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Being with My Father
Bill Quinn’s Penultimate Birthday
By Rosemary Quinn
Two hours after we all went to bed, I was still awake on the couch in my sister’s family room. An unlikely book pulled from the shelf held me captive: The Great Influenza. It was the story of an epidemic that took 675,000 lives in the U.S. alone right at the end of World War I. Normally science and medicine hold little interest for me, but this was mesmerizing; it read like a mystery. Still, just after 11:00 pm, I was drifting, so I turned off the light and was instantly asleep.
Some time later, I heard a noise: the back door opening. It was my father, prowling around in his slow way. I reached up and pulled the chain on the lamp by the couch. There was Dad, eyes wide with wonder. Boy, was he glad to see me! He was having quite an adventure, he told me.
He described how he had come through the submarine. It was dark. He wasn’t sure if there were two bunks or three, but he decided there was someone sleeping there. My dad was in the Navy, but he was a pilot. As far as I knew he had never served on a submarine.
He almost woke the man in the bunk, thinking maybe it was his relief. The man rolled over, but Dad decided not to wake him. “It seemed there was some machinery… some sort of apparatus.” He said he had fiddled around awhile, listening for the engine noise, but there wasn’t any. “I wasn’t sure if we were underway or not.” (The ‘apparatus,’ it turned out, was an aquarium sitting on a dresser.)
Dad had quite a story. It was hard to remember everything he said, so I asked if he’d like me to write it down and maybe we could sort it out together. His answer was an emphatic, “Yes!!”
I suggested we have a seat in the breakfast room, where seventeen of us had crowded in to celebrate his 87th birthday just hours before. Four generations had gathered, ranging in age down to five months.
I had other motives as well, though. I knew I would want to share this story with my siblings, but even more, I wanted to capture the incident and add it to my collection of treasures, my moments with Dad. I knew from hard experience that these “Dialogues with My Father,” while difficult to decipher in the first place were nearly impossible to reconstruct afterward. They are anything but linear or literal. Like dreams or poetry, they had to be captured quickly. I wasn’t just trying to remember what he said but how he said it. What was it that made these conversations so special?
As I jotted down phrases on my yellow pad, I recapped out loud for his benefit. Again and again, his face lit up. He was overjoyed, amazed at his good fortune! “Rosie! You’re a doll!” he exclaimed with great intensity. He was glowing with pleasure. We were in this exploit together.
He told me more: “So I went back. I found there was another man in a bunk, but I didn’t want to wake anybody. I opened up the.… I wonder if that was…. No, I’m pretty sure I found a bunk, and I think I was on the bottom.” The story looped around three or four more times, frequently trailing off, but occasionally adding a new permutation.
Watching me scribble words on the page, his mind made a leap: “You’re gonna write a book, aren’t you?” he blurted out with certainty. We had been book lovers together as long as I could remember; the idea that his daughter might be an author was heady stuff. I didn’t answer. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind that evening. He beamed at me a moment.
Ever diligent, he returned to our task. “I knew someone was here, but I didn’t know who…. I practically said my prayers.” After another moment he added, “It wasn’t dangerous, but I thought it was.”
In the next silence I must have asked a question, perhaps what made it seem dangerous. I might have known better. Questions rarely netted anything, they only sent him wandering off into the maze of his mind alone. I had to forgive myself. He stared into space and then said, “You sure ask tough questions!”
To help him out, I reread the previous sentence: “It wasn’t dangerous, but I thought it was.” His response was, “Strike that, why don’t you?” I didn’t, of course. That was way too good a line, but his request was duly noted.
Thoroughly enjoying our encounter, I kept him talking as the night passed. I answered his questions, and shared what I knew. For instance, he was right about the bunk beds; there were two just down the hall, and in fact his grandson, John Paul, was sleeping in one of them. “No kidding!” he responded, full of curiosity. “How old is he?”
“Fifteen,” I said. “He came in after we all went to bed.” Then I added that Mom was in the guestroom.
Stunned and thrilled, his voice pitched higher, as if Ingrid Bergman had bestowed a visit on us here in Salinas. “She’s here?! Sleeping?! Well, that’s great!” Then, after a long pause: “What is this place?”
“Salinas. Barbara and John’s house.”
“Really! Well, I’ll be doggoned!” dad said grinning. “That’s interesting.”
We talk of other things… his new pajamas that Stephanie brought. He really likes them; they’re the best. They’re almost the same as his other favorites. The new ones are a small, dark blue plaid. I tell him they look great with his white undershirt. He tells me how his old pajamas were worn through; they were getting pretty thin. These new ones are swell.
I tell him there are also two jars of homemade berry jam in the gift bag; Barbara made the jam. His eyebrows go up. He is delighted. I tell him the present was tied with a pink plastic bag to use when he takes Buddy out for a walk. “Really?” We get a good grin out of that one; the bow on his package is a gift for picking up dog poop. We agree that Barbara is terrific, and Buddy is “the greatest little fella.” Dad thinks he’s pretty lucky, but I don’t think it’s luck at all.
Then he exacts a promise from me. He doesn’t trust his memory, he says. He wants to be sure Stephie and Barbara know how much he appreciates their gifts. “Require me to thank them,” he says. I promise, and add it to my mental “To Do” list: high priority. I like the way he says that. “Require me to thank them.” It seems like a dad thing. He’s asking me to be the kind of parent he needs now: one that would make him write his thank you notes or do his homework on time.
“Is my mother in the bunk bed?” he asks. “I must have climbed back into the bunk with my mother. No, I think it must have been around the corner.” He’s still working on the tangled mess of thoughts, trying to get them sorted out.
I could have let the errors slide, but I elect to ask an easy question. “Do you mean your wife?” I reply. It’s my mother not his, and she’s in the double bed in the guest room, not the bunk bed down the hall. His mother has been dead since I was eleven.
“My wife. Yes, that’s right,” he says, grateful for the assistance. “Mary.”
“She’s in the guest room, across from the bathroom.”
“I didn’t want to bother her. She’s kind of a sleepy-sleepy,” he added. “Two hours, you say? Have we really been sleeping two hours?” I tell him it’s true; we went to bed around 9:00 and it was now 11:30.
“Somebody gave me information which I can’t remember…. It’s good when it’s not a stranger.” Then piecing it all together by himself, he concluded, “It must have been you!”
The thought comforted him. After his big escapade, he relaxed, venturing, “Well, this is keen. We can stay up all night…” I’m in. There’s nothing I would rather do.
We reminisce about the happenings of the day, his birthday, and he remembers quite a bit. How Annaliese, the two-year-old, was playing ‘baby’ in the stroller and swing that had been handed down to her cousins. How cute she looked in her green polka-dot dress. What a good mom Genevieve was. How great it was to have twins in the family again.
Like any good party, food was in order and Dad initiated, inquiring, “What do you suppose is in the fridge?” I knew for a fact there was plenty in the fridge: roast beef and potatoes, nectarines, strawberries, grapes and terrific jam, and on the counter, homemade bread and the remains of two birthday pies. I didn’t mention any of it; it was quite clear to me the pies should be saved for breakfast. Instead, in the freezer, I located something new: a fudgesicle purporting to be a ‘healthy choice.’ I offer; he accepts. “It’s festival!” as the Snell family says whenever dispensing with everyday rules.
This is a party house. It’s ‘festival’ here a lot. I’ve never known a family that liked each other more. They laugh a lot. And they make music. Someone is always picking up a guitar, acoustic or electric, and plucking away quietly in the background or sitting at the keyboard, playing a little something in passing.
My brother-in-law has been in a band forever. The previous day, our folks sat happily in a driveway witnessing how an aging boomer band puts together a new song for yet another wedding reception. Hearing aids off, and speakers turned the other way, dad’s toe taps and mom holds one of the local great-grandchildren, Trent or Finley. Phoebe isn’t with us.
Dad says something about a rainbow, then gives a thumbs up and says he hopes it won’t be too long. It may sound like a leap, but I gather he’s talking about dying, and it turns out I’m right. Even though he’s only 87, he’s been feeling kind of old lately. For the past six months, he’s been thinking he’s 90.
I ask what he thinks it’s like on the other side. He acknowledges that he doesn’t know, but it’s probably pretty nice. I tell him I think so too. He mentions angels, and I tell him a friend saw a whole assembly of angels the night her father died. She was singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” when she discovered the meaning of “Comin’ for to carry me home…” The energy changed suddenly and the room was filled with twelve huge angels as her father breathed his last. She felt him go. That was interesting, my dad said.
I tell him about the time I sang to him half the night in the emergency room. We had already sent Mom home to get some sleep, and were waiting for his room assignment upstairs. He slept off and on, and I held his hand and stroked his hair. The songs came and went. “What was I in for?” he asked, surprised…and the truth was, in that moment, I had no idea. I think it was pneumonia. I just remember feeling lucky to be the one there with him. There was no luck about it; that’s why I had moved to Chico.
The silence deepens. I ask how he hopes he’ll go. He says, “sort of in my own house.” ‘Sort of’ because they don’t live in their own house anymore. They sold their home of thirty years and moved to ‘independent living,’ a two-bedroom apartment with most of their meals in the dining room down the hall. At least Buddy and the cat, Feliz, still live with them, and there’s opera on Thursdays at 1:00.
He loops back to Mom… says he didn’t want to keep her awake any more than necessary. Then there’s a long pause. He stares into space. We sit together. Late at night and early in the morning are the best times to get to know another human. Fortunately, Dad was always an early riser, reading a good book for an hour or two in the quiet before anyone else stirred. The sunrise, the toaster nearby, lots of butter and three kinds of homemade jam. Hot tea. Each of us looked forward to sharing quiet morning-time with Daddy.
I ask him what he’s thinking. He says, “I was trying to think about how to be thinking.” I ask how it’s going, and he says, “Not too well!” and we both chuckle.
“I know that… hm….” He gives up, then begins again. “It’s good to be out in the clear.” That’s the truth. I don’t have to ask what he means by that.
“This’ll be a highlight of my wanting to stick around awhile,” he says. Me too, Dad. You always were a highlight of my wanting to stick around.
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