Blurry Lines
An Intermezzo for Father's Day
This will be a departure from the usual Fingers Dancing essay. I call it an Intermezzo for Father’s Day. My dad loved music. My first introduction to classical music was listening to the little red 45’s that RCA made with symphonies, sonatas and light classics. After his retirement dad used an old Commodore 64 that I handed down to build databases of all the music that he owned and played daily. Some of the CD’s were those that I recorded. He was fascinated with my recordings… especially the digital mixing and mastering that I taught myself.
It’s been over fifteen years, now, that I was hurrying south, trying to keep my car on the road. The snow was falling only lightly in lowa, but the wind was fierce. Those little clouds of swirling snow can be mesmerizing. They seemed to hover near the ground, blotting out the lines they paint on the highways that help you stay out of the ditch.
The trip was unplanned, instigated by a call from one of my sisters. “Dad’s in the hospital. It looks pretty bad. You should come home.” Yes, one of those calls. The one we all dread. I quickly made arrangements to cancel my appointments for the rest of the week, packed a very small bag, and was off within a half hour.
You tend to think a lot on one of those drives. It’s easy to stay calm, I found, because you have no idea what you will find when you get there. The highway is a good hypnotist. Your mind can wander. You imagine all of the outcomes, from the worst to the best. You strategize the ‘what-ifs’ of all the ‘possibles.’
Dad was 87 at the time. We had seen him at Christmas and he seemed healthy, although he had a deep cough that I wondered about. Of course any mention of a flu shot would push one of his famous ‘buttons’ and it was pointless to argue, especially since I hadn’t had a flu shot since I was in the army, and one was forced upon me. Pneumonia is not a friend to anyone, but an octogenarian probably should avoid any health challenges beyond those that age automatically place in your path. Dad has problems breathing anyway, and the pneumonia seemed to have stopped him in his tracks.
I suppose all children have strange, distorted ideas of their fathers. They always seem so big, so strong, and so indomitable. I know my father to have been quite a hellion in his day. We never heard too many stories of his WWII tour to China while in the Marine Corps. I’m sure his bad-boy image was one of the traits that attracted my mother to him.
Our family has, undoubtedly, the same kind of mythology surrounding our patriarch that any family has. For one of my sisters, the running of the Drake relays on his high school track team, turned dad into any Olympian! I know she believed it. I can remember running away from him one time, when I had gotten myself into trouble. I considered myself a fast runner, but.. he did catch me.
I couldn’t help but be fascinated with those blurry lines on the highway. Fathers have seen many blurry lines. Like my dad, I was 23 when I became a father. Babies don’t come with an owner’s manual. There’s no directions for the path we take to being a father, and the learning curve is steep. I was lucky in having a model, at least. My dad was fatherless from age 13. He had to make up his own job description. Let me tell you, that’s not easy. The lines are just too blurry.
My dad and I share many things, other than our early fatherhood. He was loud at times. I’m loud most of the time. I find that I can’t help it. It’s built into my nature. We’re both quite opinionated, and we seem to relish divulging our opinions, shattering the secrecy of our inner voices.
We shared a love of electronic gadgetry. My dad worked as an engineer for TV stations in the 50’s and 60’s, before digital automation. Part of our family lore is the huge electronic switch that he and a colleague built. The machine did the switching from network to local programming for the TV station that they literally built in South Dakota. There were always TV sets in our basement that dad was repairing for people. I was intrigued by it all, and this led to a very good job in the Army Signal Corps for me.
And of course my dad and I share the woman he calls Dar, and I call mom. He’s learned, over the years, to keep quiet at the right moments. When mom gets going my dad can drop into the background, the only sign that he is enjoying the flare-up are the eyes, slowly turning heavenward. I hope I eventually learn the control to drop into the background at the appropriate moment .
Dad spent almost 6 months in the hospital and rehab. His only goal was to be at home again. When he was released he was on constant oxygen, which helped his breathing. I know that was the way to keep the dreaded pneumonia away. He got a pneumonia shot this year, as did I. He worked very hard to be able to come home, and he seemed quite healthy... even a little plump around the edges, I think. And, his hair was looking better than mine, so I have some work to do to keep up. As always.
Dad died on October 22, 2014 in his last attempt to once again come home. The prostate cancer, which he developed in his early 70’s had returned. The surgery that was prescribed was risky, but dad considered it worth the risk. I think he knew the chances to wake up from surgery were slight, but he also knew that he would never get to come home if he didn’t chance it. I have always thought that he knew he was saying goodbye to everyone when they wheeled him in to the operating room.
It has now been twelve Father’s Day without him. Well, he has gone to his permanent home now, and we miss him. As always, he went first. To make sure things would be OK when we go there.