I retired from Kaiser Permanente after 27 years as a staff anesthetist. I would like to thank The Permanente Journal editors for their support and publication of my poems throughout the years. Recent published works appear in:Cloudbank (Summer, 2010), Prairie Schooner (Winter, 2009), Rattle (A Tribute to Nurses), Ekphrasis, Windfall, and in the anthology, A Call To Nursing, Spring, 2009, Kaplan Publishing.

For solace upon the death of my mother I turned to memory and writing. Just as songs can trigger memories, it is not surprising to me that waiting in a car triggered family memories. Growing up in the 50s and 60s in the USA meant immersion in the new car culture. Drive-in movies. Station wagons filled with families on summer vacations. First car. First date in a car.

The scene in 2003, waiting in the van at night with my father, reminds me how silence in a confined space is intimate. How thoughts can be uttered into the darkness.