Scooter Dude

I wish I had known the version of my father
that others did:
Scooter Dude on the sidewalk,
pretending he was gonna run over
children’s feet,
them squealing with glee.

The constant man on the town
even as his health failed.

His neighbors hold my hand at his funeral.
“He was so friendly, so funny. So warm.”
“He wheeled to our house, hallooed at our door,
gave us a yellow plastic bag full of
his tomatoes, his green beans, from his garden.”

They didn’t know he dragged himself on his belly
through the dirt.
The anti-serpent, redeeming
the garden with a trowel and
plants, sweat rolling, muscles
quaking, determination pulsing through his
Parkinson’s-burdened body
all to grow vegetables to delight.

I saw only the process, the effort.
They got the heart of him,
the flavorful red flesh
fresh off the vine.
I wish I’d known that him
better.
The performance.

He was their friend on the street,
who brought them himself as soup,
who waved and tooted his horn.
“Hey,” he’d crow, or sing you a line of
“Sixteen Tons.”

Until his funeral, they didn’t know
that his vegetable soup took him twice as long
to make, his body and mind not on speaking terms.

It came at a cost, yet one he freely paid.

I was so busy protecting him
I didn’t take the time
to get to know
my dad
that way.

By: Drema Drudge

Drema Drudge is a novelist and poet whose work blends emotional candor, intellectual inquiry, and the everyday with longing. She earned her MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. Her work has appeared in The Louisville Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, and is forthcoming in Suspended Magazine and others.