My Father's Hands

My Father’s Hands

28April2012

My father’s hands had one purple, hammer-banged thumbnail.

My father’s hands were big and bulky; strong and able; kindly stern, and sternly kind.

My father’s hands were graceful and delicate one minute; clumsy and crude the next.

My father’s hands gave comfort, sympathy, understanding, delight.

My father's hands added a whimsical flourish to the simplest gestures.

My father’s hands tapped, trilled, and tickled the ivory keys.

My father's hands plucked and strummed the flamenco strings.

My father’s hands hammered, sawed, torqued, carved, polished, ground, wrenched, sanded, scrolled, …and screwed.  

My father’s hands splashed, and speared, and paddled through Pacific waters; navigated and flew through calm and stormy skies; wandered by foot and by car to discover abandoned shacks and broken down old red barns; pointed.

My father's hands focused, clicked, and captured wind-blown waves, lonesome trees, rolling hills, and s-curved highways.

My father’s hands were the kind of strong I am still trying to be.

I would give anything to hold, just one more time…

My father’s hands.

Fig Tree

Slogging through the grieving process here.
The going-to-sleep last night was not a problem. It was the waking-up this morning that didn't go so well.
Funny how as soon as your brain really wakes up to the day (i.e. reality), that wonderful warm and fuzzy sleep-state poofs away so effortlessly, like it was never even there in the first place. Then, the brain starts churning and rolodex-ing through all of the "things" that define your personal reality for that day.
So, when I woke up this morning, and my sleep suddenly poofed away, I was immediately tangled up in a  knotted up mess of memory fragments--my last phone call with Dad and how he answered the phone, "Nesie-Love?! This is Daddy-O!"; my last visit with him in February and how I hugged him goodbye and said, "See you in May!" and he threw his arms up and said, "GREAT!"; all the times back in the 60s, tidepooling at Dana Point, San Onofre, and San Clemente; his temper tantrums when we were kids; his laugh; his singing; the way he relished food; and on, and on, and on.

I remarked to a friend yesterday how I will always think of Dad when I see or eat figs.

And speaking of figs.......

There is a large fig tree just off the deck at the house where I now live. The tree has to be at least seventy or eighty years old. It's the biggest fig tree I've ever seen--all gnarled and twisted on itself and sprawled out in directions that defy the laws of gravity. The first time I laid eyes on it was when I came to look at the house as a potential rental. Honestly, the house could have been a one-room shack. When I saw the fig tree, I figured I had found the place I was supposed to call home, at least for a while. I signed the lease, and here I am.

But back to figs and Dad......

In the midst of my memory barrage this morning, I reasoned, (because, even in the throes of grief, the intellectual four-fifths of my brain never seems to take a break) that perhaps I should get out of bed and take the dogs for a walk.

Not more than a dozen steps from the back door, leashed dogs in hand, as we started to make our way down the street to "do" what dogs do, I happened to glance over toward the fig tree........

A proud, brown, beautiful buck, all antlered and all alone, was resting peacefully right next to that big ole fig tree. And I stopped, and caught my breath, and just stood there. And he turned slowly and looked at me, and just.....stared. And I stared right back. I daresay, there was a bit of attitude in that buck's expression.

I reached for my phone to take a quick photo then quickly realized I had left my phone in the house (where's that intellectual four-fifths when I really need it?), but before I could think what to do next, the buck rose slowly out of the grass and simply walked off, down the hill, through the hedge.....gone.

1916-2012

An amazing life.
A remarkable man.

Many memories....

Style and Attitude

When I was in eighth grade, I wrote my first short story to submit to a writing contest my school was having. The story was called, "The Adventures of Tommy the Tube of Toothpaste." Before I submitted it, I asked my dad to read it. This was a big deal for me. Dad was never known to beat around the bush with his critique of anything. He was the proverbial bull in the china shop when it came to people's feelings. But he was blunt and honest. So I gave my story to him. He's my dad after all. He knows stuff.

He read it.

And the next day, he called me into the dining room.

"Hey!......." (yeah, Dad did the "HEY!" thing, even back then. Just not as loud. He still had his hearing.)

"I read your story...." (pause)

I waited for the feedback I was sure was coming: he didn't understand the story; my sentence structure is all wrong; maybe go back and give it another try. 

"Listen!!"

"Yeah?"

"I read your story."

"Yeahhhh?" And I'm thinking "Come on just get it over with. It's a silly story, right?"

But instead, he smiled and said, ".....You can write!"

(Wait.........what.........)"Really?"

"Yeah!"

"wow."

Then he handed me my story, still smiling at me. "So you know what makes a good writer?"

"noooo?"

"Style."

"Ohhhh."

"Yeah! You've got a style!"

"wow."

"And you know what else makes a good writer?"

"There's more?"

"Attitude. You have attitude."

It took me a good couple of hours to process all of this new information, but mostly the concept that my dad was handing out a piece of rarely received praise. I mean.....wow. The next day I submitted "The Adventures of Tommy the Tube of Toothpaste" and a week later, found out I had won the whopping $30 prize and publication of the story in the school newspaper.

But that's not the real point of this story.

In the last two months before Dad died, he fell, fractured his left femur, had surgery to fix the fracture, then contracted pneumonia, was diagnosed with COPD, was restricted to a wheelchair, and was then placed in hospice care. The prognosis on paper was six months. Dad had repeatedly told everyone that he wouldn't die until Mom died. How he figured he had control over death, I'll never know. What I do know is that when my brother told Dad that he would be in a wheelchair the rest of the way out, Dad looked my brother straight in the eye and said, "I've changed my mind." And he died two weeks later. 

And the thing that just keeps popping into my head, over and over again, is how amazing my dad was. 

He had a style.

And he definitely had attitude.