Father Time

Leaning against the top railing of our 20-year-old wheelchair ramp in front of the house, I silently watched Dad. "Hey, what are ya doing out here?" I asked. He looked up, momentarily surprised.

"I'm loading up this firewood to take down to your grandpa so he can burn it in the woodstove when it gets colder. Here, I'll get outta the way so you can help," he answered matter-of-factly, yet I saw a hint of sarcasm in his 58-year-old eyes and across his smile, which was almost covered by his grayish-white beard.

I smiled broadly, knowing that he was just playing with me. I knew he didn't really expect me to help; otherwise he would have called me outside before he had even started. But, I knew from past times of helping him out that he did appreciate it. Besides, even if it was hard outdoor work, it was the kind of work that we both enjoyed, or in the very least didn't mind, maybe because we were both doing it together, or perhaps for some other reason that I have not yet discovered in these last 21 years.

Taking my cue, I methodically choose a piece of firewood that I was able to handle well enough. Dad had taught me early in my childhood when I'd help him to be careful and make it easier on myself to do things like that so I wouldn't overwork my weaker body. Even though I had helped him load wood several times before, I still caught myself pausing a moment or two to watch where he was tossing the wood into his gray Dodge truck, and then follow his lead. Looking at the rust spots around the wheel wells, I recall what he taught me to take care of that problem.

"See, you put some oil in a weed sprayer, and soak the rust in the spray, and after a while you won't see those rust spots," he told me. But that's Dad; always my teacher, even if he wasn't donning the shirt and tie I remember from being in his 7th grade English and reading classes at Fredericktown, our hometown in Ohio. As I continued tossing the split logs into the truck from their temporary home under our tall spruces by the road, I really began to think about what Dad and I have been through together.

On December 5th, 1984 I was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that really wasn't very well-known at the time to many people other than the doctors, and certainly not to my mom. She had no idea that for the next 21 years I would have bladder problems that would require me to empty my bladder through a catheter, or that I would have to have pumps put in my brain to drain the excess water inside my head, and that the surgery to do that would cause me to have problems comprehending what I would read.

Upon seeing the odd bubble of nerves and spinal fluid coming out of a hole in my lower back that day, she alarmingly exclaimed, "What's THAT?" Although she may have been the only one in the room that didn't know what was going on, my dad did. At least that's the story he has told me many times over the years.

"I saw the stuff on your back, and immediately I thought 'Uh oh,'" he told me one day a few years after I was born. I don't really know for sure, but it may have been that particular moment when Dad decided that my life with a disability wasn't going to be the easiest, and so perhaps that's why he has always taken the time to make sure I am either taken care of when it comes to matters of my disability, like when I go to my doctors at Children's Hospital in Columbus, the same doctors I have had since I was born.

"Make sure they know about his bladder," he'd tell Mom, or me, once he felt I was old enough to be able to advocate for myself. Unfortunately, self-advocacy and self-care have always been a struggle.

Thankfully, Dad has been a large part of how I have grown to better deal with my handicap as independently as possible. Almost every day for the last 21 years, Dad has, at one moment or another, asked me, "When was the last time you cathed?" More often than not, my answer would simply be "a little while ago," or "just now." He was worried because he knew that due to the spina bifida, I couldn't tell when my bladder was empty like most everyone else.
When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I went through a really difficult stage in the mentality toward this part of my handicap. I began to lose sight of the importance of catheterizing myself at regular times during my day, and I would often have accidents, many of them at times in public places where I would have rather not had them happen. While I may have been able to deal with those well enough, what got me into trouble many times in those early years were the frequent bladder infections I got, many stemming from my lack of "taking care of business" when I should have. Thus began the familiar routine of getting medicine to counteract the infection, which worked, as long as I took the time to take the pills, which didn't always happen. As a result, sometimes the infection would hang on longer than it perhaps should have been able to, and that didn't make Dad very happy.

It wasn't until I became a little older and got into high school that I began to realize that my lack of self-care and awareness of the seriousness of what I had been doing to my body had affected my relationship with my dad. Although I didn't think he was ashamed of me at any point in those long years, I did feel like I had indeed put a damper on our relationship because I hadn't taken care of myself like I should have. In those rougher times, when he'd would sigh and say "Just take the pills, please..." I realized later that it was that disappointment in his voice and in his eyes that I should have paid attention to, rather than the "no big deal" attitude I was feeling myself.

My uncaring attitude slipped over into my schoolwork during those years in 7th and 8th grade, and even a little into my freshman year in 1999. In my classes with Dad, although I was a pretty good student in English, my efforts in his reading class left a lot to be desired. Granted, because of my handicap, reading comprehension hasn't ever been my strongest suit, but there was a lot more going on than that when I was in his reading class. It wasn't easy much of the time for me, and I struggled through most of it, getting frustrated to the point where I often read through the books, but nothing sank in. After a few failed reading tests and some "heart-to-heart" conversations between the two of us in my room, I bit the bullet and went along with his idea that I would read out in the other end of the house where there was no television or other distraction. It took time, but soon I began to understand the reading, and my test scores climbed to a more reasonable level. Looking back, I know now that if he hadn't been willing to take the time to push me to discover what was keeping me from succeeding with my reading, I might still be lost in the college classroom room today. Thanks to him, I am now handling my hardships much more effectively. I still have accidents now and then, but at least I care more about them because of what he has taught me to see within myself.

"Whoop...wake up!" quips Dad, the clattering echo of my needle-nosed pliers against the bottom of our rented aluminum boat resonating out into the warm, July air of northern Michigan. I sheepishly lean over my knees and rummage around next to my tackle box, figuring that's where the pliers must have fallen. Finding them, I place them carefully back into their home in my tackle box, and silently begin fishing again, pausing every so often to take in the crisp blue sky. A moment later, though, my comic mind begins playing the moment's movie over again in my head, and I begin to quietly chuckle, then laugh out loud at the situation. Behind me, I hear the nasal laugh and hearty wheeze of Dad joining in the moment's fun. I shake my head, unable to escape the reality of my foible.

Dad began that verbal joke about five years ago when I was 15 or 16, the first time he began to notice my uncanny ability to make as much noise as humanly possible in an activity where silence is just as important as what bait you use. It's true; I do tend to thump around in the boat at rather inopportune times. But what I appreciate is that Dad understands that I am trying my best to stayquiet, and that it just isn't easy for me to do that sometimes. Rather than get really upset about it, though, he instead takes the opportunity to make light of the situation. What seems to matter to him, (and what has always mattered to me) is that he is out on the lake with his youngest son, sharing moments with someone whom he has something in common: fishing. It's the time I spend doing things like fishing with Dad where I feel closest to him. After all, it was Dad with whom I took my first-ever fishing trip, out here on this same lake in Michigan where we are now. It was during those first few hours in that boat when I learned much of what I know about fishing.

"Hey, Putz. They're biting pretty well on Mr. Twisters," he says as we sit in the evening light, about 10 yards from the curve of our favorite weed bed, my eyes carefully tracking the "Lone Pine" Dad taught me to look for in order to find this weed bed we're fishing. Excited about catching more "keepers," I immediately call upon my memory of that first-ever fishing trip, and my hands search expertly through my tackle box, searching for those little white soft-plastic worms and those tiny pink jigheads with the spinners on them that I used that very first time. Finding one, I quickly tie it on, and cast right at the spot Dad has trained me to find. A few casts later, I am carefully searching for the curved end of the hook, buried somewhere within the jaws of the large Bluegill cupped carefully in my wet hand. I find it just like I knew I would, and drop it safely into the wire basket with the three other fish Dad has caught.

It's getting late, and as we glance over our shoulders to the west, we see the bright red sun dipping down below the tree-filled horizon. As I lean forward and put my hands into the warm, clear water to clean the fish smell and fish blood off my hands like he has taught me, I begin to wonder how many more of these trips we're going to be able to take before I am helping him with his crutch or cane as he slowly gets into the boat, with me at the helm. But that doesn't matter to me now. I'm with him in one of our favorite places, and I will dream of, not worry about, those times when they come.

"Hey, red sky at night, huh?" I happily exclaim, smiling back at Dad. He smiles proudly back at me, knowing, hopefully thinking that he has at least taught me that, and yet so much more.

"Sure is," he answers. "Hey, you wanna drive the boat back to the dock?"

"Hey Dad, can I go to the woods with you?" I asked, sitting in my grandmother's living room in Bucyrus, Ohio, the early-summer sun shining through her bay window, casting prisms from the glass ornaments along the opposite beige wall.

"Sure," he said. "Just be sure to bring your crutches." I jump up, search frantically for my wooden crutches, and finding them, bound happily down the concrete steps outside my grandma's house. I follow Dad down the path toward the barn where the old Ford tractor sits, past the old Buckeye tree that stands guard over the gigantic empty yard in front of it, past the unused gas pump next to the driveway near the greenhouse.

We reach the dusty old white barn, and Dad climbs up into the flat, hard plastic seat of the tractor. I carefully situate myself upon the thick metal trailer tongue behind the two giant wheels of the old Ford. Now I know just how our family friend Ron feels when he sits here on his trips with Dad to the woods, I think.

"Ready?" he asks. I check my crutches, and nod yes. He turns around, puts the key into the ignition, and the tractor sputters and rumbles to life, sending excitement and wonder through me. With a sharp jerk forward, we trudge slowly toward the empty road, and moments later Dad kicks the tractor into high gear and we are sailing down the empty county road, past the endless acres of cornfields of Crawford County, toward the woods.

About ten minutes later, having driven around the field in front of the woods, we reach the edge of the trees, and my excitement grows as I reach up and grab a handful of maple leaves; a treasure of this trip with Dad.

"Okay, we're here," he says after a couple more minutes of lurching and bumping along the path. "See that path that goes all through there?"

I look to where he is pointing, and yes, I do see the path. "That path goes in a really big loop all the way around the woods. If you stay on that path, you'll be okay getting back here. I've been working on that one for about 20 years now, so it should be pretty clear," Dad explains.

Satisfied, I amble down the path he had blazed for years to get our firewood, mind and eye caught up in the treetops and the understory below. After a little while, I come across a tree that has a bunch of old, rusty saws chains hanging from one branch. Dad told me a long time ago what this was, though. "Chain Graveyard," he calls it. "It's where my saw chains go to die," he would laugh.

I wander down the path for a while longer, the constant drone of his chainsaw echoing around the tree trunks and through the leaves and into my ears and mind, jockeying for position in my head among the sounds of warblers and crows, all of them trying their hardest to talk to me. As I come closer to the bend in the path, I notice a fallen wild cherry tree, its split trunk leaning across two other smaller trees like a giant set of Pick-Up Stix.
I continue walking, soon coming back around to where Dad is stationed, but the saw has stopped. He is now methodically tossing the wood into the trailer, and I make a little commotion so he doesn't get too startled.

"Hey, I saw the Chain Graveyard while I was back there," I said, picking up a big piece of split maple.

"Oh yeah?" he said. "Pretty nice, huh?"

I laughed. "Yeah. So is this your only load today?" I asked, picking up another split log.

"Yep, this is it. This load is going to your grandpa," he answered. I nodded, and continued to pick up much of the rest of the wood, tossing it in with the rest.

"Hello?" Dad asks, ear to the phone, listening intently for a reply. "Yeah, Judy." As I continue to fiddle with my lunch of barbecued chicken on the charcoal grill, I glance at my dad's sinking eyes as he listens to Judy on the other end of phone. Something isn't right, I think, a sudden small knot in my stomach instantly showing itself, my mind momentarily racing through possibilities, my heart speeding up.

"...What? Oh my God..." Dad breaths, seconds later. "How?"

I pause, still looking at Dad, then tend to my chicken, taking it inside. Jesus, I wonder what's going on, I think. Trying not to think that something terrible had happened to my good friend Joe, I stood at the kitchen counter, cutting up my lunch, but I had to know. I went back outside to cover the grill on our new deck, and Dad was sitting on the double Adirondack, silently. Noticing the concern in my eyes, he uttered the words I thought I might hear, but didn't want to, no matter whom he was talking about. "Joe's gone," he said. "Just like that."

That knot in my stomach grew bigger, and so did the sudden emptiness. I stood by the grill for a few moments, and then silently went back inside, taking a few moments to let my friend Laura, whom I had been talking to online before the phone rang, know what had happened.

I sat at the computer for a long time, trying to come to grips with this new loss, trying to make sense of the thoughts that were coming at me a hundred miles an hour. Soon, I heard Dad come inside from the deck, but he didn't come out into the kitchen. Instead he stayed at that end of the house, and I decided that it would be better to not go out there. I knew that he would tell me, that I would find out what happened when it was time.

November 10th, 2006, the day of the memorial service, came sooner than I had expected, and with that knot creeping up on me again, I sat in the Presbyterian Church in Fredericktown that evening, Dad beside me, my sister Alisha on my other side. As I sat there, I watched everyone file into their seats, knowing many of them, but not all. I found it odd how the strangers didn't seem much like people I didn't know when I thought about how we were all there for one thing: to remember Joe.

As the pastor finished her introduction, it was time for Dad to deliver Joe's eulogy. He slowly stood up, and silently walked up to the microphone at the front. My eyes were fixed solely on him, the one man I had been able to count on my whole life, the one man I felt could help me try and deal with Joe's death the most. I leaned forward, thinking maybe Dad would see me trying to be strong for him and listening only to him, and that maybe that would help him get through his speech.

Dad spoke, rather lightly, as Joe would have perhaps liked, of our family picnics out at his farm. My mind was catapulted back to those days, and I smiled as if it were the day before, not 10 years ago. Thoughts of Joe launching his behemoth frame into the farm pond, or looking the other way as we steal apples from Apple Hill Orchard on our annual summer hayride, or chasing me through the darkness of the countryside, giant blanket draped over his large shoulders, war whoop echoing through the trees all filled my mind as Dad spoke of our time together, that only then seemed so brief.

"...And while we would still like to have made you a senator, good bye, old friend," Dad ended. As he began to cry and his voice quivered and trailed off, my view of that man whom I thought nothing could bring down changed drastically. He caught his tears before they flowed any further, but I had already seen them, and it was there, in that moment, that my father became a different man to me. I was overcome with sadness when Dad finished, and yet I remained strong, for I knew the hardest part was coming. As we filed out of the sanctuary, the notes of John Denver's "Sunshine On My Shoulder" soaring toward the ceiling, I prepared myself, knowing that I probably wouldn't be able to handle my feelings once I was among our old family friends.

Minutes later, I followed Dad around the room where everyone was gathered, and he found Judy. Taking a deep breath, I hugged Judy and before I knew it, I was crying, head buried in her arms, mind utterly lost, crying like I hadn't cried since my uncle Bill died several years before. I cried for the loss, the loneliness my heart felt, but mostly I cried simply because Dad had shown me that I finally could. They were tears of sadness, of loneliness, of things I cannot explain. But most importantly, they were tears. Dad helped me remember they were there inside me. I just had to listen.