Fatherless Day

This is my first Father's Day without a father. As the day gets closer and my inbox becomes a repository for all of the wonderful gifts one can purchase for one's dad, my mind begins to think irrationally. Can Amazon Prime really get my order to heaven in two days? Closer still and the emails become more insistent: it's the last day to get my order to my intended destination in time for Father's Day. Can FedEx really make it to the pearly gates on time? And if I wait any longer, how much will the additional shipping costs be? At two days before Father's Day the emails become even more frantic. "Don't forget Dad!" one screams out at me. Forget Dad? How could I ever forget my dad? The email goes on to tell me the gifts I can purchase if I rush to their store as soon as possible. I begin to put their address into my GPS...

Of course, these thoughts are not rational. These are the thoughts of a disordered mind and a still-grieving heart. The most evil place of all is, of course, the Hallmark store. I try to avoid it for as long as I can but I need a card for Casey and Toby to give to Bill. I find what I am looking for and sprint past the father cards like I used to run past the stone wall outside of my childhood home because I was so afraid of the snakes that were hiding in the wall just waiting to reach out and attack me. Or so I thought. I would gather all of my energy and run past that wall like my life depended on it. So I run past those father cards as if one of them will reach out and wrap itself around me like a serpent, squeezing out even more sorrow than the past ten months have summoned forth as it taunts me with the knowledge that I have no father I can buy a card for. No dad to whom I can deliver a gift. No face that will light up with pure joy simply because I baked him his favorite raisin cake.   

I used to tell people I was not a crier. This was not a source of pride or a badge of stoic honor, it was simply the truth. It took a great deal of raw emotion to get me to form those droplets of water I saw falling from other people's eyes. To the typical human, I may have appeared cold and unfeeling. That's just the way I was built. But after my dad passed away, I realized I was wrong. It's not that I was a non-crier. It's just that the room that held my tears was locked so securely it was impenetrable.

My dad, being the carpenter that he was, knew just how to unlock that door. As he passed into the next world, his kind, gentle soul gathered itself into a swirling ball of energy and blew that door wide open. And in doing so, he unlocked a tidal wave of emotion more than fifty years in the making. So now, I cry. I have shed more tears in the past ten months than in my previous years on earth combined. Time has not lessened my grief, it has merely altered it. That tidal wave has been reduced to the kind of wild and unpredictable wave that surfers seek and risk their lives for. But I don't know how to surf and I'm a poor swimmer, so the waves of grief rush against me and knock me over with their unrelenting force. Before last August I wouldn't even have felt these waves. Now I have no power over them. And so I cry. And Father's Day? Father's Day is one hell of a tsunami. 

But beyond the tears, though, and beyond the cards and gifts and cake-baking that are no longer part of this Fatherless Day for me, I believe there is more. Because beyond what we can see and touch and understand, I believe what remains is love. And maybe, just maybe, this love can be felt beyond the realms of existence we are able to comprehend. Perhaps if I love deeply enough, my dad will be able to feel that love. Even now. Even in death. 

And that would be the greatest gift of all. For both of us. 

Time and Time and Time...Again

All of my life I have been surrounded by too much time. To be clear, it isn't that the universe gave me extra hours in my days or added a few more years to my life; sadly, none of us will be granted these gifts. More precisely, I have always been surrounded by time's inevitable march as I rushed through a childhood that should have been carefree. Mine was ensnared in time. Time was all around me. Everywhere I gazed around my parents' house, there appeared a clock to cast its judgmental eyes upon me. All around me there were reminders that time was ticking away, letting me know that there was always something to do, somewhere to be, some task to be accomplished by a particular time. Is it any wonder that I was an anxious, frightened child who grew into an anxious, insecure adult? My entire life was been one cosmic race against the clock. 




My parents were German immigrants and I can say with absolute certainty that the stereotype of the uber-punctual German is, indeed, no stereotype. Google the phrase "Germans and time" as I just did and you will be met with a delightful selection of articles that basically describe my family. To be sure, I believe punctuality is extremely important. I was raised to believe that early equals on time and on time is equivalent to late. Consequently, I have serious issues with those who do not hold timeliness with such high regard, particularly those who are chronically late. 

Time has been marked by so much in my mom’s long life. Time passed merrily as she walked home from school with her friends, laughing and stopping to tell stories. Then time stopped in its tracks as she and her family hid in the bomb shelter night after night during World War II. Time ebbed and flowed with the ocean tide as she, my dad, and my seven-month-old brother crossed the Atlantic on the Gripsholm to begin a new life in America. Time passed quickly as her son grew, then a daughter — me — was added to the family.

Today I sit with my mom in her assisted living facility. During the two hours I have been here, she has asked me five times when dinner is. "Five o'clock," I say. She checks the clock above the TV, the one with the giant face so her glaucoma-affected eyes can see it better. It is three o’clock. She has asked me seven times, "So what do I have to do now?" It is all I can do not to say to her, "You are 90 years old. There is absolutely nothing you have to do!" But I don't. I can't. She is ruled by that clock and if she has nothing to do she feels she has no purpose. 

As we sit here together my mother thinks only of time in the sense of her next deadline, where she has to be, her next task to be done. I think of time as it moves my mom along in her life so quickly. As my mom sits and stares at the clock as it counts down to dinner, I gaze up at this same clock and ponder time as it counts down the moments in her life. Time stopped for my dad a mere seven months ago. I am still processing this loss, still so sad, still grieving his absence in my life. When time will cease for my mom, I do not know. She will turn 91 in three weeks and she is certainly strong-willed, but who knows,

But while my mind frets over life's larger questions, my mother is content to stare at the clock as it counts down to dinner. At this point in her life, perhaps marking time in this manner is truly a gift. I turn and we watch the clock together, each lost in our own thoughts.

Disappearing Into Myself

There’s a photograph of me taken when I was eight years old at my Oma and Opa’s 50^th wedding anniversary. My mom, dad, brother, and I had flown to Germany for the celebration and I remember being completely in awe of everything I saw during this, my first international adventure.

The photo is black and white, taken by my cousin Wolfgang.  I’m dressed in a proper little German outfit, my hair in pigtails, smiling into the camera. What is striking about this picture is the light and life I see in my eyes. My eyes look completely alive in this photo, as if I am alight with the sheer joy of the moment. There is no worrisome past or uncertain future. There is just pure, unjaded innocence.

Whenever I see this shot of me I inevitably feel two conflicting emotions. I always smile at this young girl, almost as if I am gazing at an eight-year-old I’ve never met, and think how happy she looks. Only when I am snapped back into the reality that I’m looking backward in time at my own face am I overcome with sadness. Where did the bright shining light in that little girl’s eyes go?

Sometime after that picture was taken, the light in my eyes began to diminish. I can’t pinpoint an exact moment or event, but all subsequent snapshots of me show a young girl, then a teenager, then a young adult, then an adult, all existing in semi-darkness. I didn’t live my life out loud, as the song says, but in a dark, quiet place. My attempts to hide myself, my talents, my light, were not extreme. How could they have been? Extreme anything would not fit in my attempts to live my life in a state of perpetual retreat from anything that would draw attention to myself. In a multitude of small ways, however, I began to retreat from who I was, crawling ever further into the shadows.

My first recollection of attempting to take my life under the proverbial radar of the rest of humanity was practicing my flute. Our band teacher made us practice for a half-hour a night as our homework. This produced a level of anxiety in me that I had never before experienced. My fear was having my parents hear me, but how could they not? The house was not very big and fairly quiet. They would hear me no matter what doors I closed. I’m not even sure why I didn’t want them to hear me. If I was just beginning to learn a piece I would sound pretty bad, yet if I practiced and got better I would obviously sound good. I was afraid to be both bad or good at playing the flute. I was afraid to be.

I came up with a solution, however. I realized one day that I could actually practice my flute almost silently. If I fingered the notes to play each song I needed to practice but blew across the mouthpiece at only about twenty percent of the usual air it took to make sound come out, I could hear and correct my fingering of the notes, yet I was the only one who could hear me. Basically, it was like whispering.  I whisper-practiced all the way through high school. Which explains, obviously, why I always knew and could play the notes and did fairly well finger-wise, but never excelled at flute playing. How could I? I mean, the whisper-practicing, however essential it was to me not being heard, did nothing to strengthen my musical ability. My breath control, vibrato, and all the other elements necessary to play well were never addressed. Basically, my tone was abysmal. The whisper-practicing was my first foray into gradually retreating into myself. It would, however, soon get worse, as I continued to disappear into myself for decades of my life. When at last I emerged, I was an overweight shell filled with nothing but anxiety. 

Finding My Balance

I needed to find my balance. This wasn’t an existential crisis with which I was dealing. No, this had far more practical implications: I wanted to ride a bicycle. My brother Pete had a two-wheeler and after watching him and scores of other kids of all ages ride up and down the road on which we lived, I wanted to do it, too. But how?

You see, I was born with the equilibrium of a frat boy after an all-night keg party. I possess the balance of a two-legged bar stool. I trip over things, those things most often being my own feet. I fell down two steps last year because I was admiring one of my cats and ended up having not one, but two foot surgeries. A neurologist once made me walk heel to toe in his office and after about three steps of trying and failing, he actually said, “Let’s just hope you never get pulled over for drunk driving because you would fail stone-sold sober.” Gee, thanks, doc. I didn’t know any of this at the time I wanted to learn to ride a bike, I just knew that I had tried to ride one and couldn’t do it. But then something truly life changing, at least for an eight-year-old, happened: my brother offered to teach me.

Pete is nine and a half years older than I am; therefore, we did not have much in common. He was off doing teenage things while all I could do was stare longingly at a bike I couldn’t ride. His friends were always extremely kind to me, though, so much so that to this day I can remember their names and faces. But I was always the tagalong little sister, the team mascot, if you will. And while the mascot is fun to have around during the pre-game festivities, when it’s time to hit the court the mascot is relegated to the sidelines. So while Pete was hanging out with his teenage friends, I was alone either in the woods behind our house or in my room, writing. It was okay, though. From a young age I always relished solitude. But here my brother was now, willing to give up his time to teach me to ride a bike.

So it began. First, we needed a venue. Since our house was on a hill, our driveway was too steep for lessons. The two homes across the street, however, shared an extra wide driveway perfect for our lessons to commence. Day after day my tall, thin, teenage brother held the back of his bike while I pedaled. Whenever he felt I was somewhat in balance, he would let go. I would promptly wobble and begin to fall. His hands quickly reached out to catch me. I don’t remember falling very often; two or three times, maybe, but the desire to get it right and the encouragement of my big brother kept me going. Sometimes we went clockwise around the oval of that driveway, while other days it became a NASCAR track (“Take a left! Take another left!”). All the while I pedaled, Pete held on, let go, then grabbed hold of the bike as I began to fall. I’m not sure how long these lessons continued. To me, it seemed like the entire summer, but it may have only been several weeks. But day after day, week after week, the lessons continued. I began to think it was hopeless, but my brother did not give up on me. Then, one day...magic. I was pedaling along, clockwise, when a shift occurred. I was no longer wobbly. I was no longer unsteady. When I rounded the next corner, I noticed that my brother was at the other end of the driveway, smiling from ear to ear, just watching me ride. I was doing it. I was balancing myself and riding a two-wheeler all on my own. My brother never looked so proud of me.    

I found my balance at age eight. Throughout the decades since, I have lost that elusive equilibrium, metaphorically speaking. Examples abound of a life that quite assuredly became unbalanced. I allowed my body to reach 306 pounds. I remained in a job that I hated because I was fearful of the unknown. I developed and continue to struggle with chronic pain. But as I look back on this memory of achieving such perfect balance, a memory I had buried until a silly television commercial brought it back into my consciousness as swiftly as a lightning bolt, I wonder if the memory of that summer and all it meant to me can have a deeper meaning.

The me who played in the woods and wrote alone in my room has always thought that aloneness was my superpower; that I did not require any other humans to achieve anything. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps balance is found by surrounding oneself with the kind of support that can only be found in other people. I have a husband who is everything to me. I do not have many good friends, but those who are truly my friends form a foundation in my life that no earthquake could crack. And I could not have learned to ride a bike without the unconditional love and patience of my big brother. 

Six months ago our father passed away. Because of the difference in our ages and gender, I am certain our experience during this time of overwhelming grief was quite different. Our families and friends were there to comfort us, but we also held each other up. Pete's calmness and medical knowledge provided the reassurance I needed that our dad did not suffer. My writing helped with a eulogy to honor our dad because words come more easily to me. There are many more examples, but they all basically point to the same thing: balance. I guess the best way I can look at it is when the giant cosmic see-saw of life lifts you up and then drags you back down again, sometimes what you really need is your big brother there to hold you steady until you can once again find your balance and ride off on your own. 

Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It

This essay was entered in a contest for inclusion in an anthology of essays entitled "Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It." Out of 2,000 essays, 50 were selected by Elizabeth Gilbert and her publishers. I was not among them. I am a loser and this is my losing essay. Enjoy. 

Once I noticed its existence, it became impossible to ignore. Once felt, its presence could not be unfelt any more than I could undo the color of my eyes. I sensed it before I even knew how to write or what writing was. I would take one of my father’s pens and a sheet of construction paper and make long lines of scribbles across the page, emulating what my dad did when he made out estimates for his carpentry business. Although I couldn’t yet write words, there was something about putting pen to paper that felt natural to me, like I was born to do it. It was the spark of something I could not yet define. I didn’t have access to the kindling necessary to create fire at that point, but the spark for writing was there.

When I finally learned to write and had mastered the fundamentals of spelling and grammar, there was no stopping me. In elementary school, I folded paper up into little books and filled them with simple stories that made sense only to me (and perhaps my imaginary friend). In middle school there were more involved stories that used slightly bigger words. By high school, though, I had discovered a love of writing poetry, and the combination of unrequited crushes mixed with my fledgling poetic spirit resulted in notebooks filled with terribly sad, desperately bad, mournful love poetry.

Then high school wound down and with it, the biggest decision of one’s teenage life: where will I attend college and what will I major in? The obvious choice for a wannabe writer? Journalism. I was accepted at a small liberal arts college with an excellent journalism program where I was certain I would learn the skills necessary to gather all the kindling I needed to become one giant blazing writer. Unfortunately, I never checked in with my personality when choosing this life trajectory. Considering I possess the assertive qualities of a scratching post, available merely for other beings to rub up against, stretch, and sharpen their claws upon, pursuing people for a story and asking them invasive questions to gather quotes was simply an absurd career choice. After two years and a lot of thought and angst (not to mention driving my friends crazy with my indecision), I changed my major to English. A much more solitary, thoughtful major.

After college, I floundered. Unable to find work that had the slightest thing to do with the written word, but with college loans looming before me, I worked as a diner waitress, a foster care caseworker, a day treatment worker for special needs students, and a child abuse investigator. I did whatever I had to do to pay the rent, the loans, and feed myself while my writing dreams were quietly stomped out.

Eventually I got married, moved to New Jersey, and got a Master’s degree in English with a writing concentration, thinking that maybe this would get me closer to a suitable career path. I applied for dozens of positions and was finally hired by a medical advertising agency, beginning as a proofreader and working my way up to editor. Then, one glorious day, I was promoted to copywriter. I felt as though the universe had unlocked and swung open a giant door, one on which I had been knocking for many years, and I was suddenly on the other side. I was a professional writer, at last having achieved my life’s dream of being paid to put words on a page. What I slowly came to realize, however, was that writing for an ad agency had nothing to do with creative writing. I wrote what the client wanted and rewrote what the client did not approve of. This tends to happen a great deal in advertising, usually around 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon with a deadline of 9 a.m. Monday morning. Which brings me to the other thing about advertising that did not jive with my personality. I don’t do stress well, and 99.9% of advertising was working under intense pressure. I crumble under pressure. I seemed to crumble every day on that job; a stale, broken cookie sitting in a swivel chair producing nothing onto her blank page but tears. After several years of dreading getting up in the morning because I was completely miserable at that job, I finally left, creatively used up and stale.  

I tried teaching English to freshmen and junior girls in a private Catholic high school. I loved that job but, again, my personality failed me. I neglected to realize that along with discussing poetry and writing and The Great Gatsby, I had to discipline unruly teenagers. Again, I of the scratching-post personality could not handle this aspect of the job. I was let go after one year. Apparently even teaching writing wasn’t going to work out for me.    

It was hopeless. Finding a career path in which I could write was obviously not what the universe had planned for my life. I decided to return to working with special needs students. I got my teaching certification and made a vow to devote school breaks and summers to writing. I wrote poetry that was fair and stories that were poor. I just didn’t feel any of it. I wanted to write, yes, but there was no passion left for it. My creative spark had disappeared down a black hole and even the desire to get excited about writing something I could take pride in had apparently gone with it. I needed something to ignite the fire.

Then I read Eat Pray Love and something happened. My stomach growled for pizza and gelato and my heart yearned to know God, of course, but beyond that I heard in Elizabeth Gilbert’s words a truth that so resonated within me that something clicked. I read a story that wasn’t fiction or poetry but Liz’s own journey told in her own unique voice. When the realization hit me, it hit hard. I have a story! My soul shouted. And I have a voice! My personality answered back. And there it was. I would write my journey in my own quirky way.

I began digging. I pulled away layers of doubt in an excruciating excavation process. I loosened up insecurity until it gave, yanked away low self-esteem, used a crowbar to remove my fear of failure. I dug and dug, layer after layer, until once again there it was. That tiny spark I had so tirelessly began covering years ago. It was still there.  

I reread Eat Pray Love. I bought the audiobook to play in my car. I can do this, I thought. I began writing my story as the spark came to life once more, then began to burn. With every stroke of my pen I felt the fire grow more intense. I took several memoir writing workshops. These provided piles of kindling that I desperately needed. I spent long hours writing, rewriting, and proofreading what I’d written. The fire grew brighter and hotter as the pages spilled out. Then I took a big step forward. I submitted an essay about my father to the website that relates to the type of dementia he has. My finger hovered over the send button knowing, with absolute certainty, that I would receive nothing in return for this submission but rejection. Instead, my essay was published on the association’s website. I would never have had the courage to put my work out into the world if I had not begun the process of excavation and rediscovered my passion for writing after reading Eat Pray Love. Not a chance.

My story, a memoir through my journey with a significant weight loss followed by chronic pain, is in terrific shape now. Will it be a bestseller? Probably not. But ultimately that is not important. What matters is that I rekindled my love for writing in a way that finally worked for me and that I put fear aside in order to write my story, as well as the other stories that seem to have been waiting patiently to pour out of me for so many years. Now they have their chance.   

Eat Pray Love didn’t make me leave home to pursue travel to distant countries or radically alter my life. While Elizabeth Gilbert’s search for pleasure, devotion, and balance led her around the world, Eat Pray Love made me travel to a land of creativity buried deep within me that had long since been abandoned. Then it provided the match that my creative fire needed to begin burning. I sit now before a blazing inferno of creativity.

           

I warm my hands gently over the fire, turn back to my notebook and once again put pen to paper. My journey continues.