I've missed him and our weird conversations now for 17.5 years.HAPPY...for those to whom it applies.
FATHER'S
DAY
Then again, we all had dads. If you are still able to do so, don't forget to call him today.
My conversations with my dad on Father's Day (and most other phone calls) went something like this:
{{ring}}If Mom wasn't home, after our short discussion, Dad would invariably say, "Well, I don't want to run up your phone bill, so we should say goodbye." Our calls never, ever, EVER, lasted more than 5 minutes, unless I was melting down about something. He'd stay on a little longer then, but eventually he'd shove me off on Mom to finish the Bolstering Up of the Freaked-Out One.
"Hello"
"Hi, Dad. Happy Father's Day!"
"Hello. How are you?"
"Fine. How about you?"
"Fine. Job going ok?"
"Yes. [Some blah blah about work, or whatever] How are you feeling, really?"
"Nothing to worry about. [A short dissertation of his current projects, or complaints about food he's not allowed to eat]"
"Mom ok?"
"Sure. You want to talk to her?"
"Are we done?"
"Yep. Here's Mom."
I really miss our short talks.
On Thursday morning, after our orientation (interrupted by 5 or 6 cell phone calls), Ed began dividing us into work teams and assigning us jobs. Our group of about 10 was--I think--supposed to head to someone's house to do drywall. Ed received yet another call, this one from an elderly man who has needed help assessing what was next in recovering his house.
This gentleman is an active, fit former-fireman. Coming just six months after the death of his wife, Katrina wiped him out emotionally. He has a tidy little nest inside his FEMA trailer, and his house has been mucked out (twice: he paid for the job once, and then called Ed for help when the $3,000 he spent got him a half-assed, unfinished job which Ed's volunteers full-ass finished). The roof was replaced (I think he paid for that and again had to have volunteers finish the job properly). Then he apparently just ... shut down.
One of the things the D'Iberville Volunteer Foundation and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance have done is continue to assess each and every resident. They stay in touch and check in with them by phone and by visits regularly, though they do not force residents to begin or do any work until the individual is ready, assuming their health is not in danger. So they knew that James needed more work done, and they had talked to him about it, but he just wasn't ready. At 84, he wasn't sure it was worth it to him.
He called Ed Thursday morning as we were getting our assignments. In spite of being assigned to drywall someone else's house, Ed switched half our group over to go assess the electrical needs and get started on drywalling James's house. We pulled up across the street from a nice 60's-era brick ranch house which looked--from the outside--clean if a bit careworn. As we exited the van, looking a bit like a circus clown act, we realized we were parked in what used to be someone's living room; all that is left is chunks of concrete slab and a gravel driveway.
On that cheery note...we proceeded across the street into the garage. The inside of the house had been taken down the the stud walls. There were pipes and wires protruding from the ceiling and walls, and there was wrecked linoleum on the floor of what used to be the kitchen and dining room. The rest of the house had bare concrete floors. No insulation anywhere. Windows and screens in need of replacing, standing open like the front door: a lovely old solid wood door too water swollen to close completely. The front yard had a few dead tree limbs and a lot of weeds, the wrought-iron on the porch rusty under the white paint. Not horrible, but definitely not livable. The bathrooms had all their fixtures intact, including the tile on the floor (which, now that I think of it, will probably have to be removed).
Our team that first day consisted of the following people:Beast, Sparky, meBeast, MS, AD and me got started assessing the electrical layout. It was a mess--they ended up replacing everything except the circuit box, and rewiring the whole house. I was assigned a notebook and pencil and followed MS around making a shopping list.
two youth members: TS and JY
AD, a church member who used to be a youth group leader
another couple from church: MS and LS
a woman who teaches with one of our members: SB, and her two teenaged sons, AB and JB
another teacher, KM, and her family: RM Sr., RM Jr., and SM
RM and several others began measuring for drywall and insulation. The other women started talking to the homeowner, who insisted that everyone calls him "Mr. Jimmy." Oy. He was very clearly depressed, bent over under the stress of decision-making and despair. Still, he was lucid and able to answer all the questions about wiring and so forth that were put to him, and gradually began to join in the free-for-all. He mentioned that the linoleum in the kitchen would have to come up eventually so that some other floor could be laid. People started scraping it up in the loose spots with spade and some other tools.
Shopping list completed, we headed back to Volunteer Village to get better floor-scraping tools, and then to Lowe's for our first shopping expedition. Mr. Jimmy came to VV and insisted on taking the scrapers back for us, tossing them into his jeep. That was my first hint that as depressed as he was, he is still physically strong.
Long story short: by Saturday, we had his linoleum floor up, including the sticky backing which had to be removed with solvent, there was insulation in most of the walls, and the guys had sweat about 5 gallons each while climbing in the attic.
In the process, several of us had a chance to spend time chatting with Mr. Jimmy. He is a born storyteller, he loves girls, and he is an absolutely charming man. He told us about his wife, and her love of gardening; their house was a showcase, he said, and people used to drive past and take pictures of all the blooms.
So, the women decided to take the money raised by the children in the elementary school where they teach and fix up his front garden: new (easy-care) plants, pulling weeds, paint on the wrought iron on the porch, a soaker hose so he doesn't have to drag the hose around the house.... The dead branches and tree debris was stacked by the street for removal, weeds were shot with Roundup, and the gardens were mulched.
We worked at Mr. Jimmy's Thursday, Friday and Saturday straight through. The rest of the group was doing other jobs: painting one house and drywalling another one, and I did some of the drywalling on Monday, too, in a house just down the block from Mr. Jimmy's. On Saturday after we'd cleaned up the work area for the day, and after to some urging from his new girlfriends, Mr. Jimmy sat down in the garage with all of us gathered around and performed five songs on his guitar. There was not a dry eye in the house. He eventually agreed to come to our camp and do a concert for all of the volunteers on Monday night. It was the loveliest concert I will probably ever attend. There was not a dry eye in the vicinity, and a few audience members were singing along quietly with him.
On Saturday, his daughter and son-in-law, and grandson and great-grandkids arrived for what seems to be their weekly visit. [They live near Mobile.] They had some work to do for him on the house (long story), and they mowed his yard. The little kids (ages 5 and 9) were agog with all the work being done in the attic, and my job that day was to keep them out from underfoot so they didn't get boxes, wires, plugs, tools, etc. dropped on their heads. They are pistols, those two. Mr. Jimmy was grateful for our presence again, for giving them something to do: "They get bored here. There's nothing for them to do," he said.
Both after the concert and before we left his house Tuesday for the last time (electrical completely redone, inspection passed!), Mr. Jimmy told us that we obviously love to work, that he couldn't believe how hard we ALL worked, and that he felt that he might be able to move into the house before the end of the summer. I don't know: he's got HVAC, drywall, flooring, fixtures and plumbing to deal with next. BUT!!!! He was standing upright, smiling, gesturing--a totally new man ready to face life again. I will undoubtedly never seen James Lepre again, but the light of his lifetime of stories and the sound of his voice singing "Bill Bailey" will stay with me forever.
Yes, we helped this man, and some others. But what we got in return is just as valuable, if somewhat amorphous. I feel like I've regained my sense of purpose, reminded myself of strength I didn't know I had, seen the horror of what nature can do to us and been properly reminded of humankind's place in the world, killed some of the stereotypes I've had about Southerners, crossed off a few more states in the list of those I've traveled in/through, and survived another 'camping' trip. I wish I'd been able to eat a beignet (my stomach was not willing to face one), and I wish I could have stayed in D'Iberville longer. I wish these people didn't have to go through this horrible time, and I wish I could understand why someone would want to rebuild a beach house on the site of the one that washed out to sea last year.
Mostly, I can't wait to do this again sometime, somewhere. But only if Irene McIntosh is in charge of the meals!
The light fixtures on the back porch are doing a version of the tango this morning with the wind. The house is a little chilly. It'll warm up with the oven going in a couple of hours.
Word verification for commenting threw this one at me today: piepkbu. It made me smile.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. What are you thankful for this year?
I know I'm not exactly a shining example in the haute world, but I do have one piece of basic advice in terms of color matching:If you choose to dye your graying-blonde hair bright orange in order to be seasonal--or is it because you want people to confuse your head with a pumpkin or a pile of maple leaves?--please, I beg you, do NOT wear a fluffy pale-pink chenille turtleneck.Thanks. Now, I must get back to work.
My suggestion: wait until December, dye your hair poinsetta-red, and then wear the pink. Because, especially for old people, orangey-streaky-blonde juxtaposed with pale pink is just too much of a color shift and it may induce seizures in passersby. Or vomiting, in same. And it would be a shame to ruin your Doc Martens.
How do you sum up half of your gene pool?
This is the 10th anniversary of my dad’s last, fatal heart attack --ten years that began by being overshadowed by the death of his daughter two weeks later. Later, two of my siblings would tell me, separately, that she was his favorite.
Dad didn’t have a fun life, or an easy one. Born in November 1919 on a homestead claim in western Colorado, he was the only son in a family desperately trying to get ahead. His father was so poor that he couldn’t even work on his own claim: he farmed at home when he could, but mostly for neighbors. What drove them off their (unproven) claim was a series of horrifying experiences:Life in suburban Denver was much easier and safer. They got their feet back under them.
- A pitchfork falling off a hay truck pierced my grandfather’s neck. Grandma had to pull it out. The tines missed everything important. No doctors. He survived.
- Rattlesnakes loved the root cellar. One nearly bit Dad, but Grandma cut off its head with a hatchet before it got to him.
- One of dad’s sisters died on the Western Slope of scarlet fever. No doctors. She probably would not have died if they’d lived in town. There was no money for a marker for her grave; it has daffodils growing over it now, 84 years later.
- The final straw was financial: Grandpa spent the whole summer of 1922 (?) working for a farmer who, at the end of the season, had no money to pay him.
Until the Depression hit.
The streetcar ran down the street in front of their house, but it cost a nickel, which were scarce. But every summer and fall weekend day, Dad would load up his wagon with garden produce from their big yard and walk the two miles to the sanatorium (now the hospital) to sell it. He’d then walk home, refill the wagon and return, earning a couple of dollars each week to help support his family.
As a child, Dad watched his dad build houses, and was often drafted to help in any way he could. By age 16, he was eager to design and build his first house, from basement to roof. I think he sold it for $3,000, in 1936. It is still standing, directly across from where the high school is now. I could see it from my English classrooms.
The one thing that reminds me the most of my dad was his hearing aid. That was the basis of humor, annoyance, subterfuge, and intentional misunderstanding for my entire childhood. It was easy to talk about Dad, in his presence, if we pitched our voices just right. Or at least we thought we were putting things past him; now, I wonder how much he just chose to ignore.
Here’s an example of how I internalized his "disability" (although he never, ever referred to it that way): When I was quite young, while riding across town with him, I was proudly showing off my new knowledge of letters by spelling every traffic sign we passed. All parents recognize the inherent tediousness of this activity. We passed one yellow sign which I spelled out: D. I. P.Dad said, “Pip?”I felt as if that went on for miles, but later I realized that it was only about 2 blocks. I remember getting more and more frustrated because he couldn’t hear me. In hindsight I know he was probably winding me up, and trying to get me to stop spelling the signs, but at the time I was sure it was his hearing aid batteries going out.
“No, Dad,” I earnestly responded. “D-i-p.”
“Mip? What does that mean?”
“Dad! D.i.p. DIP!”
“Oh, zip, okay.”
“No! DAD!! DIP!!”
That was one of the two types of "jokes" my dad could do. He was hopeless at telling actual jokes or funny stories; he’d always start laughing. However, he loved listening to them, especially puns, and he’d always follow his attempts at them with "the lowest form of humor" and a roll of his eyes at Mom’s rapidly retreating back. She hated them. My brother would perform Bill Cosby and (clean) George Carlin routines at the dinner table to make me shoot food out of my nose and to watch Dad chortle helplessly and endlessly.
He loved a good story. He would cry with laughter at my brother’s firehouse hazing stories, and in trying to retell them would have to stop, in hysterics, after two or three sentences.
Dad’s job, from my little girl perspective, was to build things. He built houses, office buildings, anything really--even mortuaries. My older sisters and brother spent the night with him and Mom in a mortuary he built in Hobbs, New Mexico. They all survived. Ghost stories never scared me because of that family tale. Another time he designed and built a mortuary in a cemetery for which he was partially paid with four burial plots. His parents are in two of them. My mom’s name and birth date are on the stone next to his name and dates in their plot.
Mostly, though, Dad built and rehabbed houses. He built the house we all grew up in--there is only one other house anything like ours in the world. When I was on the way, he added a bedroom above the single-car garage. It is a wonderful room: about 15 feet wide and 30 feet long, with four windows and a giant closet. I coveted that room. Still do. He also built about 200 other houses over the years, most of which are still around. He made a scrapbook the last few years of his life, driving all over Colorado taking pictures of whatever buildings and houses were still extant. It's a treasure.
Since Dad was always building things, I got to "help" him by handing him nails, retrieving forgotten tools, bringing him something to drink.... Usually it was pretty boring, but he would sometimes get to talking, and that’s what kept me coming back to help. He never yelled at me, like Mom tended to do. When he got mad because things weren’t working for him, that’s when I’d disappear.
Church and God were the foundations of Dad’s life. I can’t think about him without thinking about his earnest desire to live the life God had given him. He had, by the time I became aware, an easy, friendly relationship with his Creator. He also had an easy way of discussing "God stuff" in the sense that he never backed away from telling us how angry he was with God when things went badly: his business failures, my sister Ellen’s near-death, etc. He always tried to bring Sunday’s sermon home, asking how it applied to my life. His favorite biblical person was David, because he messed up so much but God still favored him. I grew up really almost thinking that Jesus was a member of the family, one that lived a long way away and was, apparently, camera-shy.
Speaking of cameras, every Easter, Dad took a picture of The Kids in the yard wearing our new finery. We have over 35 years of these photos, on slides: first with just two girls, then with four kids, then back to two, and finally just me. We’d often come close to freezing waiting for him to adjust the camera, with mutters of "come ON, Dad, hurry up!" the constant commentary behind them. I love this series of pictures.
Another perfect memory of my dad from young childhood is reading. We--well, I--would pile two couch pillows just so on the floor by the couch for him to lean on. One time I was so eager to read that I brought all the pillows I could carry into the kitchen in a stack, six or so, to let him know I was ready: "Too many!" he said with a smile as he dried the dishes.
He would lie on the floor, and I would sit on the couch behind him with all of Mom’s bobby pins, the box of barrettes and hairclips, and his comb. While he read, I would "play with his hair." He used VO5 in his hair, which meant it was sticky enough to stay put when I created a new style. He then would admire it in the always-cracked hand mirror from the bathroom I kept handy. By the time I came along his hair was white and his forehead had gotten pretty high. But he rarely complained, and was pleased to announce as he aged that the reason his hair was so thin was because of our messing with it.[ASIDE: I tried this a few times with my son. The last time we had a reading session of the beautician variety, he got my comb so badly tangled in my hair I had to have the comb cut out of my hair with wire cutters! Some things just don‘t translate as well as you‘d think.]Dad had his first heart attack in 1967, just after his dad died and his business went into bankruptcy. I was 3 or 4. During his recovery, my brother ran over his foot with a lawn mower, and Ellen was in dire health as well, though improving. It was a very bad time, although I certainly wasn’t aware of all of it. Hospitals were regular parts of my preschool years.
Dad had his second heart attack in 1981. Mom was overseas: that sister had just had a baby. Dad and I were spending quality time together without Mom. The school secretary called me out of a college-planning meeting with my counselor to drive me to the hospital. This same woman had, 40 years previously, introduced my parents. Small town?
He ended up having triple-bypass surgery, after Mom returned home about a week later. I ended up losing my part-time job--at the library--at the same time all this was going on. Thank goodness my brother was an EMT and could figure out what was going on when Dad reacted badly to the meds he was on.... Dad was back at work just a few weeks after the surgery.
Dad’s third heart attack happened in 1987, in Milwaukee while visiting my sister and me (and our families) who were both living there at the time. He had another bypass during which there were intimations that this surgery, being an emergency, was much trickier than the last one. We met lots of interesting people in the waiting room. The one thing I remember the most vividly is his disgust, upon finally being moved out of ICU, that the first meal was jello. Oh, how he hated jello! A gift from his years in the Army Air Corps, where, according to his stories, he was fed nothing but rice and greasy lamb, and jello.
I think everyone in the family, including Dad, felt from that point forward he was truly on borrowed time. He made a point of telling each of us "important stuff:" memories from his childhood and early adulthood, exactly how he wanted to be remembered at his funeral, where the money and important documents were, and how he’d like us to live our lives to honor him. It was all very calm and relaxed, not maudlin or terrifying. He knew his time was short and he wanted to live it the best he could.
He knew Mom wouldn’t be able to handle the house by herself, so he found a nice retirement building for them to move into, which they did on November 1, 1994, moving out of the house in which they‘d lived for nearly 50 years. On the 5th, Dad celebrated his 75th birthday. He went to church for the last time the morning of the 19th--his grandson Don’s (the favorite daughter's favorite son's) 19th birthday--walking across the street from the hospital where he’d spent the night having some tests. He had to do his prepared talk at church that morning; it was about the thankfulness he felt for his family. By that time, he knew his favorite daughter was dying. His heart spasmed that evening in the shower. It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Ellen was too sick to travel to his funeral on the following Saturday, but the rest of his kids were there.
These things have made me laugh lately:
Houston, we have officially found the laziest person on Earth!!Toddie is a baby just like
any other--sort of.
The thing is, he's big.
Really big.
And so on....
It's possible you needed to be there.
His encore was a video (on his phone) of a dog in a banana costume. The kid has potential as a comedian, but I wouldn't want to be his teacher!!True Grace : the life and death of an American princess (title page) AND
True Grace : the life and times of an American princess (cover)Well gee, St. Martin's, let's not make a decision at all on the title. It's just TOO difficult!
Finally, the ultimatum to end all ultimatums was delivered to them: "If you two don't settle down and be quiet, I'm not taking you to Wal-Mart!!"
Beast and I couldn't look at each other, but he picked up his pen and wrote one word on my placemat: "Blog?"
Interesting how things change in just 3 short years.[which, by the way, was the most morale-boosting, work-related meeting I've been at in about a year]
After a pre-meeting conversation involving assassination weapons including, but not limited to darts, knitting needles, and poison, the chair opened the meeting.
And then busted us up by saying, in a completely different context: "I like bullets!"
Later in the meeting, she added, "I may not pass the [c@t@l0ging test], but I like a good fight."
Post-meeting, we decided that we absolutely must start enticing D-and-J our direction: D could joust with MAS, and J could...well, take MAS' job. Funnily enough, Ponytail brought this up as a possibility.* After conquering MAS, D could get to work wiping out the rest of the stupidity which is Our Consortium At Work. That will take even him YEARS. And he has a BAFS--Big-AssFreakin'Sword!
* Truthfully, he only raised the possibility of Lady J's return, since he didn't know she's now a They, a Package Deal.
