Tidings from Tim

The thing is, my mother and I had this thing, and my brothers joined in. It was a thing!  And it involved chocolate!

If you wondered what to get our mom for a present, a one-pound box from See’s was always well received.  She preferred the “nuts and chews,” but she wouldn’t turn up her nose at a box of assorted creams, nougats, mousses, truffles or toffees.  A real big deal for her was when one of her more spendy friends would give her a two-pound box.  Heavenly!  Of course, Christmas was especially bountiful, for it did bring her more than the usual satisfactions; but she did not mind if you did not wait for the holidays.  Nope!  You could swing by the See’s outlet in the mall anytime of the year and for any occasion, or no occasion.

Now you may be thinking that Audrey was a chocolate junkie with a bad sugar habit and a soft belly as evidence, but your thinking would be wrong.  She was disciplined.  She was measured.  She was frugal.  She would have three or four bites every two or three days, and she held steady at five-two and 105 pounds. And since she only pecked away at it, there were always a few pieces around; and that is why the pirates  – in the form of three strapping sons, alone or in packs — would invade her apartment, come to visit their mother in search of buried booty.   Audrey did not take this lying down, and that is “thing” of the title.

Hiding chocolate from the jackals!

Her place wasn’t too big, so it didn’t take too long to conduct a search; and eventually we would uncover her treasure.  In retaliation she devised increasingly clever strategies to fool us.  On one occasion when she knew we were coming, she took her chocolate stash down the hall to the apartment of her buddy, Ruthie.  Mom loved pulling one over on us, watching us dig in vain for something that was not there.

Eventually she ratted herself out and admitted to the scam with great delight.  She chuckled right out loud.  She wanted us to know – that she knew – that she fooled us.  Frankly, we thought it was poor sportsmanship.  Chocolate cheating!  Just imagine it.  An eighty-five-year-old lady depriving her offspring of sweet pleasure and jeering them in the process.  What kind of mother does that? 

To this joke upon her sons, there was a filial repercussion.  A few days later, brother Jim arrived with what he described as a peace offering.

“No hard feelings, Mom.”

It was a two-pounder, half nuts and chews, half soft centers!  Audrey was delirious; but her macular degeneration being what it was, she did not notice that the box did not have the normal plastic shrink wrap, nor that it was a little underweight.  She tore into it and discovered that the box had been previously opened by my brother, who had taken a bite out of each-and-every bon-bon in the box.  Every!  Last!  One! 

Mom snorted with disgust over those half-bitten morsels, but it did not stop her from eating them.  You see, Mom may have taken umbrage over chocolate petty theft; but this Depression Era girl with legendary thrift just could not stand any kind of waste.  It took her two or three months, but she finally ate them all.

And she did it without any pilfering from us.  Until she announced that she had finished off that box, there was no searching, nor any discussion of chocolate when we visited, because of the elephant-sized peanut cluster in the room – our brother had behaved in an unseemly manner.

The thing is:  on that occasion we just had to give Audrey the win.    

A Love Letter to Liza

August 2018

On one of our anniversary celebrations I wrote you a love letter, a checklist really, in which I gathered as many things I could think of that I love about you; and the most amazing thing happened.  When I counted them up, there were thirty-nine of them, thirty-nine things I love about you; and coincidentally it was our Thirty-Ninth anniversary.

It pleases me occasionally to re-read some of these love letters to you, chronicling our affections in prose and poetry for over 50 years, since you were living in Paris the year before we married.  They remind me just how great you are, with titles like The Rose, The Swan, The Sapphire, Noble Girl, You’re a Gem, Red Letter Gramma, She’s Such a Girl Scout and My Most Important Girl.  What strikes me is that this list of wonderful gifts, attributes, talents, traits, and those things you do, has grown way beyond thirty-nine.      

Which brings us to a recent visit to the home of our daughter and son-in-law and our ridiculously cute grandsons.  I was listening to your conversation with Clark, as the two of you were parked, facing each other at either end of the sofa.  He announced a crisis!  The television was melting, and he needed help, and you should call the Fire Department. 

He picked up a plastic telephone from a toy set, held it upside his face, and gave to you a telephone receiver that was strangely in the shape of a 16-ounce water bottle; and you held the empty Aquafina upside your own head, spoke to him and asked why the two of you should call the firefighters.

“Because we need some tape, Gramma,” he cried.

It was not clear what kind of tape was required – cellophane, masking, electrical, painter’s blue, duct, clear-packaging or bright yellow caution – or what value some kind of tape would have in stopping the TV from melting.

But no matter, because it also became clear from your continued phone conversation that the fire department was out of tape.  Then I heard the two of you conspire to call the Police Department. 

Why the Police Department?  Why the Fire Department?  Why the tape? 

Why not?  It was a wild and wonderful rabbit trail, a silly adventure that featured the meanderings of the imagination of a three-and-a-half-year-old.

And Liza?  You joined, you signed up, you were all in, you took your own delight in playing the game of make-believe with a little boy who always looks for a friend, and has most assuredly found one.  It was a thing of absolute beauty, Liza; but there was more.

Moments later you were thoroughly engaged with Clark’s little brother, Calvin, talking to him not in baby talk, but ruffling him, nuzzling him, capturing his attention and bringing that smile and the sounds of pure joy to that moment, and to his life.  Oh, how those little boys love you and your upholstery!

Yes, my love, I have long lost count of all the things I love about you, because you keep growing and getting better in so many ways. I am truly grateful that you keep the hits coming.  This newest thing I love about you is one of the best of all time and could only have occurred after all these years of our time together.

You do know what I love about you, right?  Practically everything! But today what I love about you is that you can enthusiastically talk to a water bottle.

Why not?

You do Gramma Magic!

Happy Anniversary.  Love you.  Love, me.

Do you remember when you were in high school and you had to take P.E.?  Do you remember how you hated it?  Among my reasons was an allergy to toe-touches and jumping jacks; I broke out in sore muscles. 

You could only avoid regular P.E. if you played a school sport, and that was not gonna happen, because when we were young and chose up teams, I was always the last kid picked.

 “You take Piatt.”

“No, you take Piatt.”

However, college was a wonderland, a smorgasbord, where the P.E. choices were numerous and varied.  Not only that, they were generous, allowing us to create our own diversions, on or off campus, like ice-skating or golf or hiking Mt. Baldy.  So it was, in the spring of our junior year, four of us got an OK for our own off-campus escape from the books.  We arranged our schedules to avoid any Friday afternoon classes, and by noon we were in the car for the 45-minute drive to our physical education destination, Newport Harbor; and by 1:00 we were aboard the sailing vessel that would be our P.E. classroom for sixteen weeks.    

Three of us knew nothing about sailing; didn’t know a mizzen mast from a kiss-my-grits.  However, Andy was an experienced sailor.  For years he had “crewed” on the very boat we would sail, which was owned by a friend of his dad, and which he could borrow.

Think about that! 

Would you let your friend’s son borrow your Bentley?  And would you allow him to drive it around every week, and especially if you knew that your friend’s kid was planning to “cruise” PCH with three of his college buddies?

The reason for the Bentley comparison is this:  this boat was no Hillman Husky.  When we three rookies took our first look at this masterpiece, we were awestruck, nothing like we could have imagined.  She was forty-six feet in length, way bigger than we imagined; and she was very high-end, with polished teak decking and fittings of gleaming brass. 

We stepped aboard to begin our nautical education; and before setting sail on our first three-hour cruise, we spent a long time getting used to the boat and its rigging, which is the configuration of her masts and sails.  We learned about sheets (ropes).  We learned that she was a ketch, a boat with two masts, the main mast which rises a bit forward of amidships, and a mizzen mast, smaller and farther aft (in the back).  Each mast has a boom (horizontal beam) that anchors the bottom edge of the sail, and which swings back and forth to allow for the direction of the wind.

On a ketch, the helm is between the two masts.  The helm is where the pilot (captain, helmsman) stands with his hand on the tiller, steering the boat.  He is also responsible to keep his eyes on the sails and shouts at the crew when it is time to “come about” – to turn the boat to the other side of the wind by swinging the booms to the other side of the boat.  And when that happens, you gotta duck, because the sail swings fast when it catches the wind; and the boom can cool ya.

The boat carries three sails:  the main sail and the mizzen sail — each attached to its own mast — and the jib, also known as a genoa or a spinnaker, which balloons out in front of the main mast. We had a crash course in boating safety and boating etiquette.  We were awestruck at Andy’s knowledge and experience and his seeming eagerness to make good sailors of us.  Great for us, and great for him too; because he loved to sail, and you cannot take this boat out without a crew.

When we finally got under way, we were in the harbor for ten or fifteen minutes, being propelled at 4 knots (about 5 mph) by a small engine; because you don’t want to raise the sails on a boat of this size in the narrow confines of the bay.  As we passed by the ferryboat that connects the Newport Peninsula to Balboa Island, we gave an “Ahoy” to the captain, and got his name.  When Coach Dan approved our plan, he required of us to get the name of the ferry skipper, and that was how he took roll for our P.E. class; because Coach was a beach bum on the side and knew all the names of the ferryboat crew.    

After passing the Island, we entered the channel which takes us out into open waters.  The channel is about one-half mile long and bordered with two enormous jetties made of huge boulders.  As soon as we escaped civilization and the boulders, the water was choppy, and the wind was up.  We had practiced the raising of the sails by the dock, but out here we showed our inexperience; but with Captain Andy at the helm, shouting instructions, we managed to raise the mainsail and the mizzen sail.  We didn’t raise the spinnaker until later voyages, because that much sail area collecting that much wind requires surer and more experienced hands.

But even our lack of skill could not diminish the thrill of the moment, the WHY of sailing, that exhilarating moment when the boat heaves to one side and is scudding close to the wind, and the wind and the salt are in your face and the sea gives you its best shot and throws its spray over the boat and soaks you to the bone and your fingers get numb from the cold and it hurts to haul the sheets and trim the sails; and it is easy to be thrown off-balance and you have to barf away from the wind and it takes everything you have to keep her on course.  When you are cruising at 11 or 12 knots, and the wind is against you, it feels like you’re going sixty in wet weather in your roadster with the top down and no windshield. 

For all the work and the salt spray and the rope burns, it was like the time you went to the beach as a kid, and when you got home your mother asked about your day.  You told her about the sand in your sandwich, and the sand in your shorts, and about the body surfing that went wrong and smashed you into the sand, and how you got completely sunburned.  Your mom said how sorry she was about your miserable day, and you said, “Oh no, Mom, the beach was great.”

We would experience that bracing assault from the sea week after week, and deeply love it.

Over the course of our semester we learned so much about seamanship and how to manage the boat under full sail and rigged for racing, and the care and feeding of a boat, and about teamwork, and how not to take the ocean for granted, because you can never own the sea.  You can only borrow it for a while.  Our three-hour cruises became four and five and six-hour cruises as we got stronger and the days grew longer.   

One great advantage of a boating P.E. class is that you can have guests.  One Friday, we each invited a girlfriend to come along.  These guests of ours were treated to the whole experience, from boating safety to handling the tiller, from hailing the ferry boat to navigating the channel, to the open sea and the wind; and they especially enjoyed our end-of-the-sailing-day routine.

When the light is fading and you enter the channel from the open ocean, one crewman is at the helm, while everyone else is striking the sails, securing the booms, putting everything in its proper place; and again you are slowly cruising under power.  If you look at a map of Newport Harbor, you notice that the peninsula has a south facing beach, and the channel lies east to west.  Entering the harbor, you are sailing a little north of west into the setting sun, which is significant to these intrepid sailors who follow a beloved custom of many bygone seamen.  It has to do with the location of the sun in relation to the yard arm. 

The yard arm is a seafaring term for a horizontal wooden spar that is attached to the main mast.  The mast and the yard arm look like a cross; and at either end of the yard arm is a stay (heavy cable) which fastens to the boat deck and helps to steady the mast.  It was said of ancient mariners that when the rising sun rose above the yard arm, it was time for the first grog of the day.  For us, the yard arm is there to mark the setting of the sun.  We were waiting for that moment when the sun dipped below the yard arm from the point of view of the helmsman, when it would be our time for grog.

There would still be work to do when we nestled up to the dock — hose the salt off the decks, spread the protective tarps and tie down the boat; but those last few moments on calm water were special.  As we cruised slowly up the channel, we were bedecked in yellow slickers, because at sunset on the water, it can get chilly.  We got the announcement from the helm that the sun had peeked below our yard arm, and we broke out the grog, which for us was a thermos of martinis.  We had tunes; because one of the crew got a great Christmas present, a portable and battery-operated record player, which was hip technology for the time, the time being the spring of 1964.  What better soundtrack to the setting of the sun on the water than “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “Please, Please Me”! 

Four young salts and four fair maidens, laughing about our adventures at sea, passing around the thermos, waving genially at the other boaters in the bay, feeling just as cool as cats, feeling the nip of the evening breeze off the water, feeling the warmth of our bonhomie.   

All things considered, it beat the heck out of jumping jacks, wouldn’t you say?        

She is a former student.  From the time she walked on the high school campus the fall of her freshman year, she was the “go-to-girl,” a leader and tireless worker, including being class president her junior and senior years.   

One day at lunch, the principal and I were on the Quad; and she stopped to chat us up with her usual enthusiasm, cheerfulness and some paperwork requiring our attention or approval. As she sped away, the boss quipped that he could probably retire and let her run the school.  For four years this girl had her hand in – and left her mark on – one prom, homecoming, class dinner, fund-raiser, canned-food drive, winter formal and community service project after another.  She was also a straight-A student.

She was also an unsung hero.  This is a story that demonstrates her skill set, her work ethic, her leadership, her attention to detail, her ability to see the big picture, and especially the “content of her character.” 

In the fall of her senior year one of her classmates fell gravely ill with two pernicious forms of cancer, and by the middle of September he was at UCLA, where they strove to stem the hemorrhaging caused by a lack of platelets, which are the elements that allow your blood to coagulate.  Without them you cannot stop the bleeding.  He needed platelets badly.

A platelet drive is different from a blood drive.  When a bloodmobile shows up on campus, students and staff make appointments for the 20-minute procedure. To donate platelets; you had to drive to UCLA, submit to a screening process, and if approved, undergo a procedure of several hours. 

For our students to donate, they had to get parent permission, and we had to find adult drivers who would fill out the appropriate insurance and hold-harmless paperwork required by the school district.  It was an enormous undertaking.

Enter our former student.  To this day I am stunned that she was able to manage her school work and senior-class-president responsibilities AND find the time to recruit enough students and staff and others – AND find the drivers – to accomplish the collection of enough units of platelets to supply the young man’s almost daily need for transfusions.  She developed an Excel spread sheet to keep track, and two or three times per week she showed up in the Attendance Office with the necessary forms and the list of students who would be absent that day.

There was a great deal of attention in the community and in the media about this young man’s plight, his grittiness, his courage.  There were fund-raisers and contributions to assist the family, and the school received many phone calls from perfect strangers wanting to pitch in for a young man they had never met.  It was a wonderful testament to the goodness and generosity of the village.

Sadly, there was not a happy ending to the young man’s journey, because he passed in January, never having left the hospital.

Yet there was also a touching denouement to this sad story.  Among the phone calls we received was one from the director of the platelet treatment center.  He wanted to know about the young woman whose name kept being mentioned by the donors from our community.  He had never seen anything like the response from our town and school.  Over a four-month period, the young man used 149 units of platelets; the drive produced 151.  As a result, they did something that was theretofore unprecedented.  They waived all the normal transfusion fees, saving the family untold thousands of dollars.   

Later in the spring of her senior year, this seventeen-year-old girl was recognized in a ceremony by the American Cancer Society for her service to her school, the community, and the family of the young man.

When I asked her where she drew the strength to do the work, and especially how she handled the crushing disappointment of her classmate’s passing; she said it was her deep reservoir of faith in Christ, which was also the driving force for her to do the work, and to love her neighbor.      

She and I have graduated from student and advisor to cherished friends.  When she granted me permission to post this story, I was reminded of the passage in Philippians, Chapter 2, regarding humility.  She asked me to say that all the glory belongs to King Jesus, and not to her.                                                                                                   

Marcel Proust was an influential French writer of the early 20th Century, whose most celebrated work is the novel Remembrance of Things Past.  A famous passage in the book is about a man who sits down to enjoy a small pastry called a “petite madeleine,” which he dips into his cup of tea; and the taste of the crumbs and the smell of the tea flood his mind with memories of his grandmother’s kitchen.  This stirring of strong memories by one or more of your senses has become known as a “Proustian Experience.”  My Proustian moment takes place when I encounter the man standing not far from the Target store.

He is often there on the slender median as you drive out of the shopping center, holding a tattered and hand-scribbled cardboard sign which reads ANYTHING HELPS GOD BLESS.  He wears dirty and shabby clothes and scuffed-up shoes.  His hair is unkempt, his face unshaven.  He has about him a most dispirited air.  Homeless.  Pitiful.  Beat down.  Threadbare.  Humiliated, just to be standing there, begging.  Usually I ignore him, hoping with no small amount of shame that the light will stay green until I pass by; but on this day the light changes, and my car is stopped directly opposite him, not four feet away.

In my shirt pocket is a Trader Joe’s gift card; and without too much thought I pull out the card, lower the window and hand it over.  He reaches out and takes it with muttered thanks.  Even though our hands do not touch during this brief encounter, he is close enough, and it is time enough, for me to catch more than his sad appearance.  It is his smell.  I know it well.   

It is the same smell that froze me with fear on that mournful night so many years ago, a recent high school graduate, coming home at dusk from a summer job, saving up for college.  As soon as I opened the door, you could hear and smell what was wrong.  My mother was choked with tears, and there was that familiar odor that seemed to hang in the house whenever my dad fell off the wagon. 

It had been almost two and one-half years of sobriety, the longest dry spell ever.  A periodic drunk, he would go on benders two or three times a year. We knew this enemy called alcoholism could rear its ugly head at any time.  We knew it was never really cured.  Yet, after all this time, we had slowly built up unspoken hope.  The smell was devastating.

For about a week I had sensed something, but could not put my finger on it, or did not want to.  In earlier days when the pattern was measured in months instead of years, I had been able to see it coming more easily.  There was a nervousness that was not in my dad’s character usually.  There was the slightly more deliberate speech.  His words were a surgeon’s scalpel, biting, especially towards our mom.  And there was that smell.  His diet obviously changed when he launched on a bender, and this normally fastidious man who always shined his shoes would stop shaving and bathing.

What snares me in this remembrance is not just the sound and the smell; there is also a visual.  Audrey is sitting in the green chair, and on the ottoman in front of her is a Kleenex, the last one.  Between wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, there is not much left of it.  She is carefully spreading it out before her, as if to dry it out.  It is tattered nearly beyond use, and hardly recognizable as a tissue.  It is a ragged and forlorn remnant, full of holes, a sad piece of lace, a metaphor about how fragile our family seemed at that moment.  Oh, how lonely she must have felt, her older sons flown the coop, her youngest son about to bolt, her nest emptying out, and the love of her life passed out on their bedroom floor.   

“Oh, Mom, what are we going to do?”

She took a few moments to answer while her tears dried up a bit and she went to the Kleenex one more time, and then she said this incredible thing.  “I’m going to brush my teeth, Son.  Then I’m going to bed, and so are you.  We both have jobs that we need to get up for tomorrow morning.”   

And so she did.  Brush her teeth, and floss as always, and it took a long time.  She marshalled her anger, her fear, and her crushing disappointment into one focused response, and committed an all-out and violent assault on her teeth and gums; and when she emerged from the bathroom, an incredible transformation had taken place, almost as if this evening of horror had not taken place.

Then she did another incredible thing; she told me an unprintable joke, and with that she gave me a kiss and went off to bed.  Not that it was all that shocking, the joke; Audrey could be earthy.  It was the timing that faked me out.  In a most agonizing moment in our lives, my mom went ribald.  Looking back, however, it was a good move on her part.  She knew we needed something to break the surface tension in the house.  She knew we needed some levity.  She knew we needed some normalcy.  She knew we needed to move on.

Years later my wife and I would binge on “The West Wing,” and there is a recurring line in which President Bartlet, after resolving one major crisis or another, yells out to his secretary, “MRS. LANDINGHAM!  WHAT’S NEXT?” 

That’s what Audrey did — the next thing!  Teeth!  Cheer up the son!  Go to bed!  Go to work! 

She was a tower of strength; and if you asked her, she would always say her strong tower was the Lord.  At the heart of her was a hunger for God.  It was her faith that enabled her time and again to put one foot in front of the other.  She lived this verse: “Blessed are those whose trust is in the Lord; they will not be dismayed by bad tidings.”  In good times and bad she would turn her face to the Lord and ask, “What’s next?”

My mother was ninety-three when she came to live with our family, and for several more years we shared many stories and tears about my dad.  It had been twenty-five years since he died and thirty-five years since that time when he was flat on his face.  Time and forgiveness had changed our hearts.  The tears we shed were no longer bitter.  When I tucked her in bed at night and sang to her, I always made sure she had a full box of Kleenex on the bedside table.                 

A Love Letter to Liza

The late great Roger Miller wrote a song about a guy who shows up late, or forgets the thing, or calls his sweetie at the most inconvenient time; and she stops what she’s doing. 

And if that’s not lovin’ me, then all I’ve got to say is, God didn’t make little green apples

Liza, you are very seldom idle.  When your phone rings, and it’s me, it’s an interruption, right?  Your Bible study?  Your photography or scrapbooking?  Your pursuit of laundry?  But whatever it is, you stop what you are doing and ask, “Is it time for me to curl up in the green chair”?

You know why I am calling, don’t you?  You know that I am working on the daily devotional for the staff; and you know that before I hit “send,” I want to read it to you.  When I call from the principal’s chair, you grab your cup of tea, nestle in, and give me all of your attention.

You know it’s not just the inconvenience that I appreciate.  It’s not just the willing interruption of your day that I have come to take for granted.  It’s not just the time that you give to my private musings, or devotionals, or a letter that needs to be proofed, or the grumblings of a no good very bad day.  Although it’s all of that!

No, what I really appreciate is the seriousness and thoughtfulness with which you put your mind to the times I am seeking prayer, or wisdom, or quite possibly approval.  Sometimes you say, “That needs another sentence right after your introductory paragraph.”  Or, “That story just doesn’t work there.”  And sometimes, “That’s a keeper.”

And if that’s not lovin’ me…   

That green chair has come to mean a lot to me.  It means that you’re the one who presents your body as a living sacrifice.  It means that that you are the one who is there.  It means that you are the one who will tell it straight, speak the truth in love, and bring not just your own version, but your best shot at a Biblical view.  Of course, your editing sometimes requires more editing on my part; because it is a devotional, not a treatise.  It is only your wording that needs the cropping, not your thinking. 

This is our 38th celebration. Thirty-eight years of highlights. Thirty-eight years of the ordinary things that make a life of blessings. When I think of you in the green chair, it reminds me that you are like the girl in the song who stops what she’s doing. It reminds me that you are my closest friend and most confidential advisor. It reminds me of why I love you.

And if that’s not lovin’ me…

Love, Me

Happy Anniversary

August 2006

How long does it take a disgruntled student who is leaving the assistant principal’s office to pull out his cell phone and speed-dial his mother, who forwards the message to the dad, who rings up the assistant superintendent, who kicks it to the director of secondary education, who calls the principal, who summons the afore-mentioned assistant principal into his office? 

o o o o o

The young man stomps into the assistant principal’s office uninvited, slams a weighted brown Alpha Beta bag down on the desk and barks, “That lady in the library says I must pay for my book.” (Only he did not say “lady.”)

Me      “So, what’s the problem”?

Him    “It’s the end of first semester. I went to the library to turn in my government book and check out my econ book for the second semester, and she said I can’t get my new book until I pay for this one.”

Me      “Well, let’s take a look.” 

Opening the bag and peering in, the student’s dilemma — and the librarian’s point — are both immediately apparent; because what used to be a textbook is a total mess, twisted, torn, shredded, nearly unrecognizable.  Do they make a blender for books? 

Me      “Obviously they can’t take it back.  So yes, that is the policy.  You must either return the book in good enough condition for another student, or you must pay for it.”

Him    “It’s not fair.  It’s not my fault.  Why should I have to pay for it?  I need my new book.”

Oh, the whining!

Me      “Yeah, I get that, but if someone borrowed your bike, you would expect it to come back in one piece, right”?

I thought my logic was unassailable; but, more whining!

Me      “So how did this happen”?

What I heard next was the all-time, most lame and pitiful excuse that has worn the patience of teachers from coast to coast for generations.

Him    “My dog ate it.”

Taking another look in the bag, I could believe it; and if true, it was not a Chiweenie or a Peke or a Shih Tzu.  Based on the physical evidence it was the Hound of the Baskervilles.  You could tell that it was one of those dogs who — once he picks up a book – cannot put it down until he is finished.

Me      “So you really don’t think you should have to pay for this book, right”?

Him    “Darn right.” (Only he did not say “darn.”)

Me      “Someone has to pay; so here is a suggestion.  Get your dog to pay for it.  Because until he does, or you do, or your parents do, you are not getting your econ book.”

He grabbed his bag and left the office in a huff, pulling out his cell phone and initiating the phone loop mentioned above.  And in answer to the question above, about how much time it takes?

Not long!

By the time I made a brief pit stop and checked my mailbox and snagged a cup of coffee from the staff lounge, the principal was standing in the hallway, beckoning me with “IN. MY. OFFICE.”   

When I sat down, he growled, “It has been reported to me that you told a student that he must get his dog to buy a book, or he cannot check out anything from the school library.  Tell me you didn’t say that.”

Put like that, it did sound a trifle unprofessional, and a bit snarky.  It conjured up the memory of a popular parlor game called “telephone” where you whisper a message around the table, and by the time it gets back to you, it doesn’t sound quite the same as when it started.

Sitting in the chief’s office, I was thinking that there might be a scalding from on high; but by the time I told him the story of the kid and the bag and the book and the dog and the whining, he was giggling.  Since he had received the call from the district office brass, he said he would make the call to the parent.  Not ten minutes later he was in my office, quoting a familiar refrain, a refrain that I had heard more than once before when I had messed up, and which totally endeared me to this most excellent of bosses: “Once again, Piatt, I have covered your backside.”  (Only he did not say “backside.”)          

I am not a collector. I don’t keep things. Haven’t worn it for a while? Gone! Postcards, ticket stubs and wedding invitations? Stamps, coins and seashells? Pressed flowers, souvenir menus and autographs? No.

And I didn’t hang onto that car.                                        

When I would see that jaunty Plymouth coupe coming down the street, and into our driveway, I would light up, because that meant my grandfather was here. It is impossible for me to separate the memories of my granddad from his ride. He bought the car right off the showroom floor for $900 cash in 1948; and when he stopped driving 16 years later, it had under 100,000 miles, the second set of tires, the original battery, and it ran like new.

It had a pointy-nosed hood, big bug-eye headlights on the rounded front fenders, and a running board.  It came in your basic tan.  It featured a straight-six cast iron block, a three-speed column shift and a push-button starter.  When you opened the huge hump-backed lid in the rear, there was a cavernous trunk, because there was no back seat.  The deep trunk was useful for traveling salesmen and their wares, so the model was called a “business coupe.”  It had just the one bench seat of grey woolen upholstery.  It was built for two, but it was not too crowded for three, if it was my grandfather, my grandmother, and me in the middle.

He only took it out two or three times a week, one of which was Sunday church; and there was a ritual.  He opened the garage, opened the hood, checked the oil, checked the water level in the radiator, unlocked the car door, turned the key, pushed the starter button, and listened for the hum.  Then he went back in the house to put on his tie and coat and gather up my grandmother and me.  I never knew him to drive that car without warming it up for at least ten minutes. 

Into his eighties he was still managing his avocado grove and still driving the car, but we were all worried about his driving.  Wouldn’t you be, if one day he got ON the freeway by driving up the OFFRAMP while you were in the car?  He didn’t say a word or acknowledge in any way that he made a mistake.  He just bumped across the median and continued in the right direction as if that was standard operating procedure.  Cars were dodging, and my heart was in my throat. 

That was near the end of his driving, but not of his own volition.  At the age of eighty-seven, he went to the DMV to renew his license; and they might have renewed it, if he had not fainted dead away while waiting in line.  When the State of California said “No,” it was the end of many things for him.  He couldn’t work his farm anymore, because he couldn’t pick up supplies.  He couldn’t deliver the provender of his hilltop grove and garden to the local orphanage.  And he and my grandmother couldn’t hit the road for their bi-annual road trip to visit kith and kin in Texas.  It was hard on him, the loss of freedom and the loss of the ritual.  In the end he sold me the car for $75.00.

On the day I drove it away, he gave me careful instructions.  Although I had driven the coupe a few times, he wanted to make sure that I was truly familiar with the care and feeding and pampering of his “baby.”  He pointed out the hood latch and demonstrated how to safely raise the hood.  He pulled up the dipstick and we noticed the oil level.  He uncapped the radiator.  “Put the water here; it keeps the engine cool.”

I should have paid more attention.  Not that I needed to be reminded where to put the oil and the water; but I needed to listen more carefully to his words, and especially his heart, about this baby of his.  But I did not.

It didn’t take long for the car not to work right.  I didn’t check the fluids every time, and I didn’t always warm her up for ten minutes.  Not only did I drive every day, I drove at freeway speeds, and my granddad had never pushed it beyond fifty-five.  It was spooky the way that car behaved like “The Wonderful One-Horse Shay,” whose days were numbered.  I sold the car and bought something newer. 

Next time I visited, my granddad asked me about his car.  I could not lie to this kind and loving man who told me about radiator caps and tools and avocados, and who put a Bible in my hand for the first time when I was just a little kid.  He did not register disappointment or deal in anger, because you see, he loved me way more than he loved the car.  But he did dearly love the car.

I have driven some cool cars in my life, including a VW “bug,” a powder-blue ’65 Mustang and a classic Jaguar, with those dual exhausts that create the most amazing rumble and roar when you downshift.  But none of them can match the sentiment of that coupe.  I have threatened for years (if I ever had the money) to track one down and bring it back to life.  But I know that even a totally remodeled and tricked-out 1948 Plymouth “business coupe” would not absolve me from my regret and my cluelessness, and how I hurt him.

Oh, how I wish I had kept that car!

My dad was one of a kind, a character right out of a Damon Runyon story.  He had a great and wry sense of humor, and he was a mesmerizing storyteller.  Ted was also old-school, polite, courtly.  Standing up or tipping his hat whenever a woman entered the room, the ladies found him charming.  As for men, he loved sports and could spin a good yarn, not often profane, but certainly ribald at times.  Although he had no more than an eighth-grade education, he gave nothing away when it came to brain power.  He was a voracious reader and a terrific speller.   

He made us laugh.  He would start a joke, and we three sons would be on the floor long before he reached the punch line. We still reminisce about the weird and goofy things he said. like…

“Come into my office,” which could mean, “I have a funny story,” or it could mean, “We have something to talk about.”      

“I’m gonna set fire to the seat of your pants,” which meant “Fear the paddle.”        

“Try to use your head for something other than a place to hang your hat,” which is self-explanatory.

“Do you know the difference between an elephant and a loaf of bread?  No?  Then I’m not sending YOU to the market.”

“If it takes six yards of cheesecloth to make a cummerbund for an elephant, how long does it take a cross-eyed grasshopper with a wooden leg to kick all the warts off a dill pickle?”  Decades later, my brothers and I are still trying to figure out the meaning of that one.  No matter!  It still brings a smile.           

He was generous to a fault, always good for a few bucks or the use of his car.  My friends liked him too; he was the dad who would drive us all over.  One day in the spring of my junior year in high school, he sprang me and two of my buddies from school and drove us halfway up the coast to watch our baseball team in a playoff game in San Luis Obispo, including his buying lunch and dinner for everyone.  During that day-long adventure he didn’t say more than half-a-dozen words.  He just listened all day to three goofy sixteen-year-olds with mush for brains talking about girls. 

Yep, Ted was a great guy, most of the time.  In fact, I’ve put a number on it.  My dad was a great guy around 80% of the time.  My brothers and I differ slightly on the percentages, but the sentiment is the same; he was a real nice dad.  Most of the time!  You see, all those tender and delightful things described above about my dad took place when he was sober.

If you have ever experienced addiction in your life, you know that it is like a big rock thrown in the lake, rippling outwards in all directions and rocking the canoes.  It does not matter whether the addict is your parent or your child or your brother or your sister of your husband or your wife or your bestie, or yourself.  Truthfully, it is way bigger than any pebble in a pond; it is a boulder, creating a tsunami of emotional and financial upheaval, swamping the family.

Our dad wasn’t a daily drunk, tying it on in this evening and stumbling off to work tomorrow.  He was a sporadic drunk, periodically succumbing to his demons, felled by whatever triggers, plunging into this dark place for days and weeks at a time, as many as two or three times a year.  His longest stretch of sobriety was about two-and-a-half years, from the early spring of my sophomore year in high school until August of the summer after graduation; but that story about his falling off the wagon is for another time.

Now I want to tell you that I did not hate my dad.  On the contrary, I loved him deeply.  My friend Frankie once said that his dad was the most reliable, dependable, sober, hard-working dad of all time; but my friend never felt that his dad ever really loved him.  My experience was just the opposite; I knew my dad loved me, but we couldn’t count on him.  Over the years during his life and mine, and for ten years after he died, I harbored feelings of anger and resentment and bitterness and unforgiveness for the times he didn’t show up at my games and didn’t show up for my necessary discipline, leaving the heavy lifting to our mom.

And in addition to his drinking, he was also a gambler; and that is a lethal combination.  He would bet on almost anything.  A couple of years before I came along, he was in an all-night poker game, accompanied by strong drink, and he literally threw the mortgage to their house into the pot, like a riverboat gambler.  He had to ask Audrey to sign on the dotted line, telling her that he needed the money for an investment.  Well, addicts don’t always tell the truth.

His favorite place to lose money was the racetrack.  He loved the ponies.  As a rite of passage, we all learned about famous horses, jockeys and racetrack touts.  To this day I could probably tell you the names of most of the Triple Crown winners.      

One Sunday morning in church the worship band was leading the congregation in a song based on an OT Scripture: Some trust in horses, some trust in chariots; but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God.  My brother leaned over and whispered, “We knew someone who trusted in horses.”  We had to stifle our laughter there in the pews, but at least I could laugh at that point; because it had been many years since my personal confrontation about the unforgiveness I harbored for this man who went off to the fields of France in WW One as a 17-year old, witnessed untold horrors, was mustard gassed and lost a lung, and probably developed the habit of a lifetime of disappearing into a bottle.  But that epiphany of mine is also a story for another time. 

Sometimes we have to take a long look at the people in our lives, stop what we’re thinking, and realize they are doing the best they can.  For many years these tears of mine about my dad were born of anger.  Now these tears that run down my face and fall on the space bar are born of melancholy, tenderness, and nostalgia.  My dad’s strengths and weaknesses were as 80 against 20 in his favor.  At the end, I will be more than happy to take that tip of the scales in my favor.  I am no longer a child, but I am still Ted’s child, and grateful for it. 

There used to be places in my front lawn where it felt unsafe to walk.  There were little dips and gullies everywhere where the ground had caved in over the gopher tunnels.  A gopher leaves a hole in your lawn, and a little pile of dirt from his excavations, and over time your lawn looks like moguls.

I always thought gophers were country folks; they lived in huge numbers in the field not far from here.  But when a developer disked the field, the gophers moved to the city, which is to say my yard and the yards of my neighbors.

Now I have nothing against gophers personally.  In fact, I think they are rather cute; they have little buck teeth, and if you catch sight of one in the light of day, he is always squinting.  I do hate the idea of killing off little myopic, new-wave prairie dogs; but people in my neighborhood did not like the holes and the little mounds of dirt that you find in the early morning on the lawn.  So, some time ago I found myself joining in a battle to exterminate the gophers.

At first, I just swore at them, but that did not produce any results.  Then I stuck a hose down one of the holes, and that produced a swampy lawn and a fresh little pile of dirt left by another gopher the next morning.  When that didn’t work, I resorted to more lugubrious methods.  We were really into bragging rights around the neighborhood; I went all out.

A gopher trap is a small tin box with springs and sharp things, with an opening just big enough for a gopher to wander in.  You set it place it in the gopher hole, being careful to cover it with dirt so no sunlight shows in.  Well, the first time I went to check the trap, it impaled my hand.  That was maddening, and I blamed the gopher, for the same reason I blame my wife when I run out of gas or thump my head on the open cupboard door.  I couldn’t possibly be that dumb or that careless; it must be someone else’s fault.

Chemicals, smoke bombs and bait, whatever I could spend my money on at Home Depot; and what I got for my trouble was a revolving balance on my Visa and a fresh pile of dirt or two every morning as another gopher — or perhaps the same wily little devil — skirted my remedies and pushed his way around under my lawn and to the surface.

Once I went after one with a shovel, but I got a sprinkler line instead, and a new hole and a fresh pile of dirt the next morning.  The only success was quite by accident.  On my way out the door one morning to play golf, one of those critters stuck his head out of a hole right by the porch, and I nailed him with my six iron, my only good shot of the day.

Once my dog caught one.  Waldo appeared at the door with this broken creature in his mouth.  I thought he was going to give it to me.  What a stupid thought; that dog never fetched a ball or a newspaper.  When I tried to take away the dead gopher, the dog gave the first real defiance I had ever seen, by growling at me and staring me down.  He was just showing me his trophy before going off to do whatever dogs do, and wherever dogs go, with deceased gophers. 

As he trotted off with the gopher’s limp head hanging out of one side of his mouth, and the hind feet and tail dangling out of the other side, I decided right then and there to admit defeat, that I just didn’t have what it takes to wage guerilla warfare in my own yard.  It is no good to go after gophers when you do not even have the skill set of a rescue mutt.  I put away the traps, stopped over-watering, ditched all the chemicals, and retired my golf clubs.

My only consolation was that my neighbor Bill was faring little better.  It seemed all we talked about for weeks on end was the one that got away.  When you get right down to numbers, Waldo was the only successful gopher catcher.  We had done as much or more damage to our yards as the gophers had done; and I knew this was really getting to me when I started asking global questions like, “Whose lawn is it anyway”?

One weekend my wife and I had a getaway, but I did not want to fall completely behind in the gopher wars.  With tongue in cheek I made a sign for the gophers that read NO DIGGING.  I attached the sign to a stick and shoved it into one of the gopher holes.  The sign was probably bigger than necessary for a gopher, but I wanted to make sure that Bill could read it from his yard.  When we returned, I discovered that no gophers had dug in my yard all weekend, whereas Bill had a new pile of dirt.

It turns out that a neatly printed sign in the yard is just as effective as any other method I have used or ever heard of to get rid of gophers.  Believe it or not, we never saw evidence of another gopher in our yard.  As God as my witness, I did not know gophers could read.