Showing posts with label dad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dad. Show all posts

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Dad


Dad died in 2001, but he was gone long before. I'd moved 600 miles away when things turned bad; when he became someone else; someone elemental -- a newborn who lived a life deep inside. It was so gradual, so gentle. Dad had always been eccentric. That's what fascinated me about him. He was a constant surprise. As a little girl, I worshiped him. If I have any sense of imagination, it's because of Dad. Maybe he taught me to be a daydreamer; maybe it was genetic. I'd follow him around the farmyard as he tended to his chores and repairs, and he'd make up a silly song or a goofy phrase that I found captivating. Often I didn't understand what he was saying, but it didn't matter, because it spawned a wondrous life of its own.

As the years passed, I disdained him. He descended into alcoholism; falling-down drunkenness. He drove my mom crazy, which drove my life crazy. A switch flipped on for me around age twelve, and it didn't flick off until I was old enough to acquire a modicum of wisdom about the vagaries of life. (It took a long time.)

My mom committed him to the State Hospital For The Insane, which in the sixties also claimed to treat alcoholics, but actually didn't. It warehoused those who couldn't handle life. Then she did it once again nine months later. The "cure" never took. What it did, though, was break him. The whimsical oddball Dad had always been evaporated. He turned docile; subdued. On our infrequent visits, he was tentative. He traversed the stone walkway with us as if his bones would shatter if he made an untoward move. I mentally distanced myself from the whole imbroglio, resolved to X off the days on the calendar until I was old enough to get the hell out and away.

Once I made my escape at almost nineteen, I dispensed with the whole mess, but home was a ghost that whipped the curtains. I was gone but never gone. Early in 1976 Mom informed me that Dad was back to drinking again. By then she was resigned. The years had become an endless stabbing needle of Dad's meek compliance interspersed with bursts of defiance. Mom told me that he had checked himself into a rehab center; one more in a long string of healings that had never once taken.

This time it did.

I don't know what Heartview had that the other places didn't, or if he just surrendered. After Dad's six-week stint in Heartview, he never again took another drink.

I never once told my dad how proud I was of him. We didn't say things like that in our family. We actually never said much of anything to one another.

Instead I did what I knew how to do -- I wrote him a song:




When Dad was in Heartview, I learned that I was pregnant. Thus, two lives began. My little boy celebrated his first birthday at Mom and Dad's home, but it wouldn't be long before my parents decided to start a new life. They sold the business that had turned into a bargain with the devil, and moved to a real house, where Mom baked banana bread and Dad chased the rabbits out of his garden. In more than thirty years of marriage, this was the first calm existence they enjoyed. Dad carried his white coffee mug with him everywhere, attended AA meetings every week; stubbed out his cigarettes in a sand-filled coffee can in the garage. He became Dad again; goofy, amused by stupid seventies TV commercials.

In 1978 my second baby boy came along. He had dark hair and dark eyes; a genetic generation-skipper. He looked just like Dad. My boys spent many a Fourth of July sunset shooting off fireworks in the street in front of Mom and Dad's house, alongside their cousins and kid-like uncles.

The last time I visited my dad he existed in a world all his own. Mom said she had to set an extra place at the dining room table for Dad's "friend". He talked to his friend late into the night as he rested in his blue corduroy recliner. I went to bed in my little sister's old bedroom and fell asleep listening to Dad talk late into the night. His voice was so gentle, I felt like a little girl again, snuggling on Daddy's lap.

I wasn't there for the end. I prefer the memory of my dad's soothing tones as I drifted off to sleep. That's how I want to remember him -- the same beginning; the same end.

It's been seventeen years and I still miss him.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. My heart aches from missing you.






Saturday, February 9, 2013

God Made a Farmer





No, I didn't forget about this.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl, because, well, I just don't care, frankly.  If the Vikings were in the Super Bowl, sure.  Like that's ever going to happen.

Day after, though, I kept reading about some Super Bowl commercial that featured Paul Harvey!  I spent approximately three to four years of my teenaged life listening to Paul Harvey on my AM radio.  At 7:30 a.m.  And also at twelve noon.

Paul Harvey could make anything seem interesting.  What he'd do was, he'd rope you into an only semi-interesting story; but he'd tell it so vividly; that when he finally said, "Paul Harvey....................."


"Good day!"

....you were waiting on pins and needles to hear the denoument.

And now he was talking about farmers?  My dad was a farmer!

So, in lieu of watching the Super Bowl, I instead viewed the DVD version of Clear and Present Danger; and I missed the awesomeness of Paul Harvey talking about guys like my dad!

Isn't that just typical?

In the year 2013, people can still get choked up about Paul Harvey and farmers?  What in the world has this world come to?  I mean, yea, I can get choked up about it; but I didn't think anybody else could.

Yet, there it was.














Saturday, June 20, 2009

My Dad


It's hard to have a Father's Day without a father.

If my dad was still alive, he'd be 85 years old. And he'd still be as exasperating and silly as he always was.

My dad was a character. There are no two ways about it. I'll never know anyone like him, because there just isn't anyone like him.

The stuff that makes me me, I got mostly from my dad.

One of my earliest memories of my dad is sitting and watching him shave. He had that old-fashioned straight razor, and he'd be looking in the mirror and singing one of the latest tunes he'd heard on the radio. "Catch A Falling Star" was a favorite. I sat there like a star-struck fan, just watching my dad shave.......and sing.

My dad was always singing......or whistling. He was a great whistler.

In my early years, my dad was a farmer. He worked really hard, from before sunup to after sundown. But he'd always drive the tractor into the yard at lunchtime, so I'd be waiting in the yard by the house; waiting for him to drive in. And I'd run out to meet him. He'd scoop me up in his arms and carry me to the kitchen.

My dad had six kids, but in so many ways, I think I am the one most like him.

My dad was the eternal optimist. Even in light of hard evidence to the contrary, he always believed that things would work out okay. Or he just figured that it wasn't worth worrying about. That's me.

He lived for small pleasures. He found endless humor in the absurd. Problem was, if he found something funny, he just wouldn't let it go. And it would leave the rest of us scratching our heads, because we didn't quite "get" what was so funny.

Remember that commercial about the Roach Motel? "Roaches check in, but they don't check out"? For some reason, he just found that to be hilarious. And he'd endlessly quote it. I could postulate that it was because, after many years of farming, my mom and dad went into business by buying a motel, so maybe that was the connection. But I still don't really get why that was so funny.

But we'd all laugh, just because it was funny that he was laughing about it. Humor in the absurd.

By no means was life a bowl of cherries for my dad. First of all, he worked really hard. There wasn't much money in the early days, and my folks got by on credit, until the harvest came in.

So, he really appreciated the small moments. Picnics in the backyard; a can of Grain Belt. A pack of Belairs in his pocket.

And then there was the inherited disease. Alcoholism. It kind of ran rampant in my dad's family, and my dad was not immune.

It didn't really get bad until the late sixties. Leaving the farm and going into business was perhaps a financial boon, but not an emotional one. Left to his own devices (and unfortunately running a bar as part of the motel complex), my dad didn't want to make his patrons feel lonely, so he'd pour himself a tall glass of whatever they were having.

As one can imagine, one thing led to another, and life got bad. Lots of drama; lots of heartache.

Finally, in 1976, my dad owned up. He knew what he had to do, and although he was sort of led, kicking and screaming, he entered treatment for the third time and got his life back.

After that, he read his twelve-step book every day. He became a sponsor. I have my dad's twelve-step book. It's one of the few things I have that belonged to him.

For the rest of his life, he never took another drink. And life was still good. He still laughed about stupid stuff. He still got tickled by things that the rest of us didn't get.

My mom and dad sold the business and retired at a relatively young age. My dad took up gardening (a flash to the farming years). He complained about the rabbits eating his lettuce.

He sat in his blue recliner with his stained coffee mug, and watched Johnny Carson, and smoked, smoked, smoked his Belairs.

He'd been in a car accident (with a Model T? or a Model A? One of those models) just before he'd gotten married. His hearing was permanently damaged, so we all dealt with his mishearing, misunderstanding stuff all through the years, but it got progressively worse as time went on. He wore hearing aids, but they didn't help a whole lot.

The thing was, if he misheard something, he'd just make up something else. He'd come up with the most absurd interpretations of what someone had said; one just knew that he was messing with us.

"Richard, do you want more coffee?"

"Toffee? You know I can't eat toffee!"

It was like Emily Latella, and just as calculated.

When Alzheimer's settled over him like a soft blanket, he'd still sit in his recliner late at night, but now he'd carry on conversations with his imaginary friend, long after my mom had gone to bed for the night.

We came to visit and stayed overnight in the spare bedroom, and as I lay in bed, I could hear him talking in the living room. I fell asleep that night to the sound of my dad's voice. It felt gentle; soothing. Just like I was a little girl again.

After my dad passed away, I sat in my rocking chair on the weekends and played Ray Price over and over. It made me happy, because I felt that Dad was there with me, and telling me, in his gentle, soothing voice; "It's all right".

Soft rain was falling
When you said goodbye
Thunder and lightening
Filled my heart inside
A love born in heaven
Had suddenly died
And the soft rain was teardrops
For the angels all cried


Happy Father's Day to all you dads. And to all you daughters and sons.

~~~