The One Who Got Away - Remembering My Dad

With the stalemate in Congress, October 17^th has taken on an ominous meaning for many people this year, but for me, that date will only ever mean one thing—the anniversary of my dad’s death when I was twelve.  

You hear people say, “A day doesn’t go by that I don’t miss him.” The truth is, I don’t think about or long for my dad every day. But even after 49 years, there are many days when the ache of missing him is so raw, it still feels new.

In my upcoming novel, CAPE MAYBE, there’s a point when the main character, Katie, reflects on the anniversary of a loved one’s death and says, “Neither of us says anything. We never do . . . like we are both afraid of what might happen to us if we admit what day it is.”

For years after my dad died, it was that way in our house. My mother’s grief was so palpable and fragile. We learned not to talk about missing him for fear it would plunge her over the edge.

I’m guessing that has something to do with my pressing need to write about him now.

In CAPE MAYBE, Katie’s dad died when she was just a baby. At one point Katie says, “I don’t remember my dad, but I miss him as if I do.”

Unlike Katie, I do remember my dad—he was burly, consistent, and dependable, a mystifying balance of gregarious and reserved. Here’s the best way I can explain him. When one of my clubs or my girl scout troop needed parents to volunteer to drive us somewhere or chaperone, I knew without having to ask him, that I could raise my hand.

Because he died when I was so young, all of my memories of him are tinged with childlike awe. I wish I could have known him as an adult, even if that means I would have learned he had some flaws.

Recently, a friend who also misses having her dad in her life referred to him as the one who got away. That really struck a chord with me.

Does it resonate with you too?

One Less Color

                                                                                     

To paraphrase my friend, Alison: when a loved one dies, though life does go on, it seems to go on with one less color.

Tommy Clewley may not have been a primary color in my life. He was the friend of a friend who became a friend. So, he was more a shade where colors overlap - not quite blue, not quite green – but an integral part of my spectrum nonetheless. His sudden disappearance from that palette reminds me how often I take the colors of my life for granted.

I have probably known Tommy since childhood. The Clewleys were part of my Aunt Renee’s extended Bridesburg family. Reen’s door was always open, so a holiday party wasn’t really a party without half the neighborhood dropping by. But my first clear memory of Tommy is Christmas 1977, in Aunt Renee’s basement “rec room,” as he tried to teach my cousins Eileen and Marianne how to disco dance. His exuberance was entertaining and infectious. Since then, every time I hear the soundtrack from “Saturday Night Fever” or anything by Donna Summer, that image of Tommy immediately comes to mind.

Then there were the late night runs to Newark Airport in the 80’s, to catch the $99 People Express flights to Florida. Tommy, Marianne, a variety of friends, and I spent quite a few long weekends in Flagler Beach, quaffing “Hallelujah Cocktails” at the Monk’s Vineyard and recuperating the next day on the beach. Tommy had a way of evoking laughter in even the most mundane moments.

He could also laugh at himself. One of my favorite malapropisms came as Tommy described the up-and-down weight seesaw of a certain Hollywood celebrity. With almost theatrical gravity, he remarked, “I am sure (the star) is bulge-emic.” In an instant, he realized his mistake –and its aptness –and burst into laughter. How could we not laugh with him?

In the 90’s, life got serious. We all had important jobs. I moved to Cape May. I only saw Tommy at the usual holiday parties, celebrations and solemnities that make up the social calendars of busy adults. And, because I had known Tommy since childhood, I don’t think I ever realized just how important – and how loved- he had become.

That is, until his retirement party on August 17. The throng of people in the photograph is a testimony to Tom’s good nature, generosity and love of life.

Who knew we would all meet again so soon – September 14, 2013 – to pay a more solemn tribute?

I heave a sigh as I write this. I know my life will go on. I know as I grow older there will be more farewells like this. Tommy’s death reminds me just how important it is to live –and appreciate – life to its fullest. Today really is all I have.

I know, too, that with time, the brightness will come back to my rainbow.  

But there will be one less color.        

Missed Flight Makes for Sweet Memory

Happy travelers at Big Basin State park.

I’m the December partner in a May-December marriage (he's 82 to my 60) so I do most of the planning and arrangements in our lives, because my brain is firing on more cylinders than his. 

A lapse of consciousness occurred on our vacation that put me in my place.  I had booked our flights many months in advance because I was using frequent flyer miles. I filed the e-ticket away and started making my plans so that each day had a destination and purpose. We were flying to California, leaving on a Friday and coming home on a Friday -- or that’s what I told myself and others as I regaled them with my plans.

The vacation was great. We had a nice weekend with my cousin in Pacific Grove, spent time in Big Sur, visited redwood forests, Sausalito, San Francisco and then back to San Jose for the flight home.  Being a savvy traveler, I went to the hotel lobby the night before our flight home to print boarding passes. Turns out that my flight home had been that very day; I had never re-checked the itinerary to confirm the flight. (And I apparently ignored the email reminder that pinged on my smart phone the day before the flight.)

$1400 later, I had new flights booked. I dragged myself back to the hotel room for a dose of humble pie as I told my husband the bad news. Bernie took it really well, far better than me. No blame, no recrimination, just an acknowledgment that stuff happens. He wouldn’t let it spoil our great vacation and he has never mentioned it again. 

I still don’t know how it happened… why I didn’t check the tickets as I normally do. Why I booked the flight home earlier than my well-laid plans. I continue to beat myself up on the screw up. 

When I think back on this vacation, I'll recall lunch at Nepenthe on Big Sur, the sea lions in Monterey Bay, the redwoods at Big Basin, and the big bus tour in San Francisco, but my worst experience may turn out to be the best memory.  Being forgiven – no strings attached – really is divine.

Have you been forgiven for something you can't forget?  Or were you the one who turned the other cheek?  Share your stories of forgiveness.

Memories Lost and Found

70 years of photos with some of the cameras that captured life.

Chris Brady

My mother gave me a shopping bag of old photos recently.  At age 89, her eyesight is so poor that the photos are just paper, faded memories of loved ones who have gone before her lost again to blindness.

It’s a big pile, probably a few hundred.  Many black and white of the small Kodak camera days  capture her childhood on through to married life. Fading color photos that document life from the 1960s to the 1980s are not holding up as well as the black and whites.  It’s fun to look through them, at her early life and mine, at aunts and uncles long gone from my life.  The responsibility to do something with this pile weighs on me.  But what?

My own photo archive awaits a similar fate.  I fancied myself a photojournalist in college, shooting, developing and printing 35 mm black and white in my home darkroom.  I moved to slides in the 70s and then color prints from the 80s until Y2K.  Being a storyteller, I organized most of my prints in albums, often adding captions and including memorabilia from places and events. There are more than 20 albums and I enjoy looking through them on occasion. Somehow, I can’t see my son being particularly thrilled if/when I pass the box on to him.

From Paper to Pixels

Easier to store but not as much fun to me.  

Digital images from the past decade sit on a dozen CDs, two laptops, two phones, Flickr and Facebook. Funny, as easy as it is, I don't look at those files very often, and when I do, it's just not as much fun.  The good news is that there is not as much guilt in disposing of digital images.  Send them to the cloud.  Might as well just hit "delete" for all the good that will do.

I’ve transferred Mom’s pile from the plastic bag to a metal box for safekeeping.  A good project for my retirement years, I think.  Sort them, scan them and save them to a DVD or maybe even create a new story book and print it.  

I like to imagine a great-granddaughter looking at the images someday -- paper or digital -- and seeing herself in the faces of the past.

Guess I have some work to do.

Dear readers:   What are you doing with your decades of print photos?  What are you doing with your digital archive? Share your ideas.