A Love Letter to Grandfathers

"I never met my grandfather
I wish I had
Sometimes I think he is watching me."

My son wrote that poem at age 6. His teacher, a veteran instructor who was never one to gush, had tears in her eyes when she handed it to me. He was writing about my father that day, but it could have been about his other grandfather too.

I understood the sentiment. The poem was an emblem of one of the bonds my husband, son and I share. We never met our grandfathers. They all had passed on when we were born.

In fact, my husband touched me more than I could express when we heard some people giving lofty speeches about the historic figures in the past they would like to sit down with given the opportunity. Lincoln, Jefferson, Lee and Grant, Freud, philosophers and poets.

My husband said he wouldn't have to think about that question. He would ask for a few minutes with one grandfather. He wouldn't be picky, someone else could choose which one.

So with Father's Day advertisements plastered all over the airwaves and elsewhere, we feel blessed to have known our fathers, certainly. And our mothers are powering along in the 90s category.

But we also think about those grandfathers we didn't get to know, wonder about the exact shade of the blue in their eyes, who had the curly hair I was born with, and a laugh that takes hold of the body unexpected, shaking us to the core, like mine does and my son's. What were their voices like? Did one of my husband's grandfathers have that deep voice? Did my son's grandfather have the off-the-wall sense of humor I've never found in anyone but my husband?

And the truth is, when you complain about the old geezers and maybe neglect them a little, we envy you. We are the ones who laugh at their corny old jokes in the grocery store lines and don't mind when they take too long to conduct their transactions.

If you feel they are too much, maybe, if you have something else you would rather do on this Father's Day, then send them to us. We'll be waiting, with a nice cake, a glass of cheer, open hearts, and all the time in the world, to just listen.

A Moveable Tea

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past." Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby

If you see me carrying my "moveable tea," be aware I'm not alone. You probably won't see them, but I will be accompanied by two ghostly figures from my past, a genteel couple from the Deep South -- Ellis and Vannie.

They are the embodiment of the fact that even our smallest actions are informed by the past.

I was reminded of this the other night when I brought tea to a parent meeting. The mother of my son's friend said she was impressed, that I had thought of every little detail related to serving tea, hot and cold. And she was right.

I brewed organic darjeeling tea leaves with spring water and placed it in carafes, rinsed out with hot water, to seal in the heat. Even though I like my tea plain (why gild the lily?) I sliced lemon, poured milk into a small container, fine sugar into another. I resisted the urge to make sugar syrup, I would save this particular piece de resistance for another time. Spoons.

But the iced tea I made with tea bags, Lipton, it just tastes better cold. Spring water, again, heated slowly in the sun in a glass jar for a smooth taste. Ice. Tongs. Glass ice bucket. All carefully placed in appropriate insulated bags for the trip. That night I did not include finger sandwiches, tea bread and sweets because that wasn't my assignment. But all go into the "moveable tea" when appropriate.

"You really know how to do this," said the mother.

Yes, I do.

Years ago, when I arrived in Washington, D.C. from Alabama, I was quite unexpectedly bereft. I had spent years plotting my escape to the bright lights, big city. And I'd gotten my wish. But I missed my childhood friends -- especially the best and most honest person I know, J., who I had known since we were 5. Who happily played loving Mary to my feisty Laura (Little House on the Prairie) for untold hours out by the woods that cradled both our homes.

And why had I moved so far from my college familiar K., who could turn a dry cleaners trip into a high adventure. Why did I think I could leave behind our rowdy mountain compound horseback rides, followed by the rejuvenating communion of a silent row on the pond. The precious company of my little sister and her husband, who I had known since he was a bashful little boy. So many things I had casually tossed aside.

And then I found Ellis and Vannie. Or they found me.

Straight out of a storybook, this warm, beautiful couple from Montgomery, AL, famous for their southern hospitality, lived near me in a big beautiful corner rowhouse on Capitol Hill. Their yard burst with flowers and greenery tended by Ellis, a political operative who became a successful self-taught artist in his later years. They entertained regularly. Everyone was invited. They especially loved other southerners.

They told stories about their rich past. They had a clothing shop in Montgomery where Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald came everyday while recovering from a nervous breakdown in her hometown. Each day, she came in and bought just one snow-white linen handkerchief. Nothing more. Vannie would get a rare sad look on her face, "You know, Scott just ruined that girl."

And Hank Williams. Ellis had known the country music legend as a poor boy, shining shoes for pennies on the street. Then as a famous singer, he had to come into Ellis' shop one day and cut off his spendy wife's accounts. Embarrassed, he paid off what she owed and then said, "We're not married anymore. That's it."

I had no idea how many things I would learn from this couple. I'm still learning from them. Ellis was a chameleon. He had several careers due to a voracious appetite for life. He was quiet because he loved to listen to others talk. But he had a wonderful quality that I couldn't define until Vannie took me aside one day and explained it, laughing as always, her long straight blonde hair swinging around her shoulders.

"Ellis has a twinkle, you know," she said in her inimitable deep, slow drawl. A twinkle is a look in a person's eye that signals a playful personality, someone who is so curious about life and people that he or she finds it impossible to judge annoying personality quirks that can be so off-putting for many. You can see it right away. The physical aspect is a sparkle, a little glow, a glimmer, if you will.

Under their tutelage, I learned to look for and find the twinkle, which comes in people of all sizes, shapes, ages and colors. I never know when one will appear. When it does, it makes my day.

Over the years, Ellis and Vannie got old. The entertaining stopped. They couldn't go out. So I came up with the idea of the moveable tea. Via trial and error, I baked this and that and stored things and carried them over and kept at it until I managed to make it work.

They were honored. They were tired and sick. But for the short time that they were able to attend the moveable tea invented in their honor, the twinkle was back. And it extended to everyone in the room. This happened several times before before they passed away, a mere weeks apart.

So when the calls go out for volunteers to do this and that, I raise my hand and suggest various versions of the moveable tea. With practiced hands, I pull it together, wheel it in and start setting up.

And as that happens, a grand, beautiful blonde is holding up a long elegant hand with an emerald ring on one finger, the one reflecting the color of her eyes. She is laughing and pointing out the young woman who looks just like Zelda, before Scott "ruined" her. And Ellis is staring at a vase of flowers tumbling from a vase, possibly to paint later. And I see the vase is beside a quiet man surveying the room, eyes catching the light with a certain familiar sparkle.

And for no reason that anyone present can see, I am laughing too, with my old friends in a great room filled to the brim with paintings, flowers and old school southern charm. They are gone, that grand couple, but I carry them with me still.

An Exotic Trip

One day, the older brother I worshipped suggested I go outside and dig a hole to China. So I gave it my best shot.

I believed him. I always believed him. So I got a shovel, dragged it to the lower lot next to our house and started to dig. I wanted it to be true. To go somewhere, especially an exotic place, one with cute outfits if my paperdolls from around the world were accurate representations. To be anywhere but that farming village in the deep South where I grew up.

My brother came out of the house, which had only recently stood in the middle of cotton fields. He watched me dig. He was straight-faced, confirming again that yes, I could dig my way to China if I continued to spade shovels of dirt long enough. It kept me out of his hair, gave him a reprieve from my incessant tattling, which I had started in retaliation because he had ditched me for friends of his own age and gender.

I remember being thrilled, working feverishly, yelling to anyone who happened by on the dirt and gravel road out front, "Hey, I'm digging my way to China! My brother told me all about it!"

Some of his friends eventually rolled up on bicycles, languidly twirling long green stems of grass from their teeth and lips, practicing for the cigarettes they would soon be trying out if not already. They smirked while giving me tips, then chipped in with digging help.

Eventually, my father came out, drawn by the growing commotion on his land. I remember informing him of my mission, that M. had divulged the secret to me. The hole was fairly deep at that point, only my shoulders and head were above ground. I can see him starting to laugh, his hands resting on his squared hips, legs wide, the confident stance of a man who had been an athlete and a soldier.

But he didn't dash the dream, squelch the effort, the fire in my eyes, arms and belly.

Instead, he enjoyed himself. He stood and chatted as the audience slowly grew for this peculiar mission -- a little girl of no more than nine, propelled by an older brother's mischief.

He supervised the site for safety, guarding against impromptu cave-ins and my younger sister's attempts to charge the hole. As the soft night stole over us, fireflies glowed against the ever darkening woods nearby. And still I kept on with my trance-like digging. My father's deep voice boomed, giving meandering lectures on the history of China and its leaders, communism, his dislike of all Chinese food (not that he'd ever tasted any).

Eventually, I gave up for the night, exhausted, covered head to toe in north Alabama's tenacious red clay, adding to my impossible laundry load carried by my mother, who understood my impulses. After all, she was still a tomboy too. And I went back to the hole the next day.

I don't remember how long I kept it up. But the digging went on for some time, definitely over a week. And then the rain started. It rained, poured, storms pounded the earth. I remember standing at the kitchen window, in despair, watching my China route fill with water. I couldn't see, but I knew. With that kind of biblical deluge, everything was filling up.

My brother, the heartless one who had started it all, joked that I would need to save my allowance for a submarine to make it to China.

The rain finally ended. I trudged through the mud to the hole. My father had built a wooden cover for it by then, to save animals and small children from falling in.

I pulled off the hatch. The hole was filled with muddy brown water. Literally full.

I was distraught.

The next thing I knew, a fake Indian war cry tore through the air, along with the metallic shriek of bicycle brakes. Jackie Ray! The neighborhood hoodlum boy, a bit younger than me, but a hurricane force of a boy. He had been desperate to get involved with the dig and I had absolutely refused. The dig was far too serious for the likes of Jackie Ray. He would have ruined the whole thing.

As I stood, frozen, Jackie Ray threw down his bike, tore off his shirt and jumped feet first with a huge splash and another war whoop into the hole to China. Which at that point was a big mud hole. Full of muddy brown water.

Filled with righteous fury, I yelled, demanded, "YOU GET YOURSELF OUT OF THAT HOLE RIGHT NOW JACKIE RAY!" He was completely oblivious. Jackie Ray, who was pretty much an abandoned little boy living with reluctant elderly relatives down in the woods, was having the time of his life. I stormed off. And met my father coming toward the hole to China. With a camera.

He was laughing so hard he could barely take the picture. But he managed. And that is what remains today of the hole to China, decades later. A faded photograph of a beaming stocky boy with a crewcut, in a mudhole. Smiling ear to ear. Laughing, full of joy.

As was the man behind the camera taking the picture.

Soon, I forgot about the whole thing. Eventually my father pushed the pile of dirt back in and we used it for a while as a barbecue pitt. But we abandoned that too. The China staging ground was later taken over by my father's excellent strawberry patch.

In time, I grew up, left home and traveled plenty. But my lifelong secret is this: I'm not sure, frankly, that my touring excitement ever quite matched the night I set out on my China dig.

All that's left of my great adventure is the picture of Jackie Ray swimming around in the hole. My mother won't let me have it, the photograph is too precious to her, to me, to all of us.

It was a silly thing, of course. But we were all there that night, fully present, vibrantly alive, engaged and happy. For a short time, we had the best of all worlds -- swept up in a child's excitement about traveling to an unknown, exotic land, while safely, thrillingly nestled in the unmatched glory of a southern summer night.

The Gift

When it was all over, this blast from the past, K. was put out. She wanted a do-over, or an un-do-over in this particular circumstance. It would have been better if he had never come back into her life, ruffled her feathers, caused a stir.

The trigger in this case was a movie, "Lord of the Rings." He said he was watching the movie with his girlfriend and thought of K. and her clique, a bunch of hobbit crazy 18-year-olds. But it was K. he couldn't stop thinking about. So he called her parents' number. And as fate would have it, 30 years later, she was there that day, helping her elderly parents.

He never expected to actually talk to her. He just called to see whether someone answered. To ask how she was, to see whether she was still married, truth be told.

This call set off a series of e-mails, phone calls, small gifts of books and music CD's. He admitted he had never gotten over K. She was reluctant. She was long married, with children. He was a parent too, but long separated. Their parting had not been a happy one.

Their courtship way back then was brief, but intense. He was a dashing senior, about to graduate. She was a freshman. Flighty, beautiful, pursued by many. They were together as much as possible, and talked on the phone when they weren't. But he omitted one pertinent fact. He was engaged to be married to his hometown girl.

She found out one weekend when a friend still in high school called. The engagement had been announced in the newspaper.

K. was devastated. In the way of an 18-year-old girl who thinks she's in love for the first time.

She saw him one more time. He showed up outside her house that summer, late at night. He begged her to tell him not to marry. She refused. She wanted him to make that decision on his own. Pride. She wondered about that refusal for many years.

Until that day at her parents' house, when he called. Out of the blue. Warning sign. Not particularly contrite, even then. Ready to pick up and be friends. All those years later.

After some hesitation, K. got back on the roller coaster. Emotionally speaking. They did not see each other except for a very brief visit, once. Their affair was not physical. But it turned her life upset down.

He followed the same pattern he had as a younger man. He reeled her in with intense professions of feeling. Flooded her e-mail and voicemails with conversations and flattery. Proof, he said, of how much alike they were, of their suitability. He intimated they were fated for each other. He stopped seeing the girlfriend.

Heady stuff for a long settled middle-age woman with children who were grown and gone or just on the verge.

And then, when he had his quarry right where he had hoped, he bolted. Back to his solitude. She was hurt. Then finally relieved, set it aside. After a long silence, he surfaced but she ignored tentative attempts to communicate.

She knows now he is a hermit, really. It's not even his fault, I reminded her. A tiger doesn't change his stripes, even when he wants to. It is what it is.

I don't think K. would have actually left her life, when it got down to it. Her husband is distracted and not particularly attentive too often. But he's her family now. I think this interloper was a lesson, a last gasp, emotional fling that came along to teach her that. And for another reason she doesn't even understand. Yet.

This blast from the past wasn't really a waste of K.'s emotional capital. Because that former dashing romantic gave her a gift. He brought back a part of her that she left behind on the campus quad, that big beautiful expanse of green that went on and on, the one we thought we would walk across forever and ever.

Most of us lost a lot of ourselves from those days, during the long, hard trudges through work, parenthood, illness and losing people we loved. Through the ravages of time. K. was one of those people. Tired, going through the motions. But she's not now. Old Mr. romance is gone, he absconded again, but he left K. a present.

Her sparkle is back. Always beautiful, her blue eyes are not the only things about her that are alive with light. Yes, she is burnished by time and experience. Now she looks like she has a secret and she does. She knows from B.S. now. And she's turning heads again. It is a joy to be with her. Because she is absolutely aglow.

A Boy's Long Strange Path Here

Motherhood never seemed real to me, a "maybe, someday" thing. A doctor said it wouldn't be a good idea, given my history. My first husband and I were married to our work anyway. The separations started early. But we couldn't manage the gumption to end it. Until finally we did.

Even during those bad years, D. was knocking on the door. Brushing against glass with bird's wings.

Once, I was in Georgetown with a gaggle of girlfriends having lunch. Wine flowed. We walked by a sign -- "Palms Read." Let's go in, I said. My friends pushed me into the closet-sized room first. I sat in front of a flimsy curtain while the woman of mystery read my palm. My friends peeked through the gaudy cloth and giggled.

The reader squinted at my palm, frowned, stared me squarely in the eye. I squirmed. What had one of my body parts done NOW? She stated that I was married to the wrong man. She asked whether I had children. Well, no. Obviously a mistake, she said. I would be a mother once I got rid of the wrong husband and married the right one. It was all right there in my palm. Mr. Right was already in my life, I knew him. No, no name available. But, said the mystery one, she could see a very vivid shade of blue all over my psychic profile. This blue was very important. Look for the blue. With that the reading was over, $25 please, and she went back to looking bored.

I was annoyed. What kind of fortune was that?

The session had been a lark. But still, it bothered me. I began staring too long at blue-eyed men of my acquaintance. Especially one co-worker, a man I liked, yet butted heads with fairly often. He reminded me of my father, the dark hair and blue eyes of black Irish ancestors. They shared the bull-headed disposition, but this man lacking the ameliorating southern charm.

But I kept thinking about the circumstances that led me to this workplace. Something had drawn me there.

I had applied several times. It wasn't a good fit, but the place had turned into a pest. I was called in for an interview when a new sheriff came to town because my name kept coming up over there. I felt I should give it a serious look. I interviewed once, then was called back for a second.

The session wasn't going well. Then the strangest thing happened. This boss man was winding up the chat, dismissing me, saying he was interviewing other candidates blah blah blah. I was already rising from my chair to make my escape. Relieved. Then I saw his face register alarm as he looked toward the huge glass window that made up one long magnificent wall of his office.

At the window was a very large dark bird, scraping and scrabbling against the glass as though trying to fly through it. Frantic, flapping, moving away only to crash back into the glass. We froze, the boss and I, unable to move. I caught my breath. The boss appeared to be in genuine pain about this bird's plight.

Suddenly, the creature got its bearings and flew away in a burst. We exhaled, the breaths audible in the still room. Then, the boss blurted a job offer, at a salary I could not refuse. He told me to go home and "prayfully consider" the request, terms I was not used to from crusty news bureau bosses. And to call him after the weekend. I thanked him and walked, stunned and shaky, down the long hall, out of the office and finally the building. I stared into the sky, thinking "WHAT WAS THAT????!!!!"

I took the job. Something unfathomable was at work. And I could not resist its pull.

Then came the first Gulf War. As Iraqi tanks stole into Kuwait under the cover of darkness, my first marriage imploded, this time for good. Sitting in the marriage counselor's office, after two years of circuitous talk that no longer covered up our relationship's torturous death, I said I just could not do it anymore. He stood, picked up his briefcase and walked out. Eleven years of marriage, 14 years together. Homes bought and sold, journalism careers pursued together, moves. An entire life rose from the therapist's chair and walked out the door.

The next weeks were a haze. Drums sounded around the clock from anti-war protestors sitting vigil outside the White House near my office. I moved into an apartment across from the soaring Washington Cathedral. Because my life was not gothic enough, a bat slipped into my nearly empty apartment and hid out during the daytime, coming out at night to flap about and terrorize me. Finally the elderly resident manager found it for me, threw it out the window, flapping back home toward the cathedral.

But none of this was nearly as strange as what I found out a year or so after the death of that marriage. During a long talk with another man, J., who worked in my office, I was surprised to find that his engagement had ended on the day of the Iraqi tanks, the same afternoon, in fact, that my marriage fractured a final time.

J. and I had not been friendly enough at that time to know that about each other. It had only come out during the intimacy of dating, which began six months after my marriage ended.

This sweet man from Iowa, the youngest of five, who I had thought of as a little brother because I was so comfortable with him. Who made me laugh. Who still makes me laugh the loudest and the longest, all the time, especially when he doesn't try.

There was a vivid clue but I didn't see for a long time.

After I accepted the new job, the boss asked me to come over during my lunch hour for a banquet with some newsmaker or another. I was still working out my notice at the old place. I said okay. I walked over and got into the elevator of the building where the odd bird had been flapping its wings against the glass just days before.

The elevator doors opened. And there he was, J., standing there as though he had been waiting for me. I didn't know him from Adam. But he stood there tall, friendly, welcoming and, well, cute. He started talking. It made no real sense but I understood him perfectly. Something about having washed his hands but the towel dispenser was empty. He was funny and warm and I relaxed immediately. I felt like I had known him forever.

J. welcomed me to my new workplace. He's so nice, I thought. And I couldn't help noticing his eyes. Like a certain mystery woman clad in veils behind a curtain predicted, the man I married a few years later and improbably had a son with was standing there staring at me with eyes a wonderful, vivid, shining shade of blue.

It just took a while for it all to fall into place. And even longer for me to see. A bird desperately hurling itself against the glass of a workplace where I didn't even want to be but felt helpless to resist. War and bats and sad endings, culminating in the beautiful, vibrantly healthy, yelling boy who was so easily born without incident and took away the breaths of every single person in the hospital delivery room.

But I was the most amazed of all, a 40-year-old first-time mother who wasn't even supposed to give birth. I held him, staring, and could not stop saying, "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it."

The baby was so strong, he nearly hurled himself off the warming tray, alarming the veteran delivery nurse. "They're not supposed to be able to do that," she said, white-faced. I understand that now, nearly 16 years later. This boy had to wait a while to arrive, for an unlikely mother to open the door. By the time that happened, he was already an old soul. He had been on one very long, strange path.

The Fox Hunt

I shadowed my father on a few hunting and fishing trips as a kid. He also let me tag along "to the store" -- an excuse to loaf with his buddies, sprawled on benches around a wood-burning stove, sneaking smokes, talking about nothing.

But my begging never penetrated the iron wall of his resistance when it came to fox hunting. No. Never, not even one time. These forays, with his older brother and men they had known for most of their lives, are still burnished with mystery and ritual, decades later.

This was not riding to hounds, with horses and tea tables laid out under a stand of trees. The hunts led by my uncle were far more primitive. Still, rules governed them. And first and foremost, this was a masculine enterprise.

On hunt day, the hounds knew. I imagine they woke up, lofted those fabled noses into the sunlight and smelled what awaited them -- a long sweet chase through the unparalleled beauty of a middle Tennessee night.

Uncle H., a tough old bird forced to leave school and take over a man's roles at the age of 8 when his father died suddenly, trained his dogs with a firm yet loving hand. Once, a lunatic neighbor shot sweet Lucy for running across his property. It hurt her so severely she had to be put down. It nearly killed my uncle.

For these men, the hunt was all about the hounds. We drove up from Alabama, so the dogs heard our car coming first. My father descended the long familiar dirt and gravel road on my uncle's farm, following the smooth limestone-bed creek running parallel to the pasture. Hearing the car, the dogs yipped and howled first in warning, then in greeting after recognizing us from a distance.

I always made a beeline for the barns, which were filled with hay bails and many cats. From my perch in the top, I watched men converge as the afternoon light began dissolving into the treetops past the white farmhouse, making its way to the river and beyond. Men in overalls or jeans and hunting jackets climbed from cars and battered trucks. Some shouldered rifles and shotguns, others clutched flashlights and lanterns.

Every single time, I would ask my father to bring me the fox tail from the hunt. I had visions of fashioning a hat with a fox tail for myself. Or a stole. I'm not really sure. My father would say yes, of course. I made him promise. I badgered, confirmed it with Uncle H.

But at a certain point, they were beyond listening to my prattle. The men were animated, the dogs pacing, pulling, straining on leashes -- anxious to run.

Finally, a sharp whistle cracked through the murmurs and the roar of the barking. The men took off, barely able to hold the leashes of frantic, pulling dogs desperate to be on the run. The men and dogs swelled in the yard, around the smokehouse, spooking work mules and horses behind the house. A swarm now, they flowed finally through the gates of the south pasture along the creek, the one with the sweet cold water waiting to be cupped into dried gourd dippers hanging from nails on the well house. And then, with twilight settling into the hills, they were gone.

I tried to wait up, fighting sleep. I asked again why only men and boys could go. "Some of those men talk rough," my aunt would say, a quaint notion now. So I strained to hear the dogs in the distance. And I could, once they picked up the scent of a fox running a circuit in the night, looking for food.

That sound was a high-pitched howling that the men called fox-hound music. I knew the men were gathered around a fire, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, talking, listening with a faraway look in their eyes. Their minds were on the competition taking place at a distance. The dark, barbed wire fences, steep hills and gullies made following the hunt treacherous. But following wasn't the point. The point was the chase. The men were discerning the sounds from the dogs. They translated for each other, especially for the younger men and boys in their gathering.

They knew which dog was closing in on a fox. They knew who was bringing up the rear, or had lost interest. They knew how close the dogs were, whether the fox was outrunning or outsmarting the dogs. They could tell by the way the dogs "cried" that they had lost the scent. They talked about how much faster Lucy was this year, say, but that Sam was gaining on her. That the younger dogs would need seasoning. That maybe this was old Jack's last hunt.

They could tell by the music they were hearing -- the dog's singing voices. The howls, cries, barks, how long and how high the pitch. These things wove the tale in the mind's eye, painting a canvas of vibrant color and motion to go along with the sound.

They had an idea when the fox ran through a herd of cattle to throw off the trail. Or ran to ground. If the dogs found another fox to chase. And if a fox was cornered or trapped, the men whistled and called the hounds off, fired a gun in the air. These men who could seem so hard, so impervious to death on the farm, wanted the fox to go free. If the fox population had been leaving the farmers' livestock alone, that is. If the wild creature being chased that night was really a fox instead of a coyote that had been killing calves and pets.

There was no need for senseless killing. Or for taking a bloodied fox tail to a little girl who wasn't a hunter or fisher in any form or fashion, whose father amended those trips when she wanted to go, making them into nature strolls, really. Because that girl grieved for days when she found dead minnows in her father's fishing bait pail.

These were men who simply wanted to give free rein to the hounds. Letting them do what they were born to do -- catch the scent of a beautiful, clever, wild creature and track it, sing the fox-hound music. They were men reveling in the freedom and beauty of a deep dark night in the southern wilderness. In the easeful company of other men, they celebrated life. Blessed life.

The Non-Goodbye

--"I can scarcely bid you good bye even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow."
*John Keats


I guess I'm not done. I'm still thinking about my father here.

Some odd things happened right after he died. The death was sudden, an accident, so we were in shock. I kept thinking the emotional blow was behind my strange reaction. Then later, I found out a friend whose parents passed away a year apart following long illnesses experienced similar things. And those deaths had been expected.

So, I wondered, what the heck.

I was with my mother for nearly a week after the accident. The house was chaos for a few days. People stopped by with enough food to feed a battalion. The phone never stopped ringing.

And as I live and breathe, I could hear him, my father. The deep voice that sang bass in the Methodist choir, led countless closing prayers, instructed an adult class in that church for decades. The voice that settled a one-room schoolhouse of overgrown farm boys who accepted his authority only after wrestling matches at recess (my father always won).

His voice was strong, his laugh infectious. And I could hear both ringing bell clear in the hours and days after he died. I was so certain of this that I would charge from the room I was in, searching for him. But he wasn't there. He was never there.

I also could hear his pickup truck pull into the driveway. I would rush to the window and look. But the truck was where it had long sat, ready for the tailgate to be pulled down and his pointers to leap in, eager for a ride deep into the countryside in search of a quarry of quail. It had not moved, no one had touched that truck.

After a couple of days, I thought I was losing my mind. I slept with the lights blazing. I would dose, exhausted, and my eyes would fly open thinking "he's here" -- and of course, he wasn't.

I thought it was because I had not been at the hospital when he died, had not said goodbye. Because my mind was not accepting the truth. Because I had not seen the awful results of that accident. That I was "hearing" him even after the freakish experience of seeing his name on the town's funeral home sign, where the long wake had to be extended because people kept arriving, hour after hour after hour.

Maybe it was because I kept rediscovering him? At that wake, friends poured in, former co-workers, people I had never seen. One neighbor stood alone and very still, with tears in her eyes. She said my father was kind to her family when they moved there. "Everyone else ignored us. He was the only one in the whole town who made us feel welcome here," she said. I had no idea.

We gave him a funeral the next day and had lunch at home with all that food, asking everyone at the service to please join us. Then I drove my mother almost four hours to his Tennessee hometown for yet another funeral and the burial on that blazing hot July day.

My siblings went back to Alabama. But my mother and I spent the night in the house where she was born, a remote place of no streetlights and river rock roads. I saw only pitch black darkness from the window. And the sounds were a profound comfort for me -- a nightlong mercy symphony from fields and woods filled with crickets, katydids and frogs.

Before leaving, my mother, an aunt and I stopped by the cemetery. I placed a dime by the temporary marker, a private hello. That's because my dad would distract me from childhood vaccinations by putting a coin in front of me at the exact moment the nurse pushed a needle into my arm.

I had been a trooper until then, channeling my father's best social self for long hours in public. Helping my mother with decisions I knew my dad would want.

But then my mother, standing dry-eyed by his freshly dug grave, put down a small flower arrangement and said softly, "Well, I brought you home." And she quickly walked away.

My heart cracked open.

I sat in the car and cried in silence for several minutes. We did not speak, the three of us, the new widow, her older sister and I. Then I started the car and drove through silent headstones and tombs, back to my aunt's house and then to Alabama. I continued to hear my father, although his voice was fading with each day.

I stayed in my hometown for two more days. My mother flies into high gear to cope. I need down time. Not sleeping, hours of driving, going on my mother's manic missions. These included returning flimsy pie pans meant to be thrown out, to the surprise of people who brought food in them specifically so we did not have to take them back. I was worn out.

My siblings live in the same town with my mother, so she had company and help. She wasn't bereft. She was energized, hyper, keeping herself busy. We were starting to grate on each other. So I left. At the airport when I got back, J. met me, folded me into his long arms and brought me home. I really slept for the first time in nearly a week.

I talked to my friend L. I told her I thought I was losing my mind, hearing my father and his truck pulling into the driveway. She said she heard similar things after losing both her parents, a year apart.

I was relieved, to say the least.

That's because L. doesn't believe in the woo woo. She is not given to fancy, belief in the supernatural, things not scientifically nailed down and the like. Once, after she had surgery, I drove her home from the hospital, installed her on a couch, and turned on a relaxation tape of flutes and babbling brook, birds singing, etc., thinking she would find it peaceful and, well, healing.

We were quiet for a bit. Then she said:

"C.?"

"Yes?"

"You are SO weird."

But this is what she said about "hearing" our relatives after they had passed away. Or something to this effect: "It was like there was a scrim or a curtain of gauze between this world and the next. And my parents had gone just beyond that curtain. And I felt like I could reach out and almost touch them, but not quite. And that they could touch me if they wanted to. But they didn't. And wouldn't. Because I didn't want them to."

She said the feeling lasted a few weeks. Then one day she realized the curtain was gone and so was the feeling that her parents were just there, behind it. She felt their souls had moved on, to where they were supposed to go. That this process just took a while, longer than we had been taught to believe.

And it was like that for me too. In time, I didn't hear my father.

Except for one last time.

A few months after he died, I had a dream about him.

In the dream, the telephone rang. My father was calling. He was dressed in his blue and white seersucker suit, his summer dress up outfit. In his hand, he held his white hat with the tiny pearl pin in the hatband.

I told him we had been extremely worried, looking for him everywhere. He was laughing, telling me not to fret. He chatted a bit, he was on a trip. Healthy and fine. The charming, gracious father, the one with his best foot forward, bad moods nowhere in evidence.

"I am fine. Everything is good. I am doing very well."

And that was that.

So, I was not with him when he passed away like his other children and my mother, even his friends at the restaurant, the ones he shook hands with on that last day. But during my last visit, we had gone to a movie together, as reader Rebekah said, a sort of special goodbye that he had suggested and completely out of character. Then he seemed to stick around for a while, for me. And he came to tell me goodbye again, in a dream.

But I hate goodbyes. I don't say them.

I will, instead, be leaving a dime in this spot and that when I think about my father. That's my decided response to this whole thing, once and for all. Finally.

The random dimes are me saying, "Well, hey there daddy."

I won't be saying any goodbyes.