August 02, 2001
Missing Pieces
Kymm mentioned finding her father's script for a play he was in on Broadway in a used bookstore. Aside from that just being very cool, it got me started thinking. In a way, I envy her. Since her dad was an actor, she can see him on TV regularly, doing what he loved to do in life. I don't have many pictures of my dad, much less anything else. There are a few videotapes of home movies, but I don't like to watch them. In all of them, my dad is already sick, dying really. I would love a chance to see a videotape of him alive and well and younger.
I feel like so many memories of him are starting to fade with time. I remember the sound of his voice, especially when he would sing to me. My father had a cracked singing voice. Tuneful (and now that I think about it, not too horribly bad), but cracked. We had a game when I was little. He would sing the chorus to "The Battle of New Orleans" and I would yell and cover my ears until he stopped. He'd change the lyrics a little. I always thought the song was about his hunting dog Lady until I got older:
Well they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast that Lady couldn't catch 'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico!
I can't remember why I yelled. I think I just felt funny hearing my dad sing, but I have no idea why. My dad liked old country music -- Marty Robbins, Johnny Horton -- and it occurs to me now that he probably would have loved the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Are Thou? I seem to remember him having a tape player in his truck, with tapes of the above artists, and the Statler Brothers. And I can remember being mortified, because I was in middle school at the time.
One of my earliest memories (three? four? It was before I started school, I'm fairly sure) is of going to Boblo Island with my family. Boblo Island was an amusement park in the middle of the Detroit River. You got there by taking one of the "Boblo boats", boats that looked huge to me as a child, like cruise ship size. On the trip over, I got scared, convinced that the boat was going to sink and that I'd drown. I remember being pretty upset. My dad took me to one of the souvenir stands and bought me a little orange plastic umbrella. I sat for the rest of the trip, quietly holding my umbrella over my head. There's a picture of me somewhere, sitting at the railing of the boat, umbrella overhead. I can't remember my exact reasoning, but I think the umbrella made me feel safe because, well, umbrellas keep you dry, right?
I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out who my father was, by talking to my mom and piecing together what I remember. It's frustrating, like getting half-glimpses of the man. I know he had his own battles with depression, and a lot of medical issues that left him in pain often, even before he was diagnosed with cancer. He loved to hunt and fish and garden and play cards. His favorite TV shows were probably Night Court and M*A*S*H. Was he happy? I think he was. I know I was the apple of his eye. This is so frustrating! I lived with him for seventeen years, and I feel today like I didn't really know him. I didn't, not as an adult. I was a kid, so I just knew him as my dad.
I know my mom. We've had time, since I grew up (quit laughing), to get to know each other. I didn't have that chance with my dad. I'll always see him from the perspective of a little kid. I'm missing a huge chunk of who he was. I miss him still. Granted, after twelve years, it's not the same grief I knew at seventeen, but I miss him. Sometimes I wonder what he would have thought of how my life has gone, but I never wonder for long. I can almost hear my mom answer that for me: "He would have been proud of you." And it's true. No matter what I did, my dad would have found something about me to be proud of.
Posted by Lisa at August 2, 2001 03:37 PM
