I was probably eleven when my father started spinning plates. He’d been watching The Ed Sullivan Show and in between Petula Clark and Sergio Franchi, there was a man, all tuxed-up, spinning fifteen plates, five in the air on spindly sticks, five on the table, as he ran back and forth to keep everything going at once. The orchestra, trumpet-heavy, behind him, the audience’s rippled applause.
My father hadn’t been out of his armchair, leather and patched, since the accident. The accident being our twelve-year-old neighbor, Jimmy, on his ten-speed, knocking the briefcase out of my father’s “coming home from his crappy job” hand and hurling him to the ground. My father’s leg breaking like it was made of cheap china. I always hated Jimmy a little because of how he told all the kids I had Lemon Pox, which isn’t even a thing, but after the accident, I hated Jimmy even more.
My father sat in that chair for months, even after he healed, even after the doctor said he was fine and could walk again and go back to work. Instead of doing either of those, my father seemed to sink even deeper into his chair. “This accident,” he said, “was the best thing that ever happened.” My mother didn’t agree. She was at work all day at the flower shop. “We’re not gonna starve,” she said, “but a man has got to do.”
“Do,” my father scoffed, “I do all day for a punk half my age always telling me call this client, go make a sale.” He shook his tired head. “Enough,” my father said. “It’s enough.” And that’s when he saw the plate spinner. “God,” he said, “if I could only move like that”. The plate spinner eased back and forth, twirling the sticks with the plates on top, making sure this one twirled and then that one. And as soon as they were all in play, he’d set the plates on the table in motion. One little wrist flick and they were, all of them, turning in the same direction at once.
The next day my father got up out of his chair. When my mother said, ”ohhhh how wonderful, now you can get back to work,” he said, “no, this is not work.” He went to our china closet and took out five plates, bone white, with tiny little flowers along the edge. He set them up on the dining room table. He wasn’t ready yet for the sticks, but he seemed convinced he could handle the plates on a flat surface. Certain he could make them dance.
And he did. My mother and I held our breath as the plates, and he, came to life at once. My father was able to find a rhythm in those plates that he had lost everywhere else. They seemed to love his touch. My mother didn’t seem very concerned about the china. “Oh we never use it,” she said. “And if it makes him DO something, I’m glad.”
From then on, every night after dinner, we were eating together as a family again, my father would clear everything off the table. He’d lay down a linen tablecloth (the linen, he said, kept the plates from sliding off.) Then he took the plates out of the china closet and set them nicely in a row. He looked them over and put his finger under the rim of the first one, then the second, just as the man on TV had. He moved on his leg, which seemed like it had never been broken, as if he were leading his own line of ballerinas, all tutus and pirouettes, and my father waiting for the trumpets to come up, followed surely by the applause.
~
Francine Witte is the author of eleven books of poetry and flash fiction. Her flash fiction collection RADIO WATER was published by Roadside Press in January 2024. Her poetry collection is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She is flash fiction editor of FLASH BOULEVARD and South Florida Poetry Journal. Visit her website at francinewitte.com