Grasping for air

When my father died, I stopped worrying, and began not taking myself quite so seriously. I started getting out more and sweating the small stuff less. 

I turned off negative comments from people who don't really matter, and instead focused on the positive (or at least constructively critical) ones of those who do.

Or such has been my aspiration. On some days, during certain moments, amid various circumstances, I feel I'm grasping it. But on others -- half? three-fourths? a third of the time? -- I end up holding a handful of air...and holding onto it for dear life.

Reaching for Dad in the Thanksgiving sky

The turkey was my father’s bailiwick, his self-assigned, by-default duty Thanksgiving morning. I'm pretty certain he'd have rather conjured up one of what we called his "concoctions" -- an artistic jumble of whatever he found in the refrigerator. But our family's Thanksgiving dishes tended to be more basic than he'd care to tackle: green beans; mashed potatoes; dates stuffed with walnuts and rolled in sugar.

So post-sunrise found him contemplating the bird, still frozen in a sink full of water, its neck stinkily simmering on the stove. At some point during the next few hours, it thawed, or thawed enough, for Dad to cook it one of two ways: He either popped a lemon, lime and orange into its gross-the-kids-out cavity and baked it in a pre-heated oven. Or he'd put the stuffing-less turkey into a cold oven, crank up the temperature for a few minutes, then turn it off for hours.


Either way, it came out moist and delicious. Not that Dad had an opinion on the finished product. He wouldn't eat turkey, or chicken, or anything with feathers. The story goes that when he was a boy, growing up poor in San Antonio, he plucked so many feathers off his family's supper-bound chickens that he vowed once he grew up he would never eat another. Nor pluck one, for that matter. Nor, if he had his druthers, smell one.

But on Thanksgiving, he never questioned the turkey's presence -- or his role in its being there -- on the table. 

This year, for the first time in more than a half-century, we won't have Dad's turkey on our table. And though each other's presence will be palpable, all of us won't be together in the shoulder-touching way that's as ingrained into our lives as gravy stains on Nana's white tablecloth. 

Mom leaves for Maryland on Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving week with my brother Ben, his wife Meg, and her parents. My sister Jeanne will be hosting dinner at their lake house for her immediate family and her son-in-law's parents and sister. My little group will be at my sister Susan's house. 

We won't have turkey; last I heard, my brother-in-law is grilling fish. I'm fine with the no-turkey aspect of it; really I am. I prefer fish to turkey anyway. Jeanne's having turkey, but I'll wager none of our respective Thanksgiving menus will include the ubiquitous creamed onions or mashed turnips -- staples that few but Dad devoured. The couple who always baked Dad a much-ballyhooed mincemeat pie isn't coming this year.

Thanksgiving will mark one day short of four months since our precious father died. Last November, he wasn't in the best of health, and two years ago we all brought him Thanksgiving dinner at his latest rehab facility. Still, as dad to five of us and grandfather to nine, he was the patriarch, the one who made everyone feel welcome; the generous host who said the blessing until he got too choked up to continue, and then one of us would step in. 

The closer we get to Thursday, the more I am getting too choked up to continue. As Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, I can almost visualize, and all but feel the constants we've counted on for more five decades being tossed into the air from our collective cupped hands. 

Some will drift down like snowflakes,  landing in pretty much the same spot they always did. A few will catch a breeze and be scattered to the horizon of our memories. Others will return next year, falling like glitter onto shoulders.

And the rest? Sprinkled like stars which, if we stand on tiptoes, we can almost reach up and snatch from the sky.


AP Photo/NASA

Seeking Dad in the sun

My father died while I was running. It was a Monday morning; eight hours earlier, we had all said our goodbyes. The hospice nurse told us she thought he’d make through the night, so when I woke up  and saw neither a text message nor heard a voicemail, I let out my breath a little, put on my shoes, and took off.

For the first couple of miles, I listened to NPR. A little before 6:30, suddenly any sound seemed superfluous, so I pulled out my earplugs and looped the cord around my fingers. My eyes moved from the sidewalk to the sky, an endless blue canvas without even a sprinkling or a swath of white.


Without even thinking, I said out loud, “Where ARE you, Daddy? Are you in the sun?”

That’s where my friend Judy looked -- a year shy of a quarter-century ago -- for our mutual friend Gary when he died. On this recent Monday, it seemed the natural place to look, and the normal question to ask.

I finished my run around 7, went into the kitchen, cried just a little, and drank some water. I jumped when I heard the phone ring. It was my sister Susan.

“I called Daddy’s room when I woke up,” she told me. “The nurse said, ‘I can’t believe you’re calling right now. Your dad didn’t show any of the usual signs during the night that the end was close. But just now, he took a breath, and it was over. It was very peaceful.’ “

When I could talk again and after I’d wiped tears and sweat from my face, I realized I needed to ask her something.

“Hey Sister," I said. "What time was that?”

“About 6:28, I think,” she answered. “Just before 6:30.”




photo: Erich Schlegel

Belonging here

At the end of last year's track season, my son Charlie's PR (personal record) for the triple jump was 39 feet, 1 1/2 inches. This is an event in which the silver grail is 40 feet. With each additional foot leaped, the chalice slowly turns to gold; each inch adds a gemstone.

Charlie didn't want to graduate without grasping the silver, and on a sunny day a few weeks ago, at a track meet on home field, he did. I am so grateful I was there, watching from the bleachers as he jumped that morning. After he landed and the sand around him had settled, his jumping coach stretched out the tape, and proclaimed "Forty feet, one inch!" The group of boys standing around clapped and cheered.

That was the first of four times this season Charlie reached it. In the best jump of his life -- 40 feet, 11 inches -- the grail was just beginning to turn to gold.

On his school's track team, two juniors excel -- a word that seems almost silly were you to watch them -- in the triple jump. Without question, they'd be going to the conference meet that ends the season. But the third slot was up for grabs. Charlie's major competition was another senior, one who would already be representing their school in the pole vault and long jump.

Charlie made up his mind he wasn't going to let that boy be the third triple-jumper, too. So Charlie worked harder than ever. He began eating the egg-white-turkey-bacon breakfast his coach eats every day. He spent more time chilling his muscles in ice baths, and incinerating them during sultry spring workouts.

His hard work paid off, and on Friday, his event of the conference championship took place. The day was clear, the sky blue, the breeze noticeable enough to keep the inevitable heat at bay. Before the triple jump began, his coach summoned his participants off the bleachers. He instructed them to sprint 100 feet at 70 percent effort, then at 80, then 90. The boys joined others warming up with high kicks, with exaggerated skipping, with vertical leaps.

Then the jumping began. One of Charlie's teammates immediately jumped more than 44 feet, a distance matched by the other one. Charlie jumped last, reaching 39 feet, 4.75 inches the first time and, oddly, the same on his second jump.

I stood by, feeling proud and supportive and nervous. His coach walked by and started talking; we walked together so I could listen.

"He's scared," he told me. "He's looking at his teammates jumping 44 and 45 feet, and he's wondering what he's doing here. But he needs to know he belongs here. He belongs here every bit as much as they do. He's worked hard, and he's good."

When I saw Charlie take his familiar deep breath before starting his last jump, I held mine. When he moved his arms across his body in his traditional preliminary move, I kept mine stiff and at my side. And then he began sprinting toward what would be his last triple jump of the meet, of the year, of the track chapter of his life.


He fouled, so his jump -- which he later told me he thought would be his best -- disqualified him. And I'm glad I was wearing sunglasses, because when he walked past me, I could hardly keep the sob in my throat. But I swallowed hard and I went back to the bleachers. He sat next to me, a foot or so away, and we didn't say anything. The coach came up and knelt in front of Charlie.

"You belong here," he said. "Don't think for a minute that you don't. You have worked so hard, and you are a great jumper. I have loved being your coach, and I'm going to miss you."

Charlie hugged him. "I'm going to miss you, too," he said.

Charlie stood up, gathered his gear, wandered off. I wanted to put my arms around him and tell him how proud I was of  him, but at that moment, it didn't feel like the right thing to do. So I let him go. All around, kids were talking and laughing, warming up and working hard, running and jumping and being right there in that very moment.

I'm not sure anyone else felt it, the lingering feeling of finality amid the excitement, the knowledge that, unless Charlie goes out for track in college (which I don't think he will) he'll probably never triple jump again.

But last time I saw him out there, his head was held high. And -- maybe it was the way the sun hit that green water bottle he always carries -- but I could swear he was raising a golden chalice to his lips.

Finding our way home

My mother periodically calls to tell me about something she has found: A photograph maybe, or perhaps a report card, or an entry from one of her dozens of diaries. The most recent was a letter she wrote to her mother (my Nana) in January, 1970.

In it, Mom apologizes for not writing the whole thing in one sitting (as if Nana would even have known, much less minded). But, she explains, as she was halfway through the letter, Ben (my brother, who had just turned 10) called to her excitedly:

"Mom! Chuckie's home!"

Chuckie was one of the dozen or so (admittedly, that's conservative; we weren't on the spay/neuter bandwagon that we are now) cats who made their way into our family. He had been missing for close to two months, and now was back. But this little creature was hardly the Chuckie we remembered. He was skin and bones. He could hardly walk. His coat, once black and shiny, was dusky and thin.

Ben told Mom the only reason he knew the strange and unfamiliar creature was Chuckie -- this is the part that made my sister Susan cry when Mom read the letter to her, and, when Mom read it to me, made me beg her to stop if the ending was sad -- from the red collar and tag he was still wearing.

Mom took Chuckie to the vet, who said he was in really bad shape. She surmised that on one cold night when he was roaming outside, he'd sought warmth under a car's toasty hood, one he could have climbed into from underneath. Miraculously, Chuckie wasn't sliced when the engine started, but he was stuck. When the car stopped, the vet continued, he probably found a way to the concrete below, and started walking.

"He must have walked a long way," the vet said, "because the little pads on his feet are almost worn through."

She told Mom that although Chuckie's outcome was questionable, she couldn't bring herself to euthanize him because he had fought so hard. I am about to cry just thinking about this. But I can't; I'm afraid were I to start, my tears would become those for every animal we ever lost, or those I never knew but whose deaths still tear off a piece of my heart.

Instead, on this glorious spring day, as I plant zinnias under the mailbox and tomatoes in wooden crates, I think about Chuckie's resolve, about his pluck, about his determination to do what we all -- realistically or  miraculously -- strive to accomplish. And so we persevere, no matter how small the odds, how many the miles, how long the journey or how short the jaunt: 


Like Chuckie, we just want to find our way home.