Stained-glass sunlight lay like a quilt
across the pews and families. The depictions in the nearest window were of
symbolic items: cup, sword, washbowl. I liked the clean lines of the sword in
glass and leaned to inspect the next pane’s icon. Mom had said the thing was
a farming tool from Biblical times, but it reminded me of the alien weapons I
saw watching Star Trek with Dad. I thought about how heavy it would be
and how you would swing it.
“Sit up,” Mom said, barely above a mumble.
“Pay attention.”
Dad, sitting to her other side, would have
heard. He did not look or frown, but I knew he heard.
The homily went on. My brother and sister
and I went to mass twice during the week as a part of school, and those
homilies were easier to follow. The priest would come down from the podium
and talk like a person, but on Sundays when the adults were there he spoke
longer and wider. The sentences made sense individually, but trying to
connect them made my mind swim. At my right, Parker listened or pretended to
listen. He was good at such things, and whenever we played superheroes, he
was always the hero. My twin sister, Sasha, was on the other side of our
parents, probably fussing with her braids. Kids at school joked that when our
older siblings were home and we all went to the same mass, we took up a whole
pew. It was true.
Kids at school also talked about troubles on
Sunday mornings, not wanting to go to church and wanting to sleep in instead.
I stayed out of these conversations. For the Niemann family, there was no
discussion, debate, or mention of other possibilities. You went to church on
Sunday like you ate meals or went to sleep. There was never any question of
whether one wanted to our not. You did it.
I tried to be attentive and listen again.
The homily was on the presence of God the Father in our lives. Catholic
schooling had imparted a solid base of theology, but the person of God the
Father was a gray area. Jesus was easy. Most of mass and religion class was
about Jesus, his life, his message, his smile and outstretched hole-y hands.
I knew Jesus, and the Holy Spirit was supposed to be mysterious, but Jesus’
Dad was sort of a blank for me. The priest this morning was talking about the
Father’s love and guidance, but the ideas rolled past me. I could visualize
them no more than love from the sky or guidance from the earth under my feet.
Mom slapped my hands without looking. “Don’t
crack your knuckles.” I had been. The habit had been passed on from my
sister Tatjana, who was old enough to go to different a mass.
This time Dad did look and did frown. His
glances carried the weight of whole conversations, encoded like radio
signals. There was no violence in him, but we feared his wrathful countenance
more than any of Mom’s actual punishments. He would say things once and let
the look repeat it later. He would tell us “get your hands out of your
pockets, you look like you just fell off the turnip truck,” and he would say
it again with his set jaw and lowered eyebrow. He was a mysterious presence
to me, rarely at home and never talkative. I had only the vaguest notions
about his job and personal tastes. Occasionally we’d watch TV together:
westerns, science fiction, or, his favorite, war movies. I kept quiet, but he
knew when I didn’t understand things and would try to explain in few words.
“He’s talking about the Civil War.” “They’re already in space.” “That one’s
a spy.”
The priest continued his sermon on the
subtleties of the Father’s grace and love. My back hurt from the wood pew and
my feet ached from the polished shoes that no longer fit. They had been
Parker’s, hand-me-downs like most of my wardrobe, but I was already outgrowing
them. Mom had been on the lookout for shoes during her weekly garage sale
ventures. I knew not to complain about hand-me-downs and garage sale finds.
The rewards of complaining were lectures about counting one’s blessing and all
the hungry and/or naked people in the world. Worse were the shorter lectures
about the costs of sending us to private schools and how our father’s
hard-earned money went there instead of to anything he wanted.
To ease my spine, I sat sideways and
stretched my arm across the back of the pew behind my Mom. On her other side,
Dad was sitting in a similar posture, but with his elbow slung over the back
of the pew. The sermon went on, touching on the power of God the Father,
which I found easier to understand. I’d always thought the story of creation
interesting and digestible. I could create things too, albeit with Legos and
couch cushions, but it was an act I got. That God would wish to take chaos
and make something good made sense, but to care about it afterward didn’t. My
Lego inventions returned to the box by suppertime and the couch cushion forts
had to come down before the Cosby Show.
Mom adjusted her hair. She always wore her
long, dark hair up in a bun. We only saw her hair down when someone was sick
and needed tending in the middle of the night. She would descend to the
children’s rooms in her nightgown to administer the cure for head aches,
fevers, or ear aches: two crushed aspirins in a large spoon with sugar water.
Her hair unbound and clouding her face, she would wait until you drank it
all. You could feel the rough edges of the metal spoon against your teeth and
lips. Awakening the next morning, all better, you would only half-remember
the sweet-bitter of aspirin and the mysterious hair. In daylight, Mom was
sensible and kept her hair out of the way.
The sermon glided on. The homily, I’d
calculated, was the halfway point of a mass. Afterward we would stand briefly
for a creed and the “Lord, here our prayer” part. We’d sit for the collection
and after that came what I called the First Stand. Then we’d kneel while the
priest did his thing with the bread and wine. After that we’d be up, the
Second Stand, for the Our Father and the Sign of Peace. Kneel again. Then
back up for the communion line, technically the Third Stand even if we were
moving. After that the mass would be practically done, with only the final
blessing and sundry songs left. The art of subdividing time had been a major
discovery for me and made any event tolerable. I learned to worry only about
getting through each particular unit of time.
To pass this unit of time, I
had the hand-imal. The hand-imal was an animal of one hand: the middle finger
was its head, thumb and pinkie hind legs, and index and ring finger the fore.
The hand-imal would wander about, sniff things with its fingernail snout and
generally explore its miniature environment. This particular hand-imal was
interested in the cliff that was the back of the pew behind Mom. The sheer
drop would surely kill it (or at least disturb the people in the pew behind
us), so it had to be careful navigating with its awkward gait.
Dad clamped his hand over mine,
trapping it. He was a huge man, tall and wide, and the weight of his hand was
enough to keep mine from moving. Dad’s attention was still on the sermon and
his face was expressionless, like he didn’t know that he had grabbed my hand
at all. Or perhaps his expression was a slowly building one, I thought, an
anger so hefty it took time to unfurl. I waited, but nothing happened. Mom
didn’t seem to notice either.
Then my hand was released. The
hand-imal was free once again. Dad gave me a look, one I hadn’t seen much
before, and a shadow of a grin. I withdrew my hand but his pounced on it
again. He squeezed and released, this time his hand scampered back like a
tarantula spider.
I could feel the grin spreading
on my face and I sent the hand-imal to investigate. The larger creature,
which had seemed just a landscape feature before, sprang into action again,
moving with its own cadence. My Dad’s smile was more than a shadow now and,
POUNCE, his hand had captured mine again.
We had never played many games.
He often insisted on taking Parker and me to racquetball with him (his favored
social sport) and occasionally tried to teach us his more involved board games
(most involving global warfare and long-term strategy). Parker had been
better at both. I was too quickly frustrated and Dad didn’t have the patience
to put up with me. But this was something different; he was engaging in a
game on my terms. He was entering my world instead of permitting me into
his.
The hand animals tussled again
and I chuckled. Then Mom shhhed me and gave me a look of her own that plainly
said “behave.” Dad shifted his posture and moved his hand, and the spell of
the moment was broken. I returned to being a child waiting for the sermon to
be over. I hadn’t been listening to all of it, but I felt like I understood
an important part of what the priest was saying. Somewhere in the expanse of
the church, a baby cried and a parent pacified.
The dappled light from the
windows had moved, changing the colors allocated to each father, mother, and
child. I rarely noticed then, and still rarely notice now, how the light
moves slowly over time. But when you look away for a time and then look back,
you will find that everything is different.
I am sitting down to write this at 10:30 pm—it has been
one hell of a busy day, but a fruitful one, as we just sold our house! Sheer
exhaustion will be my excuse for what will most likely be a tangential
mishmash of tales.
The stories that have been sent out so far have been
simply incredible. I love reading about the qualities and quirks that made
Dad, well, Dad. One thing I did notice is that people seem to remember those
qualities about Dad that are present in themselves. And my short stories no
doubt highlight those characteristics of Dad that I see in myself.
(1) One thing about Dad is that he loved food.
And that was great for us kids, because when we were with him, we got to enjoy
food too. This was never more apparent than when we went on road trips with
Dad and got to eat fast food. Perhaps dialogue can best highlight the
differences between eating at a fast food restaurant with Mom and eating at a
fast food restaurant with Dad:
Scenario 1
Mom: “I’ll have one hamburger, but no
mustard or ketchup if that costs extra.”
McD Worker: “No ma’am, the condiments are
free.”
Mom: “Ok. I’ll also have a small cup of
water with three extra cups- do the extra cups cost anything?”
McD Worker: “No ma’am, no charge for the
extra cups.”
Mom, to us three little kids: “Alright, you
can order now. Keep in mind we have $2.35 to pay for all our meals today.”
Scenario 2
Dad: “I’ll take 3 Double Bacon Cheeseburger
meals, all with large fries and large cokes.”
McD Worker: “Will that be all?”
Dad: “Ahhh, and also 3 ice cream sundaes.”
Tory, whining: “But I don’t want bacon on my
Double Bacon Cheeseburger!”
Dad: “What? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve
ever heard.”
Parker: “Ha! What’s wrong with you?”
Tory: Exasperated look, soon replaced by look
of satisfaction after discovering that he was, indeed, being stupid for not
wanting delicious bacon on his burger.
(2) Another food story. And this story DID
happen, although it was on a roadtrip with Mom, Dad, Tory, Sasha and myself,
so I may be the only one that remembers this.
As with all road trips with
Mom, we tried to save money. So for one of our dinners we stopped at a
Krogers to get lunch meat, cheese and bread to make sandwiches. And for some
reason, Dad decided to get ice cream sandwiches. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP! So
Dad and all the kids got ice cream sandwiches, and there were still more than
half a box left. Of course Mom was furious. I think Dad ate like 4 of these
ice cream sandwiches to save some face, but he still had to throw more than
half away due to one small detail- we didn’t have a FREEZER in the car.
As I reflect on this story, I
think it stayed with me because I could see myself easily doing this.
Shopping at Krogers on a roadtrip, and, what’s this? Ice cream sandwiches?
Why didn’t I think of this before? This is a great idea! Only to have your
dream crushed by a rightly infuriated wife and 80 degree weather.
(3) The last memory has nothing to do with food.
Ok, maybe a little: the experience often occurred at Mr Gatti’s (pizza place)
and other restaurants. It was Dad’s ability to change from a quiet, somewhat
irritable disciplinarian, into a comedian, or maybe heckler is a better term.
I can remember being at Mr Gatti’s, it was crowded, and the big screen TV had
a commercial about Rogaine. And Dad yelled out “Ahh, give a guy a break, that
guy looks great” eliciting chuckles from surrounding tables, and eventually
even from me when I realized he wasn’t actually mad.
Even worse, one time at a Rotary Club luncheon (why did
we have to go to those things anyway? Were we being punished for something?)
the guest speaker was a scientist. He started off by saying “some of
you may know about this project currently underway, the human genome
project?” And dad yells out, very loudly and very sarcastically “Ha! Yeah, I
think we’ve heard of that.” I just sat there looking at my melting ice
tea, still trying to figure what exactly it was that the Rotary club did or
stood for.
Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon for me to
think of these instances shortly after yelling something out in a group of
people in an effort to be funny.
