Waiting For My World To Change

Father, dear father, come home
- H. C. Work

I always felt that my day was not complete until Daddy got home from work. During the school year I remember sitting on the couch in the living room, looking out the big picture window, waiting for him to get home. We normally weren't allowed in the living room, presumably because we were a generally rowdy bunch of children. However, I was allowed to wait there for him every night. Sometimes one or more of the others would wait with me. The feeling I got seeing his car turning into the driveway is something I just can't describe adequately. Every night, at the exact instant I first spied his car, I would bounce up and down on the couch, chanting "Daddy's home! Daddy's home!" Luckily Mom was usually busy getting dinner ready, so I almost never got in trouble for bouncing on the good couch.

Summers were different. At the end of school, Mom would pack us all up and drive out to our little summer bungalow in the country. I loved it there! There was only one problem: Daddy had to work, and he could only come to see us on weekends. By default, that made Friday night the best night of the week.

The bungalow was on a corner of a small country road and an even smaller country road. I remember waiting on the corner with my younger sister, the two of us sitting on a couple of rocks, watching impatiently for Daddy's car. We would make up silly "charms" for ourselves. "The next car is Daddy's" "Two more cars and it's him" "If we sing it'll make him get here faster" That sort of thing. The funny thing is, I think we really believed it worked. Maybe we just wanted it to.

The Bumpy Road, Smashing Pennies, and Clams on the Half Shell

The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, and what do you think he saw?

We spent summers in the country when I was a child. Before my parents bought our little bungalow, we'd go out and visit family friends, who were really as close to us as family. Between the two families there was an awful lot of kids running around, and of course Daddy and our "Uncle Doc" were the center of the universe to all of us.

There were little country roads out there, narrow and winding, with all kinds of hills and valleys. The men would load all of us into the back of one of the station wagons (the back seats folded down, of course) and drive around, all up and down those roads, making sure that every bump was a thriller. Of course we loved it, screaming and laughing and bouncing around like a pack of puppies.

There were also railroad tracks that ran through the town. A great, big, heavy, filthy diesel locomotive would roll on in twice a day. This was in the 1960's, in a little hick town, so there were virtually no safety features other than a half-hearted set of warning gates. Well, Daddy & Doc would sometimes drive us all up there right before the train came by, and let us put pennies on the tracks. We would run up, put our pennies down, and run right back to safety until the train passed. When the coast was clear, we'd run back to the track and retrieve our pennies, now all smooshed into thin, misshapen copper disks. This was a huge deal to us!

Now for the clams.......and why I won't eat them to this day. I remember the men clamming in the creek during the day, always with several children tagging along. They would return triumphant, with bushels of clams. At night, I remember my parents, and Doc & our aunt all sitting on their patio, having a cocktail or two, laughing, singing, and eating clams on the half shell. I remember Dad and Doc calling me over, and showing me what happens when you squeeze lemon juice on a live clam. They twitch, in case you're interested. It was, and still is, one of the grossest things I have ever seen. Bleah.

Dad, Politics, and Me

In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.
Thomas Jefferson

It was early November, 1964, the weekend before the Election Day that would decide the Goldwater-Johnson presidential race. Dad has been a Conservative Republican his entire life, and for years was active in the Conservative Party, helping out local, state, and national candidates. JFK had been assassinated the year before, and I was 8 years old. Of course Dad was supporting Goldwater. Personally, I remember telling him that I thought HE would make the best president of all. However, if Daddy thought Goldwater was the man, then so did I.

Imagine the cold, gray drizzle of mid-autumn, the kind that seems to seep into your bones and chill you all the way through. The kind of day where the sky feels low and is the exact color of gunmetal. The leaves that have fallen have been raked into what were once piles for diving into; now they are slimy and icky and slippery. A boring Saturday between Halloween and Thanksgiving, with nothing to do but watch cartoons and read Nancy Drew, until Daddy asked me to go campaining with him. We climbed into the car (I can't for the life of me remember what kind of car it was) and set out on our mission. We were going to get old AuH2O elected President of the United States!

Sounds like a thrill a minute, I know. It actually was, for a while, because I was with my father and we were being politically active. However, as Dad drove the car, I was to run up to houses and stuff the mailbox with Goldwater campaign leaflets. Slogging my little self through that cold drizzly rain managed to thoroughly snuff out my Conservative zeal in no time. I was cold, it was boring, I wanted to go home. Dad, of course, had no intention of returning home until every pamphlet and leaflet was gone.

I jokingly blame Dad, and that rainy November day, for my liberal political leanings. In reality, I am proud that my father taught me early on to be a concerned, aware, and active citizen of this wonderful country of ours. I have voted in every election since the year I turned 18, and plan on doing so until I'm no longer able to, for whatever reason. I have virtually never agreed with my parents' politics, nor they with mine, but that is what makes this nation great: a place for everyone to voice their opinion, and to vote their conscience. Thanks for that, Dad.

Family Comedian

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
e.e. cummings

He has always made me laugh. Making children laugh was something he was always doing. Silly and goofy things he did that designed to draw giggles are some of the best of my memories. He played characters for us -- Zacherle and Lurch being two of my favorites. He always had a mischievous streak a mile wide, and it showed. He told us tons of jokes (the sillier the better), and was always coming up with something new that was sure to cause hilarity. It always worked. Even now, when so much of him is fading away, his humor still surfaces, and still makes me laugh. Granted, now it's a bittersweet laugh, but a laugh is a laugh.

I will never forget him telling the first "off-color" joke of my life at the dinner table one night. I know Mom was irritated that he told it to us, but I can still hear us kids laughing to this day.

Here's the joke:

A woman went on a cruise. One night, when the ship was far out to sea, the waiter came to her table to take dinner orders. The woman asked the waiter what kind of vegetables the were serving that night. The waiter responded that the vegetable du jour was peas. The woman was thrilled and said to the waiter, "Oh my goodness, I haven't had a pea in ages! I can't wait! How wonderful!" With that, the waiter jumped up on the table and yelled to everyone: "Man the lifeboats! All those who can't swim hang on to the chandelier!!"

I didn't say it was a great joke, but the toilet humor and play on words sure struck us funny!

Another one I remember vividly is about Jose. It's not politically correct, but too bad. This is my blog, and my Dad's jokes, and I'm putting it in anyway. Suck it up if you don't like it.

A young man named Jose came to the United States from Mexico. His mother worried about him being alone in a strange country, so when she spoke to him on the phone she asked him if everything was going well, and if Americans were friendly. He reassured her that he was doing very well and was very happy here. He said to her, "Mama, Americans are so friendly you won't believe what they did. I went to Yankee Stadium to see a baseball game, but I couldn't afford a ticket. I snuck in, and couldn't find a place to sit where I could watch the game, so I climbed the flagpole and sat at the very top. Do you know what these wonderful Americans did? Right before the game started, they all stood up and sang......'Jose, can you see.......?' "

Daddy

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
Anne Sexton

There are so many images running through my mind, that I am not sure exactly where to begin. Not snapshots, perhaps more like mini-movies. I don't really know. Just images of Daddy.

Perhaps it's best to work as much in chronological order as I can, and try to bring clarity and cohesion to some of those images. Here are some of the things I see when I think of my father:

• Untangling the lights for the Christmas tree.
• Taking our pictures with a camera that had HUGE lights on it.
• Setting up the movie projector in the living room and patiently showing us the home movies he had taken of us.
• Going to the bakery with him after Mass on Sunday mornings.
• Communion breakfasts downstairs in the school hall with him & my older sister.
• Taking me clamming, and teaching how to clam both using a clam rake and my feet.
• Buying me a Sunfish because I wanted to sail on the bay.
• Coaching my brothers' Little League teams, while Mom, me, and my sister sat in the bleachers.
• Going to work with him on school holidays, and getting to eat lunch at the counter of a luncheonette, just like a grown up.
• Carrying me in his arms from the cabin in Connecticut down to the lake the summer I was 7 because I had mono and couldn't walk.
• Taking pictures of us in our Easter outfits, and on the first day of school every year, always coming out the front door and down the steps.
• Putting up an ice-skating rink of corrugated metal in the back yard for me, after Santa brought me that AND ice skates the same year!
• Watching him and my mother smooching in the kitchen while she was trying to cook dinner.
• Standing on a ladder, cleaning the outside of the windows while mom cleaned the inside of them.
• Swimming like a fish.
• Getting up very early and going to play golf with my Uncle Tom, then coming home, showering, and going to work.
• Telling jokes and doing silly things to make us laugh.
• Holding me in his arms when I was 5 years old, at the casket of his father. I remember asking him why Grandpa was sleeping there.

Starting to get a tiny bit weepy, and I've only barely scratched the surface. More next time.

Who Are We?

All the world is a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and entrances;
Each man in his time plays many parts.
William Shakespeare

What exactly is our identity? How do we define ourselves? At the most basic level, who are we? What is the essence that makes each of us who we are?

This is a question that has been on my mind for a many years, in varied ways. We each play so many roles in our lives, which is the one that is the true "us"? Or are all of those roles each a fragment of our spirit/soul/whatever?

At this particular moment in time, I believe that each of these individual personas are merely pieces that make up the basic entity of each of us. That belief may change at some point, but for months now I have been thinking of this in relationship to my father.

son brother pilot student friend golfer conservative Catholic pharmacist husband father grandfather Alzheimer's victim

He has certainly been all of these in the course of his 85 years, and many more things as well. Which one most defines him? To me, he has always been, and still is, Daddy.

Where Does It Go?

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.
Oscar Wilde

The local Blues Festival is this weekend, and I want to go. I can't go today, but hopefully tomorrow I'll get there for a few hours. I love the blues, and so does my father.


I know if I try to talk to him about the festival, or music in general, he will do his darnedest to carry on the conversation. I also know he will have only a vague idea of what we are talking about. However, if I put one of his CDs in his Walkman, and turn it on for him, he will enjoy listening immensely, even if only briefly. He also would not enjoy hard rock any more now than he did 35 years ago.


So here's the question......what happened to his knowledge of music? The ability to appreciate the sound is still there, yet not the verbal/cognitive ability any longer. Is it still in there somewhere, that knowledge he had, or has it been strangled by the illness?


What happens to what we knew?

I'm Here

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-tzu

I have finally committed to doing this.

What am I thinking about? Life, death, love, fear, anger, joy. I am watching my father die of Alzheimer's Disease. I share the burden with my four siblings, and our mother. I don't believe my father is carrying the burden any longer, since he has now reached a point where he is declining rapidly. A little bit more of him is gone each day, yet in my heart I still see him as the vital young man who was my Daddy. When cruel reality steps in smacks me in the face, I acknowledge the truth: my Daddy is locked away from me forever, a prisoner of his own physiology.

I want to use this space to share my thoughts and feeling, to perhaps tell our story, and hopefully to connect with others.

I am keeping my identity, and even my location, private for a specific reason. Alzheimer's is a rapidly-spreading epidemic that is dessimating families all across our nation. The minutae that is "me" is but a grain of sand in the vast desert of Alzheimer's. All of us who deal with this disease on any level or in any way are connected. It is that connection that is important to me.

So welcome, and talk with me.