by Christopher Kronen
PING! My phone chimed. I swiped open LetGo, an app for buying and selling used goods. Someone was interested in the car sunshade I'd posted. I coordinated a time and place to meet the buyer. Meanwhile, my mind wandered to my father. Adolph — or Molly, as I used to call him (a mispronunciation of a German word for "chubby). A hard-working, practical Austrian immigrant, Dad would've been proud I'd taken the initiative to sell something I no longer needed.
Dad died in 2016. He lived with me for the last nine years of his life. One of my favorite memories was our trip to New Mexico. That's where Dad bought the pastel drawing of parrots that hangs in my entryway. He liked to say it reminded him of the three of us — my late mother, my dad, and me.
On the day of the sale, the would-be buyer arrived on time. To my shock, he stepped out of the car with a colorful bird perched on his shoulder. How odd to bring a parrot to a meet a stranger from an app! The sunshade didn't fit the man's car, but by then I already knew the sale wasn't the real reason we'd found each other. The man's parrot looked as if it had flown straight out of my father's painting. And when I'd asked the parrot's name, the man replied, "Molly."
A member of the Holy Souls Sodality, Christopher Kronen lives in North Las Vegas, Nevada. This article was first published in the April/May 2019 issue of Mysterious Ways.
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