Where do we find meaning? Is it contained in the objects we keep? Or perhaps it appears in the repeated rituals of our lives. Maybe it’s buried with the memory of a person. Or, well, isn’t it in the nature of the relationship with that person instead? In her short fiction, “Ole,” writer Elana Shira Segal explores these questions and more. Perhaps there’s no secret at all—we’ve known the truth all along. We just need a reminder from an unexpected source.
“[W]e felt reassured that he loved us,” says our protagonist narrator about the version of her living father from childhood memories. “[H]e’d don the yellow velvet hat with the enormous brim and delicate gold stitching, and every year, we kids would laugh and say ‘Ole.’” But something shifts when grief enters the picture. Our protagonist narrator returns home to collect her father’s belongings, “There it was, yellow and bright as a field of mustard. I sat on a work stool and fingered the wide brim.” Naturally, she decides to withhold her dad’s sombrero from being tossed out, “I repacked the sombrero into the folds of plastic just as Dad had many years before and put it in my car.”
What will happen next? What does our protagonist narrator do with this object? Does hanging on help her move forward? “It’s junking up the garage,” says a voice of reason in her household. Discover the rest of this story for yourself. The touching conclusion is well worth the read.
Source: Segal, Elana. “Ole.” Every Day Fiction, 4 January 2024, https://everydayfiction.com/ole-by-elana-shira-segal/.
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Pauline Shen 