The first time I heard my father curse I was 10, or maybe 11. We lived in what was a typical ranch style home for the area, in one of the older developments. It looked like how movies portray suburbs, all the houses in neat rows, all one of the same three designs, all with a driveway on the right and a green grass front yard with bushes under the front windows of the house. The kind of place you would wave to your neighbors every morning when you got into your car to drive to work. We lived at the top of a hill, on one of the two main roads through the neighborhood, so there was more traffic out front of our house than others a street or two back, as a result we didn’t spend a heck of a lot of time in the front yard. We had a young oak tree out there that my grandfather and father had planted which was ok for climbing, but wasn't big enough for more than maybe 8 feet up, so much of my outdoor time was spent in our backyard. We had a decent sized hill in the back, with two roughly flat areas at the bottom and top respectively, and true woods which started up maybe 30 feet further on from the bottom of the hill. I remember seeing all manner of birds back in those woods, bright blue and red feathers. Deer would come into the yard regularly, bucks and does. Dad had a picture for a while of a 6 point buck standing by a little shed that was on the flat at the top of the hill. I have a memory, in a funny too real in some parts and too hazy in others way that makes me think I fabricated it from an experience dad told me about; late one summer evening he looked up from the sink, out of the window which faced the backyard, and the whole yard was filled with fireflies; thousands of them, like a movie, lighting up the dim of just past dusk with a clear sky. I remember stepping out just a few feet from the back door, and seeing him standing out in the middle of them all. Anyway I don’t think I was really there, but it’s a pleasant picture. The basement wasn't what you would call finished, but it wasn't raw either. We had carpet down, not wall to wall, not professionally installed, and not the same carpet from one side to the other, and wood paneling that I think came from the garage at our old home in Illinois, leaned up against the concrete walls. The steps were carpeted, and did a good job of dividing the basement into two parts. One side of the basement was the family room, tv, couches, toys; the other side was my parents office space, and the laundry and furnace. So I was ten or so and sitting in the family room on the floor which had a good view of the bottom of the steps, and dad comes out of the office side headed up the stairs, stubs his toe hard on the second or third step, and says “SHIT!” I think my mouth probably dropped open, and I stared while he rubbed his foot before continuing up the stairs. Memories are interesting things, I have no idea what I was doing in the family room then, before or after, whether I was playing with toys or legos or watching a VHS tape or one of the 7 TV channels we got (3, 6, 10, 12, 17, 29, and 57) I don't remember what I did after he went upstairs, or if he said anything that night at dinner about cursing in front of me. Actually I’m not even sure if he knew I was there at the time, or would have recalled the incident if I had brought it up to him years later. Memories are interesting things; many of us struggle with them, struggle against them, blame them from time to time, even curse them, but other times, we cling to them with a fervent desperation. Memories of my father, good and bad, I cling to.