Remember me on Sunday.

Eyes ripened by time like two Alaskan blueberries squinting against the August sun, he uses one calloused palm to push open the Badger Store's screen door while holding a little paper bag in the other.

As they make their way toward the 1963 Chevy truck, work boots with fragments of the dry concrete from Saturday's foundation pour crunch across the graveled parking lot. Knowing that he can only make out the top of my little blond head, which is filled with thirst over the possibilities the bag carried, I wait on the other side of a filthy windshield that is splattered with mosquitoes and the occasional fly.

My favorite is strawberry pop that is cold and dripping with chilly condensation. The Mexican bandito dancing across the orange and white packaging of a package of salty Fritos is another example.

Sunday is here.

1974.

I'm thirteen.

And in 2025, if it's quiet enough in my area, I can still see him strolling and hear the old truck's door opening. A doorway to the heart and tenacity of devotion, encased in the body and blood of a straightforward, decent guy.

As I've traveled my own dirt roads without him for years, I've encountered the familiar scent of coffee, sawdust, and leather work chairs that have been fixed with silver duct tape in some places and worn in others.

With the brown paper bag between us, that extra passenger—the green flannel work shirt and old wranglers with the valuable silver tape measure hanging off his frayed brown belt like an identity badge—slides in beside my recollections as smoothly as yesterday.

Once again, at sixty-three, my existence stops to take in this moment as two grizzled hands grab the wheel.

He's returned to bring me back.

The cool touch of a crinkled paper sack against my bare arm on a hot afternoon without air conditioning is so sweetly relieving that I almost forget it's Sunday.

On this sweltering summer day, I almost forgot that my friends were swimming in the pond, while I was selected like Cinderella to assist him with household tasks on our family's property.

Nearly.

It's funny because I'm so much older now than he was back then. My years are frozen with those moments when I wanted to be with him and not with him at the same time.

Those workdays when I was the "chosen one" who didn't want to be are sometimes when I think our relationship was at its most genuine. Or how he never failed to deliver on Sundays, and how I looked forward to a paper bag with two cans of strawberry pop.

He used to say "I see you" without using any words.

In the haze of July, the ancient engine just turned over and started the journey directly out of town, passing dusty truck windows and through slender pine trees that had been halted in their tracks by the severe Alaskan winters.

Only the two of us.

Worlds away, yet together.

As if sensing that dusk was imminent, flickers of white Shasta daisies peeked through arid ditches and sharp pebbles, reaching somewhat frantically for the sun. While his right hand lifted a can from the dampening bag and offered it to me with a smile that turned those blueberry eyes into a new shade of northern sky, his left hand stayed solid on the wheel.

Even then, I assumed they had secrets hidden in long-forgotten meadows, but I nevertheless continued to have hope that I would one day learn the whole truth and write his story in a book.

Oddly, his story didn't change as my youth matured and moved on.

I was the one who started life.

I can't remember if I smiled back or if I muttered "thank you" as I pressed the silky dampness of the tin against my perspiring cheek. I do recall pulling the tab on that pop while bouncing down country roads in a silt swirl. I bent it repeatedly until the sharp edge came off, and then I put the remaining circular on my finger, resembling a silver ring.

Back then, we moved out of the town until the music on the radio seemed static, and I was engrossed in the lyrics of the 1970s, which I would later grow to love so much.

"We experienced happiness, fun, and different seasons in the sun."

Before any real journeys around the sun had started, all those gentle and harsh words were permanently inked on my ancient soul. The man in the hard hat, proudly wearing his covering, skillfully steered the old truck to avoid ruts, and before each spring, the seat beneath me jerked my insides from poetry to reality.

And I was amazed by his ability to maintain concentration while competing for the attention of a young girl who dreamed of far-off countries she had only read about while pointing out squirrels, birds, or the rare moose wandering across the road.

I watched him timidly balance his own can on the open window with a saucer-sized hand while taking that first long gulp of ice-cold pink soda, the carbonation stinging at my throat. I feared and craved it at the same time, having experienced its discipline and tenderness.

I wish I could reach back and grab it right now, here in my corner, in a world he would no longer know.

to express "I see you, too."

The knowledge of "time in a bottle" that comes only with age allows one to stroll along country roads with the windows down and sunlight bouncing off an old truck's shattered dashboard.

I had no idea how secure I felt just riding next to him, and all of our quiet times together suddenly had a voice.

He reminds me that I still am on Sundays.