It was my father's coat. Draped over the back of a chair as always; its waistband hanging just at eye level. Suede I think that it was. Shiny but coarse, the color of my milk in the cereal bowl when I was done.

Inside the pockets were forbidden things. Lucky strikes, matches, a pocket knife, some coins maybe. The corner of my father's coat was always sinking, pointed downward, the contents seemingly ready to fall into my outstretched hands like candy spilling from a gumball machine.

If I wasn't careful, I would pull the chair over with a tug of my father's coat. It would snap like a trap; me barely escaping. If I wasn't careful, there was no hiding what I had done. I was too small and feeble to right that which I had wronged.

I would press my father's coat to my face and take in the smells as if I was taking my last breaths on earth. If I could get it down, on it went. I would punch my small hands into it and wrap myself in his empty arms. Then I would dance about the floor as if I owned the place!

Today my father's coat is drab and blue. It is draped over the back of a chair as always, but the pockets are empty and there is no tug to be seen or felt. There is nothing that he needs and nothing that he could work with his aged, feeble fingers now.

I pick up my father's coat. The coat smells of nothing. It has been institutionalized; there is no allure to the thing that I hold in my hand. It is just a blue coat that my father always wears when I take him out.

I hold it open for him: "Dad, do you want to put on your coat?" I say. We are going out to have lunch in the sun and the coat will keep him warm.   "Do you think that I need it?" he asks. I shake it. I hold it up for him again and he struggles like a child to get his hands through the sleeves.