K. J. Hansen

They Were Great. Runner-Up in Return of the Night Owl Challenge.

When he was young, my father was a big, strong man with hands like catcher’s mitts, wide and leathery. I know this because my mother told me. The first time she met him she was walking home from her job at the dairy. As she crossed the street, she tripped over the old streetcar tracks. My father, crossing from the opposite direction, scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the sidewalk. Her ankle had already begun to swell so he insisted on carrying her home - eight blocks away. She said he didn’t even break a sweat. Of course, she “barely weighed a thing in those days,” she’d always say. Three months later, they were married.