Then Again - Diane Keaton [17]
Once in a while he would try to inject himself into Dorothy’s inner circle: us. After all, he was our father. But how was it possible to fit in with his hard-to-understand children and his high-strung, sensitive wife? Every night Dad came home to his family, and every night we’d stop what we were doing as soon as he walked through the door and present a friendly if distant wall of silence. I’m sorry to say we never extended an invitation to join us. Dad seemed to accept it, just as he’d accepted it from his mother.
Three Stories
Dad told us kids exactly three stories about growing up, and no more. There was the story about how when he was little he had rickets so bad he had to wear braces. There was the story about how Grammy Hall made him play the clarinet in Colonel Parker’s marching band, even though he couldn’t stand the clarinet. And there was his favorite story: the story about meeting Mom at a Los Angeles Pacific College basketball game when they were nineteen, and how he knew right then and there that she was the only woman in the world for him. Dad’s ending was always the same: “Six months later your Mudd and I eloped in Las Vegas.” And that was it. Or, as Mary would say, the past schmast.
Three Memories
When I was nine, Dad taught me how to open a pomegranate. He took a knife, sliced around the circumference, laid his hands on either side, and popped it open. Inside was a chestful of garnets—my birthstone. I bit into the pomegranate. Fifty red gems came crashing into my mouth all at once. It was like biting into both heaven and earth.
There wasn’t a family excursion that didn’t lead to the ocean. It didn’t matter if we were camping in Guaymas, or Ensenada, or up the coast past Santa Barbara; every evening Dad would sit down and stare into his acquiescent friend, the Pacific Ocean. Evening was Dad’s designated few moments of peace. As I got older, I would join him with a glass of 7Up with ice. We would sit in silence. Then: “Your mother sure is a beauty.” “Your Mudd—God, do I love her or what?” “Di-annie, do me a favor and be sure to tell your mother what a delicious meal she made.” Compliments were Dad’s way to whitewash his guilt about Mom’s submissive role. He worried about Dorothy, just not enough to change the way he went about living with her. He never contemplated a different approach. As he stared into the ocean, he must have tossed a lifetime of apologies into its silence. Maybe he thought the tide would wash his troubles away.
I thought I was dying. I couldn’t breathe. Asthma was bad enough, but this whooping-cough thing was way worse. When Dad turned me upside down, I got my breath back almost instantaneously. It was like a miracle. Mom was so worried, she kept me out of school for two months of my fourth-grade year. Every day she spread Vicks VapoRub on my chest, and she gave me 7Up with ice hourly. Sometimes she’d even let me watch TV. One night Dad and I saw a drama about a really old lady whose Seeing Eye dog was run over by a truck. I asked Dad why God let a dog die for nothing. He told me not to be scared. That seemed weird, because I’d heard Mom tell Auntie Martha that Dad passed out when he got pricked by a rose earlier that afternoon. I never thought of Dad as a fraidy-cat. After all, he’d saved my life. And it seemed mean of God to let the really old lady on TV lose her dog when she was going to die soon enough anyway. So I asked Dad, “Why do old people have to die just because they’re old?” He put me on his lap and said, “Old people have already had long lives, so they’re prepared for death. Don’t worry, they’re fine, Di-annie.” He gave me a kiss, put me down, and told me to get ready for bed. That night I heard Mom and Dad talking behind closed doors. Maybe Dad felt safe with Mom, safe enough to tell her about scary things like roses that made him faint, or the story of a beloved dog dying from a stupid accident, or just being old.
Think Positive
Dad found his version of the Bible,