He appeared to be very tall, standing in a landscape with miniature
models of a village, farm animals and a castle.

“I’ll hurry over first,” he explained, “so I can
let the drawbridge down and open the big front doors for you.”

He welcomed his visitors into a room of dollhouse chairs he
would move into place with a seemingly massive hand. “Here’s

one little chair for one of you,” he began with a soft
and gentle voice. That was 1950s black-and-white TV

and my four-year-old self believed completely in the Friendly Giant.
“Here’s a bigger chair for two more to curl up in,” he continued,

then played his recorder and read stories to Rusty the Rooster,
Jerome the Giraffe and to me. “And for someone who likes to rock,

a rocking chair in the middle,” which was always my favorite spot.
If your own father was an isle of ice that boiled beneath,

Friendly’s invitation was a warm welcome to a safe place.
“Are you ready?” he said with a smile. “Here’s my castle.”

Brian Dean Powers is a retired civil servant and a lifelong resident of Madison, Wisconsin. His writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, in magazines, and in online publications.