The small plastic disc spins through my memories like a dream, catching glints of summer sunlight. Father’s weathered hands, showing me how to flick the wrist just so. “Like this, Amy,” he would say, his patience infinite as I failed throw after throw.
The frisbee was tiny, child-sized, a bright yellow beacon against blue skies. Mother called it my “special disc,” though I never understood why until much later. Through my childhood eyes, it was simply mine - my connection to those precious weekend afternoons when Father wasn’t consumed by work.
“Higher, Daddy!” I would squeal, jumping and stretching my small arms skyward as he sent the frisbee floating in graceful arcs. The world would blur into streams of color and sensation: grass tickling bare feet, wind teasing hair, Mother’s laughter from the porch where she watched us play.
“Remember when…” my sister Sarah’s voice breaks through my reverie. We’re sitting in Mother’s kitchen now, boxes of old belongings scattered around us as we pack up the house. Twenty years have passed since those frisbee days.
“You were so determined to master that throw,” Sarah continues, hands absently sorting through a box of photographs. “Even after…”
Her voice trails off. Even now, we dance carefully around certain memories.
“I found it,” I say suddenly, pulling the small yellow disc from beneath a stack of old report cards. The plastic is faded, scratched, bearing the scars of countless hours of play.
“Oh Amy,” Sarah’s eyes go soft. “I didn’t know you kept it.”
The memories swirl faster now, like leaves caught in an autumn wind: Father teaching me proper form, his hands steady on my shoulders. The day I finally managed a perfect throw, spinning straight and true. Mother’s proud smile, camera flashing to capture the moment.
“Do you think he knew?” I ask, running my fingers along the frisbee’s worn edge.
Sarah looks at me for a long moment. “That he would leave so soon? No. But I think he knew how much these moments meant.”
A photograph slips from the stack in her hands - me at seven years old, frozen in mid-throw, face scrunched in concentration. Father stands behind me, but the image is oddly blurred, his features indistinct.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say slowly, “about what Mother told us last year. About the treatments he was already undergoing back then. How the doctors had given him months, not years.”
Sarah nods. “Yet he spent every free moment playing frisbee with you.”
I close my eyes, and suddenly I’m seven again, watching that small yellow disc soar through summer air. But this time, the memory shifts - I see Father’s trembling hands, carefully hidden. The way he would sometimes pause to catch his breath, playing it off as dramatic effect while I giggled.
“He wasn’t teaching me to throw a frisbee,” I whisper, understanding blooming like dawn. “He was teaching me to hold onto joy. To keep throwing it back into the world, no matter what.”
Sarah reaches across the boxes between us, takes my hand. “Then I’d say you learned well, little sister.”
I look down at the tiny frisbee, this humble plastic disc that carried such weighty lessons. Tomorrow we’ll finish packing up Mother’s house, close this chapter of our lives. But for now, I hold onto this tangible piece of love and wisdom, understanding at last that some things - like joy, like memory, like love - never truly fade.