By Amaris White
My father, Trevor White, passed away in July and has lived in the Clayton and Concord area for nearly forty years. He was a frequent patron of the Clayton Club Saloon and the Clayton Library. He was born in London, and came to the US when he was 21 years old, where he met my mother from Tokyo. They were the first couple (perhaps only still?) to get married in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Over the last nine months of his life, we collaborated on a project called “Poetry with Dad.” He wrote witty and silly poems, and I would illustrate them. You can see our poems here — https://www.instagram.com/poetrywithdad/.
We also published two books — “Poetry With Dad,” and the second was published in his memory last week, “More Poetry With Dad.”
I started this project as a way for us to connect during the pandemic. My father’s health had been declining, and with the pandemic, his social life completely disappeared as well. I live on the East Coast now, and we didn’t have much to talk about during this time.
This project gave us an opportunity to have something other than physical ailments or problems in the world to focus on. It gave us both something to dream about — he had big dreams of doing poetry readings in bookstores after the pandemic, and of publishing children’s books. I’m so grateful to have been able to share this with him.
