Erosion

I ran my hand along the piano keys, careful not to press too hard, and then I tidied up the pile of music that I had left strewn across the bench. I picked up photographs, old black and whites of Ginny's family, and read the faded names of people unknown to me on the backs.

There was a picture of her, not more than eight or nine years old, holding my father when he was a baby. Ginny was grinning in the picture, her smile filled with laughter and delight. She told me that my father Arthur, wasn't much for getting his picture taken and was trying to wiggle out of her arms to gain his freedom. His mother, Ginny's sister, was standing alongside, staring blankly into the camera while her father, my great-grandfather, looked sternly ahead, piercing me with eyes I knew to be just like my father's. Ginny would always smile when she began to tell this story, but her smile would fade, her happy memory turning to sadness, knowing that my father's grandfather, the only male figure in his life, had raised my father to be just like him - controlling and unforgiving.