What is remarkable is what I learned; and am learning, from it. See, to say she was "unpleasant" as a person is perhaps the second greatest understatement of last 100 years. The first greatest understatement of the last 100 years being that of Lieutenant Henry Wilde when he said "do you think?" to Captain John Smith of the RMS Titanic when Smith said "maybe we should go slower around this ice.".
She was extremely unpleasant. Hateful would be a better way of putting it. And, as a consequence of her aggressive, intemperate life spent attacking everyone around her, she found herself, at the end of her life, completely alone. Estranged from her only son, her brother, her grandkids who were the frequent targets for her venom and manipulation. Her death came quietly, without any family near her, at a government subsidized nursing home.
After she died, I helped my dad pack up her stuff. It was an extremely sad time. Sadder still was what I discovered when I found her phone bill. See - she died back at a time before there were cell phones or internet. Looking at her itemized phone bill, the single number appearing - repeated over and over - was to the time.
Yes, "back in the day" it was possible to dial a number and have the phone company tell you "at the tone, the time will be 11 o'clock and thirty-five minutes....DING." I can't remember what it cost, but I do remember that she was calling that number 75 to 100 times a day, every day.
I never had the nerve to ask my dad about it; it just seemed so crazy and sad. But after he passed away I mentioned it to my mother - who is very wise about the ways of people - and she told me "it was the only human voice in her life; we all need to hear a human voice. At the end of her life, that was the only voice that could bear to talk to her..."
So today, hear I sit, decades removed from that lesson, in what you would otherwise think was a busy dad's paradise. My wife and son are away with the Boy Scouts - a week of primitive camping, canoeing, and fishing in an area of the state so remote and beautiful that I am actually green with envy. They will see trees whose roots date back to the time of Lincoln and whose shade protected the Ojibwe and their guests not as visitors to the forest, but as inhabitants.
Amazingly, or perhaps more accurately, blessedly - there is no cell phone coverage, no electronics, no digital anything. Just life the way the scouts have been living it for the last 100 years - camping, cooking your catch over an open fire, stars by the divine multitude. The week will become a colorful stripe woven forever into the tapestry of each of the lives of both mother and son. I am sure of it.
And my daughter, the 4 year-old magical human-tornado who never stops talking, is spending the week with her grandparents in "the Big City." She will visit with her grandma and grandpa who spend their winters in Florida. She will see their friends and be shown off at church, doted over, be treated like the princess she is not permitted to be in my home. (no princesses here, this is a working household - she wants to grow up to be an astronaut, surgeon, or hard working stay at home mom - fine. But no princesses allowed here - she is so much better than that). That being said, it's ok if she goes to grandma and grandpa's house to be a princess for a week. All granddaughters ought to be their grandfather's princess I suppose.
So here I sit - the military channel on an infinite loop as I try and remember to do all of the stuff my wife usually does to keep this house together (water the cats, feed the plants, do the wash, mow the lawn, follow up with the doctors and dentists about appointments, pick up the trumpet from the music store...) in a house that has suddenly gone quiet. In the last 48 hours I haven't really talked to anyone - haven't told anyone "eat your dinner, brush your teeth, don't run in the house, be careful..." I think the only words I uttered in the last 48 hours were "oh great" when the cat barfed.
And I - I can't believe I am saying this - I miss the noise. I miss the activity. I miss always wondering "what next?" I miss the door bell ringing and seeing one of Michael's pals and knowing I'll be cooking for one more tonight. I miss Kristin chasing me down the street when I leave for work - racing me down the sidewalk smiling and waving as she races the car out of the subdivision.
The quiet reminds me of the blessings - the vitality of a house that is really a home to a busy family. The blessings of sorting out the border wars of who gets the best spot on the couch, what time baseball starts, why the shrimp is out of bed at midnight. There was a thunderstorm the other night and there was no one for me to reassure that everything was going to be ok. Two days into this reverse exile, I miss the cacophony that marks the rhythm of my life.
Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com
PS - before you get all teary-eyed thinking of me, I should add that, by the time you are reading this, I will be on the second tee with a good friend and I have a T-bone steak the size of a small pizza thawing in the fridge. I think I will probably survive being on my own, if only the cats would stop barfing. :-)
