The Environment

I learned to care about nature as well as people because my parents did. It was my father’s job. He is an environmental scientist and when I was young he researched environmental impacts such as acid rain. He worked long hours, he wrote books, he skipped dinner.

My mother took us to a farm for summer vacation. We played with the chicks, watched the cows being milked, stomped in the piles of grain in the yard, and hiked in the Alps. My father visited one weekend.

I grew accustomed to not seeing my father often; I knew his work was important. I listened to him talk to colleagues he brought home about the world heating up and the oceans rising. He sounded worried and said no one was listening. I was afraid of being swallowed by the ocean.

I remember my father best in the evening when the sun softened and the wind cooled the patio. I would stand on it, warming my feet and waiting for him. I would wait there until my mother told me to come inside and then I waited at the window, pressed to the glass. I waited for the white helmet to glide above the leafy wall, for the gate to open and my father to step through supporting his bicycle with one hand. He would put his bike in the garden house and come inside smelling like sweat and wind. It was my turn.

I would jump on him and say, “Let’s do ‘Come on again let’s twist like we did last summer.’” He would put his bag down and sit on the couch while I stood up on his knees. Then, he would take my hands and begin to sing. I twisted like a wild woman, until the room turned to a blur, my head felt hot, and my stomach turned upside down. I shrieked with joy and my father smiled a big smile that squeezed his cheeks and squinted his eyes. We were in a good mood and I didn’t want it to end.

“Come on again like we did last year,” I would beg, and we did.