The Distance Between Us

The first time I saw my father in nearly twelve years, he was sitting alone on the porch of our old family home, the paint on the railing chipped and curling like the pages of a long-forgotten book. He looked smaller somehow—thinner, older, like time had quietly folded him in.

I stopped the car at the end of the gravel driveway and sat behind the wheel for a full minute. The engine clicked softly as it cooled. A bag of clothes sat in the back seat, along with a folded paper—the letter he had written me two months ago. Simple words. No apology. Just: If you can, come home. I’d like to talk.

Twelve years. A whole childhood, and most of my adulthood, had passed since we last spoke.

When I finally stepped out, the wind kicked up some dust around my shoes. He looked up from his chair as if I were just another part of the landscape. I braced for the awkward wave, the slow rise from his seat, maybe a stuttered “Hey, kid.” But he didn’t move. He just nodded once and looked back out at the trees.

So I walked up to the porch and sat on the top step. Not too close. Not too far. That was always the way with us—distance measured not in feet but in silence.

“You look like your mother,” he said after a while, still staring straight ahead.

“You told me that when I was ten,” I replied.

“Still true,” he muttered.

The breeze rustled the trees, and somewhere a bird chirped a long, lonely song. The sky was beginning to turn orange, the sun dipping behind the hills like it was too tired to fight anymore.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he added, more to himself than to me.

“I didn’t think I would either.”

We sat in silence. Not the heavy, angry kind that had filled the house after Mom died, but a different kind—gentler, sadder. There was no one left to fight for anymore. Only memories, and the mess we’d made of them.

“Do you still play guitar?” he asked.

“No. Sold it to pay rent a few years back.”

“That was your mother’s favorite sound,” he said, a faraway smile flickering across his face. “You playing in the attic.”

I almost laughed. “She used to tell me to stop all the time.”

“Only when I was trying to sleep.”

I looked at him then—really looked. His hands were thinner, more fragile. The deep creases in his face weren’t just age; they were regrets, carved over years.

“Why’d you write me?” I finally asked.

He shifted in his chair and looked down at his hands. “Because I’m tired,” he said simply. “And because I didn’t want to die with nothing between us but silence.”

There it was.

I swallowed hard. “You left me alone,” I said, more quietly than I meant to. “You stopped being my dad the day she died.”

He nodded slowly. “I know.”

“You didn’t come to my graduation. You didn’t call on my birthday. I lived twenty miles away for four years and you never once came to see me.”

“I know,” he said again, almost a whisper.

“What the hell were you doing all that time?”

His eyes glistened. “Grieving. Wrong. I grieved wrong. I thought if I shut everything out, I wouldn’t feel it. But it just made me feel nothing. And when I finally looked up, you were already gone.”

I looked away. My throat tightened, the way it always did when I was trying not to cry. I hadn’t planned to yell at him. But years of holding it in had shaped my voice sharper than I’d intended.

“I don’t need you to apologize,” I said after a long silence. “I just needed you to show up. Just once.”

“I’m here now,” he said.

We sat there as the sky faded into indigo and the crickets started their nightly chorus.

“Do you want to stay the night?” he asked, finally turning toward me.

I hesitated. But then I looked at the porch—the way the boards creaked under my weight, the smell of pine and tobacco. It still felt like home, buried under years of dust.

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

He smiled, small and tired. “I made stew. Probably too much. Old habit.”

I followed him inside, the screen door creaking like it always had. The house was cleaner than I expected, but worn. Time had been both kind and cruel.

Over dinner, we talked about little things. The weather. Baseball. The neighbor’s dog. Nothing big. Nothing that hurt. But it was something.

That night, lying in my childhood bed, I stared at the ceiling fan spinning in lazy circles. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel the weight of old anger. Just the soft ache of something starting to heal.

The distance between us was still there—but it didn’t feel so impossible anymore.