I turn to see, on a counter, a small carboard carton with the flaps open. Inside are neatly stacked documents. On top of the papers are two photographs, both portraying females. One of them I don't recognize. The other is of a dark haired woman in a sensuous pose on the green paisley sofa I remember as a small child. The woman is clad in a leopard-skin bathing suit. She is smiling and looks familiar. My mother?

I know that I must go up the stairs. The darkened living room is clothed in eery orderliness. I am plagued by visions of empty wine bottles and overflowing ashtrays, but I climb the stairs anyway.

On the third step, loud snoring pierces the darkness. The stairs whine. The snoring ceases, then begins again.

My Dad.

I know it is my Dad.

An urgency propels me up the steps. They creak again. My heart leaps with fear, sensing he will awaken and charge me like a raging bull, out of his mind from rot-gut wine. Whispered screams tunnel down the staircase. I freeze, suspended on the edge of a nightmare. The battered face of my brother, bloody and swollen, greets me in the darkness.

I reach the top of the steps and glance into the bedroom from my lost youth. I see a thirteen year old girl, burying her tears and agony in her bed pillow. That nightmare is detached from my soul. I turn my back on the terror and Move toward his room. There is no fear. I turn to the right, into his bedroom. The snoring stops.

"Daddy?"

He is lying in the middle of the room on a gurney. He is dressed in pressed brown slacks and a brown sweater. A brown leather strap holds him on the gurney. On the other side of the room is a table that holds assorted cardboard cartons. They are all lined up with all of my dad's belongings neatly arranged within them.

"Daddy?"

He turns his face toward me. His eyes open - clear, warm and brown. He holds out his arm. "Come here, honey. Where is your baby brother?"

I fall into his arms and sob. I feel the roughness of his sweater, the smoothness of his face and smell his old spice cologne. His strong arms wrap me in safety and in love.

I awaken to the taste my of tears.

Two weeks later he answered me in this dream.

The seed planted by my willingness to let go blossomed into forgiveness that predawn morn.