TIME AND AGAIN

I have a blog called "Help, My Compass Broke."  I am very proud of it.  But I think the only way to keep going is to start fresh, start a whole new blog.  I have not published a post since March 2, 2012.

This may sound completely insignificant to anyone else, but considering it is now May 9, 2012, it's actually pretty off-putting.  I was doing splendidly there for a while -- quite a long while, in fact -- giving myself the assignment to write something every Friday (a suggestion from a group I belong to call She Writes).  Often it would be in my head all week to compose this or that but when I went to do it, the piece took a totally different turn and what I'd intended to write about ended up as a draft.  I have a lot of drafts.  So when the brook dried up shortly after my best friend died unexpectedly in fall of 2011, and I could not (and still can't quite) put a cohesive piece together (especially if it's funny), you would think I'd just go to one of these drafts and it would kick-start my brain again.  I really, really thought this was the answer.  But no.  I looked at the drafts and thought, "These were written then.  These were written before."  And I craved and coveted then and before as a smoker craves a cigarette, as a gambler covets the coins spilling out of the slot machine next to him.  I have lost, a loss that left me dazed, sad and helpless.  How do I rewind this tape?

You can't go back and start life over again, of course.  You can only keep going.   Living without my friend -- my sister, my supporter, my truth, my comfort -- viciously pulls the shade of mortality down.  There is so much I have not done and never will do.  (While I'm young, at least.)  It seems peculiar to be old enough to have regrets, but I am, and I do.  Mortality again, and looming ever closer: I have a parent who will be 90 tomorrow.   In my family there are no old men or old ladies.  But my father will be 90 tomorrow.  When you see a piece on the evening news about a 95-year-old man who still cheerfully donates blood (though he seems feeble and quavery), you have to rethink aging; you think of 101-year-olds jumping out of airplanes and teaching the tango and Jack Lalanne with his one-armed pushups, John Glenn in the space shuttle.  But when you have a parent who is 90, you are really trying to convince yourself: I am not middle-aged, and he is not an old man -- not yet.

Nonetheless, you know the truth: he is living on borrowed time, he won't get much older than this, and mortality jabs you in the heart, your heart that beats because his does.  "You guys had a good childhood, didn't you?" he asked me not long ago.  "Good?" I said, "We had a great childhood!"  And it is true.  My brother and I grew up in the quintessential post-war baby boom, with a stay-at-home mom, a house, a yard, summer vacations, Sunday School and snowy Christmases, a black and white console TV and Little League and Barbie.  We were doubly blessed to live with my aunt and uncle for the first 10 (in my brother's case, 15) years of life.  Four parents who loved us more than life itself.  The discovery that not everyone had such a childhood was overwhelming.  Not that it was perfect.  But our childhood was an idyll, a fairy tale despite the occasional bumps and bruises (mix a purebred Scot with a fiery Italian-Norwegian gal) and what I have come to realize is this:  that it continues.  
 
Dad is still the dapper and mercurial troubadour, boyishly eccentric, out raking the yard with a ski pole in one hand and his cane hanging off the front of his shirt.  We are still the kids, at 56 and 61, he worries about, gifts us with his advice and astuteness and fills us with wonder as he has his hand on our shoulder, constantly showing us the way.  He drives his truck out to the road to get the mail now because his walking is so bad.  He can't hear us.  But he is bigger than life, he is like a whole world.

For the last couple of months there has been a fun meme on Facebook; people are forwarding snapshots of things, suggesting that if we know what it is, we say nothing and just hit "Share."  I know, damn it!  I remember; the reason why you'd occasionally need to use a pencil or pen on your cassette tape (and what cassette tapes are)...what the switch on the floor of the car by your left foot is there for...the round plastic adapter you needed for 45rpm records (and what records are).  It's fun, but it has a way of making you feel, well, ancient.  But Dad...Dad will be 90.

We soak him up as time tumbles forward.  We fear for and want to protect him but for us it is the other way around.  We want his approval and hang our heads at his criticism.  He divides his time equally between us, including my brother's two kids, because we fight over him:  "Want to take a ride to the dump today Dad?"  "Let's go look at cars, Dad."  "Dad, come and see the color I painted my bathroom."  Dad still knows everything: the right way to get a stripped screw out, how to shim a fencepost, the best way to spackle a wall, when to plant lettuce.  He knows the difference between swamp maple and sugar maple, what kind of gravel to use in a walkway, how to put a storm window back in its track, the way to tell if a fan belt is going.  He is a marvel.

The other day he and I were outside at my house, getting rid of some overgrown shrubbery.  He did some sawing and then he got tired and I did some sawing, and he stood beside me, watching, teaching: "The saw cuts on the way back, remember.  Put your left hand here and use some pressure.  There you go.  Good job.  You've got it now."  When we were done, he took an axe out of his truck and started to determinedly chop some errant and bothersome tree roots that were growing right in the path from my front door to the back yard.  "These will kill somebody some day," he said.  Not today, Dad.  Not with you here.  But stay and show me.  I know how to ride a bike because you taught me, Dad.  I know how to prime an oil burner.  I know to smile when I'm on the phone to someone.  I know all the words to "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" and "Jamaica Farewell."  I know how to check the antifreeze in my car.  But I don't think I know how to tear away my roots.

                   HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY.  I LOVE YOU.