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A Daughter
- University of Arizona Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
10 A Daughter Sergio mentioned the hills, how he spotted my dad and me on the back roads. What I remember is how we stood stunned from the heat of the run, the view of the valley: fifteen sheep grazing near a cypress tree tucked in the hip of the closest hill, my father’s eyes watching the sand rise off a path. But perhaps I was hampered by the view, and Sergio knew something was missing. Perhaps my dad stood dreaming of something he wished he had done, that would have been his own, the way he weighed in each hand a granite and shale stone. Maybe I just needed to see my father looking out on the land, at the groomed plots framed with boulders and thistle, because this way he appeared wise to me, knew the size of a healthy heifer, the sickly shoots of adolescent wheat. There on the edge of an overhang instead of down in the city below, 11 I would have nodded yes to Sergio, agreed my dad picked up the rocks to protect me. I would have let the boy giggle, as if he had stumbled upon the secret. ...