My Late Father Warned Me About the Stairs

My father was a careful man, a fixer, the kind who tightened every screw in the house twice and warned you about hazards you had not noticed yet. He died suddenly, and for a year the house felt wrong without his voice telling me to mind the step, watch the ice, check the smoke alarm.

About a year after he passed, I had a dream so vivid it did not feel like a dream. I was standing at the top of our basement stairs, the steep old wooden ones, and he was standing at the bottom in the dim light, looking up at me with the serious face he used for real warnings, not jokes. He said, clearly, "Not tonight. Not those stairs." That was all. I woke up with the words still in my ears at three in the morning.

I lay there unsettled. In the morning I remembered it and felt foolish, but the feeling would not shake. I usually go down to the basement first thing to start the laundry, taking those stairs fast, half asleep, coffee in hand. That morning, remembering the dream, I did not. I went down slowly, both hands free, holding the rail, watching my feet, feeling ridiculous the whole way.