Category Archives: Night Writing

Neither here nor there

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Buffy Holt writes of a childhood memory:

Iaeger, West Virginia. Nineteen seventy nine. The old bus terminal that use to sit somewhere along the river bank. Maybe next to Sears & Roebuck? Maybe not. Maybe Sears & Roebuck came after it was already gone? I can’t remember. But I do remember the terminal; the diner it held. And it’s a memory from this diner that’s running away from me.

I keep trying to get my head around it. To see all the things I can already hear and smell and taste. But all I see is a plate. White. With a blue racing stripe around its edge.

The room smells of beef. The real kind. And of lettuce. It sounds like my grandfather. Loud and laughing. He’s sitting beside me. Telling a story. To men or to the air. I can’t see him; all I see is the plate. But he’s there. Just like the sun. Breaking through the windows, fracturing over hands and faces, lighting up the room.

It takes me back. Another bus terminal, another restaurant. Another childhood, mine. The summer after second grade, so what is that — 1966? My family and my mother’s parents live in Indianapolis, but my grandfather, Pawpaw, has taken me on a road trip, just the two of us, back to his hometown — Cuba, Missouri. It’s a sunny morning and we are sitting in the most exotic place I have ever been in in my whole life: The Midway.

The Midway is a restaurant, bar, hotel and the bus terminal for Crawford County, right smack in the middle of town. Route 66 runs east and west just outside the door, while Highway 19 intersects the Mother Road going north and south. The interstate is just a couple of miles away. People pass through here on their way to St. Louis or Chicago or to exotic ports of call such as Springfield, Little Rock or Tulsa. They stop here to change buses, get a bite to eat, maybe take a room and sleep. Pawpaw and I are sitting at a table in the middle of the large, green dining room with a group of men, including his brother. It’s just us men in there. They are talking and smoking (L&M’s for Pawpaw). I’m playing with the paper wrapper from a straw, folding it up like an accordion, then using the straw to drip a drop of water on it so I can watch the wrapper expand. The guys are talking about a bunch of people I don’t know.

Some of the tables around us still have upside-down chairs set on top of them. Over on the counter by the cash register several pies are under a glass case. I am intoxicated by the thought that you can go over there and look at each pie, point at the one you like and the woman in the white uniform behind the counter will cut you a slice then and there. It’s not just one kind of pie, take it or leave it, but cherry, apple, strawberry and lemon meringue. And you get to choose!

Along the far wall there are several pinball machines. I wander over, cautiously. There is a forbidden aura about them. I look over at the table, and no one is paying any attention to me. Cigarette smoke and dust motes hang in the bright sunlight as they tell their stories. One of the games looks like a baseball stadium. 5¢ is painted on the glass. I oh-so-casually take a nickel out of my pocket, from the handful of change Pawpaw had given me earlier in the day, and stand in front of the machine and push the little silver button. A trap door opens at the pitcher’s mound and burps out a pinball. Pushing the big silver button causes an oversized bat to swing at the pinball, redirecting it through the infield toward targets that say “single”, “double, “triple” or “out”. If you’re good enough or lucky enough you can send the ball up a little ramp to a target that says “homerun”. If you get a hit, little metal base-runners pop up in the infield and follow a circular track around the bases. I make a lot of outs, but somehow cause a runner to make it all the way around to home plate. The bells on the machine literally ring up a run on the scoreboard, and it’s loud. Pawpaw looks over at me and gives me a crooked smile and goes back to the conversation.

I finish the game and cross to the other side of the room to where racks of postcards are for sale. The first stand are all pictures of the Ozarks, or the St. Louis Arch. I move a little deeper in and find brightly colored cartoon cards. On one card a voluptuous women is standing waist-deep in water, wearing a bright yellow, polka-dot bikini top. She has a shocked look on her face. Beside her a hairy, fat man with a dumb look on his face is holding up a piece of bright yellow, polka-dot material and asking, “Did someone lose a hanky?” Oh man, this is hot stuff, and much more entertaining than dropping water on a straw wrapper! I read every card on every rack, laughing at the jokes that I get, trying to act as if I get it on the ones where I don’t. Most of the humor is not that sophisticated. One card makes me laugh and I decide to buy it and mail it to my uncle back in Indianapolis. It’s a cartoon of a hound-dog lifting his leg on some tobacco plants, with the caption, “Do you cigarettes taste funny lately?” I don’t even know if my uncle smokes.

I am a boy in a man’s world, trying to guess at context. Cigarette smoke, racy cards, pinball games, pie. It looks to me as if everything one needs is right here, but people are passing through. It’s the Midway — they’re between where they started and where they’re going, neither here nor there yet, just going in stops and starts on their tracks like little metal men in a game. At the table someone tells a joke that I don’t hear and everyone laughs.

At the turn

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by the Night Writer

As you read this I will have completed my 50th year on this planet. Yes, I know, hard to believe – at least it is for me. Somehow in my mind’s eye I still kind of picture myself as I was in the 1980s, though that is a man my children never knew and my wife may even have a hard time remembering, which, truth be told, is probably a good thing for all concerned.

As friends and family members, especially the golfers, have reached this milestone in the past I have commonly bestowed upon them a cheerful, “Good luck on the back nine!” Now it is I turning toward the clubhouse. Though I have my share of fairways and bunkers ahead of me I realize that this isn’t necessarily the half-way point. Fifty doesn’t mean there’s a real-life 50-50 balance between the time I’ve lived and the time I have left. Believe me, I’ve worked with enough actuaries over the years to know about that.

Sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one — they couldn’t come fast enough.

Thirty — “what the…?”

Forty — “now wait just a minute…”

Fifty. Fifty? Fifty.

Nevertheless I feel good, I feel strong. My blood pressure and cholesterol are low and everything else seems manageable. If I no longer swing a 20-pound post maul all day in the sun, or polish off 27 spare ribs at a sitting, I can still remember what each felt like and believe that I don’t do those things now simply because I’m old enough to know better.

Yet there it is – old enough. To know better. From this vantage point I can look back and see all the faces that helped me get here who are here no longer. And thanks to them, I see the young faces around me now and I can turn and look into the distance and imagine the even younger faces to come.

There’s still time for some practice swings, though, and to work on my game. Yeah, the ol’ backswing can’t help but get longer, though the important thing now is the follow-through. I’m not familiar with all the holes I have left, but I know I’ve got a wise coach and caddy who has said he’ll never leave or forsake me, so I’ll take my time and enjoy the round for there’s no sense in hurrying.

I do hear the Clubhouse is spectacular, though.

In my father’s truck

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One of the reasons I went down to Missouri last week was to pick up my father’s pick-up truck, which is now my pick-up truck. It’s a 1998 Dodge Dakota extended cab (V6, 2WD), and the odometer didn’t turn 51,000 miles until I was somewhere in Iowa on the drive home. It’s in great shape, and my mom had had it detailed before I came for it so the interior was in like-new condition. In fact, the steering wheel was kind of slippery.

I had sat in the truck last November when I was home for Thanksgiving, only a few weeks after my father died. I rifled the glove box and center console, finding miscellaneous to-do lists and receipts, half-a-roll of Life Savers, and a few pipe filters in the ashtray; I could smell the old tobacco. Pictures of his grandchildren were clipped behind a visor, and the dashboard was coated with dust. When I climbed in the other day everything was wiped down, polished and antiseptically clean without a trace of him, except for a Shriner’s medallion on the back window. I’m not a Shriner, so I’ll have to find a way to remove that and mail it to my brother.

The truck had been parked on the carport, behind the section of garage that had been turned into his re-upholstery workshop. I climbed down from the truck and then down into the shop, looking around for a screw-driver. The shop has barely been touched in the last few months, other than to remove the unfinished projects that had been waiting for him to feel better. Scraps of fabric, several extension cords hanging from straps, a workbench, some stools, the heater I had bought him for Christmas several years ago, some photos of he and some friends taken at the golf course and tacked to the wall. There were two calendars, one featuring a picture of Ronald Reagan. Both were turned to May, 2007; he had been diagnosed in June. My mother came in and joined me. “I’m not changing a thing,” she said.

As I drove back to Minnesota I took stock of my new ride. I liked the above-the-traffic driver’s position. The truck drove true, without shimmy and the only strange noise was a brief turbine-sounding whine when the speedometer moved between 45 and 50 mph. Hmmm. How does it ride? *BUMP* Like an empty truck. I started a mental to-do list of tasks and upgrades: a little wobble in the brakes when coming down from highway speed, perhaps I should get the rotors turned; new wiper blades; add a tonneau cover; replace the AM/FM/Cassette with a new stereo with CD-player and iPod port; perhaps new speakers since these seemed to buzz with any significant bass tones. I’d only driven about 180 miles since I filled the tank; I looked at the gas guage; 1/4 tank left. YIKES! I added “tune-up” to my mental list, but I soon realized that the engine was turning at 2100 rpm at 70 mph in overdrive without a hitch or falter, and the old man had been pretty methodical about his maintenance. It could well be that 17 mpg was all I was going to coax out of the truck on the highway.

I had an older model Dakota several years ago when the responsibilities of home ownership had shown us the value of having a pick-up truck. Granted, there may be only a few times a year when you need one, but when you need one you really need one. Nevertheless, I’d foolishly let that earlier truck go, and it created a gap that has taken me this long to fill. Given the circumstances, I could have waited a bit longer.

Related posts:
In My Father’s House, Part 1
In My Father’s House, Part 2
In My Father’s House, Part 3
In My Father’s House, conclusion
Turning Toward the Mourning
Shifting the Sun

A Balm in Gilead, part 3: children

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The third in a series that is part writing exercise and part year-end reflection,
about the “balms” in my life, inspired by the book, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

In Gilead, the Rev. John Ames reflects back over a long life that, while full, did not include the opportunity to watch his children grow up. He lost his wife and infant daughter while still a young man and later, as an old man with a heart condition, knows he is unlikely to see the 7-year-old son of his much later marriage turn 8, let alone 28. As such he easily ascribes gracious expectations of their character and what they might have, or will have, accomplished. The memoir he is writing, in fact, is intended for his son to read after he has become a man, meaning that the wisdom and explanations in its pages will have largely been unavailable to the youth in his formative years.

Not that the Rev. Ames is naïve. He has watched, often helplessly, as his best friend’s son has careened from one mischief and misadventure to another. That the man is also named after him further cements the empathetic anguish he feels for his friend’s fatherly agony and embarrassment. Young Jack, like most of us, is a man of more conscience than character, with a fatalistic dread of his shortcomings. Both he and his namesake have a sincere desire to reach each other, but are constantly confounded by their own missteps and the other’s misinterpretations.

The good reverend, however, never had the opportunity to convene a meeting in his parlor, to rest his own arms regally on the wide, wooden arms of his patriarchal chair, to fix a steely eye on an anxious young man across from him and, as I did, state the question, “What, good sir, are your intentions regarding our daughter?”

A balm in Gilead, part 2: wife

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The second in a series, part writing exercise and part year-end reflection,
about the “balms” in my life, inspired by the book, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

“We should talk more,” she said, her bare foot lightly brushing mine. She’s logical and practical in a way that some men say they wish women could be more like. There’s wisdom and concern in her words, a concern that perhaps we’re becoming too autonomous, rising and setting like the sun and the moon covering the same familiar ground but at different times, our orbits barely overlapping. Nevertheless, sometimes during the day, you can see the moon.

Earlier in the evening we had talked, sitting in big, comfy chairs in front of a too-hot fireplace at a local coffee shop. Then her motions had been gamine-quick, almost coltish as she reached across the small space between our chairs and stroked the arm of mine, or raised up to draw her legs underneath her, or raised her arms to take off her sweater when the fire became too uncomfortable even for her, the one who shivers almost non-stop from Labor Day to Memorial Day. She was telling me about her dreams, literally. Those fast-asleep dreams she had had recently, round and portentous, dripping with symbolism and still crystal-clear upon waking. To some extent they were also Dreams, having to do with what she wanted for the future, to pursue.

As for myself, the one who used to never be able to shut up, I had leaned back in my chair meditatively, parsing the symbols and conjuring context. Leaning back is something I’ve found myself doing more often the last few years; I’m not as concerned about letting silence into the conversation anymore, whereas before I often couldn’t wait to careen in and even high-jack it, not daring to leave a space where someone else could take it away.

Now, later in the evening, when she says “We should talk more,” it’s not so much to say that the talking earlier was fun, but that we don’t have as much fun as we used to have, or could have, and she sees the need to stay in practice. She looks ahead, imagines the inevitable empty nest. I imagine her considering the old buzzard sitting on the other side of that nest. What do the sun and the moon do once what has been your world goes away? “Ummm…” I say.

When we had first gone out I was nervous and had babbled, which I tend to do if I’m nervous. Fortunately, few things make me nervous anymore. Then, however, I had nearly blown it with my chatter, trying one conversational gambit after another looking for a favorable response, some traction. My best stories and jokes, my wittiest observations, littered the top of the table at the restaurant like dirty dishes. So I shut up, and things got better, because she had some things to say, too.

One of the things she said, some time a bit later, was, “Look, I don’t want to lead you on. You’re nice, but I believe God is preparing Mr. Right for me, and when he comes along, you’re out of here.”

Okay, so I have been nervous.

In Gilead the Reverend Ames reflects, with some wonder, over the circumstances that brought his young wife — and ultimately the son to whom he is writing — into his life. A widower who lost his first wife in childbirth and his infant daughter shortly thereafter, he had lived most of his adult life as an outside observer and counselor of the family dynamics taking place around him, covetously (he admits) watching the relationships that appeared to be denied to him, until these, too, overtook him.

I have only half-jokingly said that I was smart and got my trophy wife first. I didn’t have to wait until old age, like Rev. Ames, to know the comfort of a wife and family. And it is a tangible balm.

My wife and I first met in April, 1986. We went on our first date in June. By late September we were engaged (though we didn’t marry for another year). Once, as she and I were clearly getting serious in our relationship, a concerned friend of mine (who had known me for years) drew her aside to urge caution, warning her of the dark moods that were known to come over me from time to time. These moods were not imagined, and during those times, I confess, I was not a good friend. I remember these moods well. Strange, I don’t remember having one since I married.

Once, not too long ago, I was teasing her. “Oh, you’re definitely high-maintenance,” I said, citing how particular she is about the ingredients in the food we bring into the house, her taste in clothes, the way she likes things that concern her to be “just so.” She was not amused, which suggests that there are still times when it is better for me to keep my mouth shut, especially if it gives me time to think. And as I thought about it I quickly realized that almost all the maintenance she requires is handled by her. She rises early for her physical and spiritual exercise, the burdens of selecting and preparing the foods we eat fall upon her, her fastidiousness in her appearance reflects well on both of us with little involvement from me. About all I have to do is avoid shrinking her jeans in the wash (difficult, because I like tight jeans on her) and bring her favorite towel up from the laundry on Saturday night and hang it on the rack above the bathroom radiator (I’ve also ceded this premium towel position to her). Further, since I am almost pathologically detail-averse, she manages the details that keep our household running smoothly, from balancing the checkbook, paying the bills and (usually) putting the things I need out where I can find them or won’t forget them.

She does all of that, and somehow still desires my attention and conversation.

We should talk more.

Related Posts:
A Balm in Gilead, Part 1: Life and Death
A Balm in Gilead, Part 3: Children

A balm in Gilead, part 1: life and death

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I’m just about finished reading one of the most profound and moving books I’ve come across in (at least) the last 10 years: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. In fact, the only works of fiction that have affected me as much as this book are Mark Helprin’s A Winter’s Tale and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams. Listing these three books in one paragraph makes me realize that, though they are very different, they all revolve around the nature of time and place, the nature of man and the nature —as Lightman/Einstein would put it — of “The Old One.”

Gilead is set in the mid-1950s in Gilead, Iowa and is written as a letter from an elderly pastor to the young son who came to him very late in life and who he knows he will never get to see grow up and become a man. The pastor, Rev. John Ames, has lived his entire life in Gilead, pastoring the church his father pastored before him. Ames is, in fact, the third generation of preachers in his line. His grandfather was a firebrand abolitionist in Kansas, known to preach with a pistol stuck in his belt and thought to have ridden with John Brown and, perhaps, to have killed a federal soldier who was pursuing the Reverend’s band of insurgents. He railed against the spiritual complacency of the “doughface” Christians who could tolerate slavery and warned of God’s judgment on the nation as a result. He fought in the Civil War and lost an eye in the conflict.

Ames’ father was the complete opposite, a dedicated pacifist who saw the 1918 Spanish Flu plague, in the midst of World War I, as God’s judgment on a mad world. Nevertheless, the father took in the aged grandfather when he had no place to go, giving the young Ames a chance to observe their respective theologies and the dynamics between the men, even though the surest sign of a disagreement between them was their use of the title “Reverend” when addressing one another. Also factoring into this narrative are Ames’ older, apostate, brother; Ames’ lifelong best friend, Old Boughton, who is the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Gilead; and Old Boughton’s prodigal son, John Ames Boughton (Jack), who was named after the narrator and who consumes a great deal of the old man’s thoughts and fears as he lays out what little legacy he has to offer his seven-year-old son.

The plot, such as it is, progresses much as an afternoon float trip does, meandering slowly around bends and through shady places as Ames unwinds the story in such a way that you don’t readily realize how much ground has been covered, while leaving you with a vague unease about what rapids or waterfalls might be ahead. I am continuously charmed by each page and awed at the grasp that the author, a woman, has on the inner-workings of a man’s mind. I could have read the book in an afternoon, but I have purposely drawn out the pleasure by allocating myself only a few pages a day to read and ruminate upon.

Now, if my purpose in this post was to offer a book review, I’d hope that my words so far would inspire you to seek out the book yourself (indeed, I do). But that is not the purpose of this post, despite the paragraphs that have come before. Instead, the book has stirred something in my own inner voice, and in my mind, to record some of the thoughts I’ve had of late, some of which have come along of their own accord and some that have been brought forth by the book, and many that are a bit of both.

In My Father’s House, Conclusion

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The house looked all too familiar. My sister and my uncles had removed all the appliances and equipment brought in over the past few months that had never seemed to fit. His chair, his bed, are now as they’ve always been. I know better than his dog, who wanders the house looking up quizzically and runs to the patio door when he thinks he hears someone, but standing in the family room I still half-expected to see him when I turned around, or when I heard a footstep in the kitchen.

What I wasn’t expecting at all was to go into the grocery store or the gas station in the small town and see a black-bordered card by the cash register, announcing his passing. I’d forgotten how things were done in a small town where just about everybody knows everyone else. I’d seen, maybe, hundreds of these cards when I lived here but never pictured his name on them, let alone my own in the body copy. Later, driving some things over to the funeral home I was still taken aback to read his name and the times for the visitation and the funeral on the marquee facing the street.

My father passed away Monday night, October 29, due to … what, exactly? It’s kind of complicated, so I suppose you could say he died of “complications.” Was it the lymphoma he’d been battling? The chemotherapy itself? The realization that living with the pain only meant yet another day of living with the pain?

I saw him wasting away, of course. In June. In September. Was it only last December that we had all been together and so happy? Thursday morning, October 25th, my mom called me at work (I’d taken to keeping my cell phone on and with me even in the office) from the hospital where he’d been for a week, fighting a kidney infection; where he’d had another torso scan to check on the progress of the cancer. There was to be a consultation with his oncologist the next day, could I be there? How could I not. Plain, but unspoken, was the thought that they would say the cancer was still spreading and there was nothing more they could do. I took an early morning flight Friday, and arrived at the hospital just moments after they’d moved him from his room into the ICU. When I caught up with him he had an oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face, the straps making his ears stick out even further, his head bald as a newborn’s. Despite the oxygen his whole body fought for each breath, filling and releasing in a series of rapid convulsions. I took his hand and could feel his pulse through his palm.

My mother, my brother, my mother’s brother and I met with the oncologist. Good news: the cancer was stable, it had not spread further. Bad news: he had developed blood clots in his lungs from the chemo. This was dire. He might not live through the weekend. By the afternoon, however, he was better, breathing easier, able to talk, still able to understand. He thirsted, and I put the tiny sponge to his lips so he could drink. I, his first child, shared some news of his first grandchild, and the monitor showed his heart-rate spiking. “That … was … your … heart … then,” he said. Yes. Yes it was.

Saturday morning I held my phone to his ear so he could talk to my youngest daughter, Tiger Lilly; as always, he teased her a little. Saturday afternoon my brother and I picked up our sister at the airport, just 15 minutes from the hospital. Saturday evening my father and I said our good-byes. They were brief because there wasn’t much left unsaid between us. Sunday morning I had an early flight back to St. Paul because there were things I had to do, first. Then calling my mother when I got home, hearing he had asked to be disconnected from everything except what was dripping into him for the pain. Monday evening my mother was at his bedside, talking on the phone to my sister back at the house, saying that he had been breathing much easier for the past five minutes and was resting peacefully, and then, as she said it, he stopped. “Say good-bye to your father,” she cried, thrusting the cellphone toward his ear as the nurse rushed in. Then the phone was ringing at my house, and once again I was on the road, toward a familiar place that was never going to be the same again.

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In a time like this you really appreciate the “commune” of community: prayers and condolences come in from friends, co-workers and the blogging community just as the food showed up at my mom’s house: hams, chili, soups, cakes, pies, more ham, doughnuts, fruit – the bread of life as friends and even acquaintances near and far stretch out their hands to hold you up. Some because they share your memories of the departed, all of them because they share the knowledge or the experience that this is a time common to all of us; this week it was you, last week or next week, them. I could feel the thoughts and prayers of those far away, nearly as tangibly as the line of those who brought the embrace of communal comfort: hug, pat, pat. Sometimes, three pats.

When I was younger I couldn’t quite understand why people went to visitations or funerals. You only had a few moments with the family before moving on, and wasn’t it hard for them to stand there having to greet all those people when they’d rather be off grieving somewhere in private? I’ve had a different understanding and appreciation, though, for the last ten years or so. “Paying your respects,” always sounded like such a cliche until I experienced how important and comforting it was to see and hear from people what my father had meant to or done for them; there were a lot of friends and family of course, and many, many people I did not recognize.

The funeral was a “celebration of life,” and several of my father’s friends from the Masonic Lodge and/or the golf course shared moving and often hilarious stories. Men of a generation not known for crying wept openly nonetheless. With tight lips and throat I somehow kept it (mostly) together through the eulogy I offered, perhaps because in a way I had been preparing for it all my life. After we rode out to the cemetery my wife, an ordained minister and police chaplain, spoke the scripture and the prayer and then my oldest daughter stood in the bright sunlight beside the casket and on that hillside in the great, open air absolutely filled every ear (and I hope every heart) as she sang a cappella, an old hymn:

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.
And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die;
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.

Related posts:
In My Father’s House, Part 1
In My Father’s House, Part 2
In My Father’s House, Part 3
Turning Toward the Mourning
Shifting the Sun

One Year On

 

Perfect weather

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Crisp, sunny autumn days like last Saturday are great — and as refreshing as biting into a Honeycrisp apple, but there’s a special seasonality to an overcast day in early fall like today.

This morning the sun rose but never shook off its blanket and the gray backdrop was the perfect canvas for the prima donna colors, helping the grass in my yard take on an extra-deep and lush green while the reds, yellows and oranges of the various leaves on the ground and still on the trees competed for attention. I enjoyed driving through my neighborhood, looking at the leaves that had fallen since last weekend’s rakings and, like the children at the bus-stop, resplendent in their new jackets, just waiting.

On days like these it is hard to keep your eyes on the road, but even at that I was rewarded. As I pulled up behind the line of cars waiting to turn left off of the Ayd Mill Road I broke into a smile when I recognized the autumnal glory of red taillights and flashing orange turn-signals in gleaming clarity that would not have been possible on a sunny day. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

In My Father’s House, Part 3

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1989 was my first Father’s Day as a dad myself (thanks, Mall Diva). As a first-timer that June I wrote a letter to my father that included the following:

There are things about growing up that can’t be explained to — or understood by — the emerging adult. At those times the elders can only say “Wait until you have kids of your own” to indicate the unseen forces and emotions that will one day come into play. It is an enigmatic, somewhat ominous, prophecy born of instinct, experience and intuition. Given enough words, it can be described but not experienced. Given enough experience, it no longer needs to be described.

The revelation of being a Father, to accept the title that has always belonged to someone else, is almost dizzying. The family armor, passed on for generations, has been taken off the wall and handed to you with your banner. It is your turn.

Some find their armor rusty and decrepit. Corroded by years of venom, its surface has been marred by each coat of blame and accusation they have applied over the years. These men will always find their armor ill-fitting and uncomfortable. Never having learned or cared where the weak points are, they don’t know what parts need to be reinforced, what parts need extra care, what parts need to be protected the most. They clank and creak into battle already spiritually defeated, blaming the previous owner, and scarcely able to defend themselves, let alone carry out their sacred charge. Some even abandon the field completely, leaving it (and the next generation) to the enemy!

Others will be blessed and even surprised to find their armor in good shape, and not nearly as big on them as they thought it would be. Oh, there’s a scratch here, a small dent there, but these only serve to reinforce the necessity of such gear. These men are properly outfitted and equipped, and where necessary they have taken it upon themselves to repair or replace whatever they see missing. Respect, and a good teacher, have kept the pieces oiled and in good working order.

I have been thinking about armor lately; thinking about how it’s something worn on the outside as protection against the things that would pierce or cut us, the mortal thrust to our vitals from an external foe. But what about the poisoned blade that comes from inside?

Think about the wonderful design of our bodies; how they easily and automatically handle the vital chores of our survival: respiration, digestion, circulation, even healing and restoration. From the time we’re in the womb our bodies perform countless tasks dedicated to our survival, including resisting infections and toxic interlopers. In today’s vernacular, you could say our bodies “have our back.” How cruel and crushing, then, for our closest friend and ally to turn on us, for our very own cells to go rogue, even to the point of using our own defenses against us.

And how quickly it can happen! The doctors estimate that from the time my father’s mutinous lymphocytes first went over the wall to the time he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma (lymphoma in multiple locations above and below the diaphragm) was only about two months; this in a person who was undergoing nearly constant check-ups and monitoring due to a previous bout with prostate cancer and a heart-valve replacement a couple of years ago. What can you do?

Then again, maybe there is an internal armor and a toughness after all. Cancer is an insidious foe that, along with the measures used to combat it, strips away virtually every visible vestige of one’s dignity. I know heart attacks can be devastating and life-changing and leave you weak as a baby, but at least they leave you with your hair. The chemo takes your hair and your appetite and nearly every illusion you have about being in control of your own body. When I was down to see my dad in June he still pretty much looked like himself, but the stress of the pain and the effects of the pain-killing medication caused him to throw up — much to his dismay. “I haven’t thrown up in more than 30 years,” he said. At one point when I went to see him in September he was throwing up every 30 minutes. Rather than lurching into the bathroom each time he had fashioned a bucket from a one-gallon plastic milk jug and used that. The first time I went in to assist my mother he was sitting up in bed, spitting up into the bucket. He was well past the point of feeling embarrassed, he just gave me a matter-of-fact look over the lip of the jug and went about his business.

He’s lost his hair, and more that 40 pounds from a frame that can barely spare it. He’s been poked with needles and IVs so many times the nurses can barely find a vein that won’t collapse and there’s scarcely a bodily function he can perform without an audience, yet he still jokes with the nurses even if his voice sometimes sounds more like his 100-year-old mother’s than his own. He struggles to swallow his food, and to keep it down even when he does, yet he’s drawing sustenance from his will and a determination not to give up no matter what fresh hell the day brings, and doing it with a grace that I never would have expected in him.

We think of armor as being made of metal. Apparently, it has more to do with mettle.

In My Father’s House, Part 2

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A childhood memory: waking up in the pre-dawn winter hours to the muffled thrumming of my father’s car warming up in the driveway. In my mind I can picture the clouds of crystalline exhaust illuminated by the back porch light. I would lie snug in my bed and listen to the sounds of my father preparing to go to work: his step (the heaviest in the house) in the hallway, the jingle of the dozen or so keys on the big ring on his belt, the clink of a coffee cup being set down on the counter; finally the closing of the back door to mark his passing. It was familiar and unremarkable, and I would go back to sleep.

When I awoke again my mind was filled with my own thoughts and plans for the day. In this time my father owned his own business and was rarely home for supper. My brother and sister and I would eat with our mother, and go about our evening routine. I would often be in bed again when I heard him return. There would be the sounds of my mother frying him a steak, and of talking; their voices distinct, but not the words. Sometimes the tone was obviously my mother reciting the sins of the day, and if they were heinous enough, we would be summoned from our beds for the promised retribution of When Our Father Gets Home.

As a father now myself, I understand how this had to have been as unpleasant for him as it was for us.

During this time our father was a seldom seen force in our lives, operating outside our understanding, toward ends unknown. We would see him mostly on Sundays, and there was a feeling of awkwardness as if none of us were quite certain about how we should act. And yet there was always food on the table, a comfortable house, and clothes for every season, even though we gave little thought, or saw little connection, to how these things came to be.

It wasn’t until I was 11 or 12 and old enough to go to work with my father that I really started to get to know him, and learn what a just and wonderful man he was. I admit he never seemed to be at a loss for things for me to do: pick up rocks and litter, sweep the drive, clean the restrooms for the rest of the workers and the guests. As I learned more about how to please him, my responsibilities and privileges grew. I came to know the special feeling of joining him in the early morning while everyone else was asleep as we got ready to go to “our” work.