#rebeka singer

That moment when you first see your parents from an adult perspective--Rebeka Singer captures it.

About An Iguana

Dad went on a road trip. Said he was headed south, destination Florida, so he could lie on the beach and just relax. He had been retired, (as he liked to put it), but just plain unemployed, for nearly ten years. He spent his days smoking pot, gambling at the casino, and sleeping around the house, bored and dreaming and lonely.

Before he left he had said things like: “There’s…

The sandpipers nosed the shoreline. The sailing breeze was quiet. Weathered rocks like an elephant’s hide jutted from the ocean’s surface. Robby and I wandered along that water’s edge. A child’s castle melted into muddy mush. Hush, hush, said the old lady, Goodnight.

My skin seared under his sticky fingers inching along my shoulder blade. The water hid my feet beneath its muddy blanket.

“I just…

At only five or six years old, my mother would send me to talk to my father whenever there was a tearful, desperate argument between them. He never lost his temper with me.

It was always night. My mother would be crying in the bedroom. "You can’t blame others for your life. That’s what your father does." She swept my hair across my forehead. "You see things clearly, Lucy. You have a gift."

She would drape her body over the second-floor banister as I tiptoed downstairs. The scent of tobacco warmed my lungs even before I entered the TV room. The smoke dried my eyes.

I would stand in the doorway facing the ripped leather couch lined with stale cushions. He was always watching Westerns, holding his wooden pipe. I loved cowboy movies then because of those times I spent with him. Sometimes he would hand me his pipe to puff for play. Then I would say, "Mom’s hurt. It’s not your fault. Can you help though? Make it better." He would pull me close to him so that my cheek touched his bristly cheek, so that my skin tingled and stung, and he hugged me, so that I loved him.