Category: Uncategorized

My Father, Part 3

My dad has a thing about fruit juice.  He drinks gallons of the stuff.  These days he goes for, you know, actual juice from actual fruits, but for a long time it was “fruit juice” with, you know, actual fruits in the picture on the carton.

A few years ago, I watched my dad remove a jug from the fridge and pour himself an icy-cold glass of bright red liquid.  He fell into his easy chair to drink it and read and pontificate to anyone within earshot, as usual.  Dad sipped the “juice” over the course of about 15 minutes, grimacing after every swallow and commenting, “Dreadful stuff!” before hoisting himself up and heading back to the kitchen.  Curious, I followed him and watched him take the jug out of the fridge to serve himself another glass.  It tweaked my brain a little that the label said ‘Indian River’ and had a picture of an orange on it, but I wanted to ask him something so I didn’t stop to think about it.  “Hey, Dad, why in the world are you getting more of that juice when you just finished saying it was ‘dreadful stuff’?”

My mom looked up from whatever Laura-Ingallsy task she was doing, probably baking bread or pressing grapes for jelly.  “Leighton!” she said, alarmed.  “I told you yesterday, that’s hummingbird food!”

That’s my dad.  PhD from Cambridge University and everything.

Anna

My friend Anna was born to teach elementary school.  Specifically, she was born to teach elementary school in Harlem.  That’s where we met in 2002.  I was starting my first year of teaching, she her third, even though she was a few years younger.  Anna was infinitely cooler than me.  She grew up on 106th Street in Manhattan; I spent my childhood on Old Highway 421 outside Boone, North Carolina, which occasionally got blocked off by Farmer Proffit’s cows who would wander into the road.  Anna had smoked since she could hold a cigarette so she had this sexy, gravelly voice and a low, rumbling laugh; my voice is sort of mid-range and boring, and my dad once described mine as a tavern-wench laugh.  Anna found it enormously funny when she fucked up; I blushed with shame at my errors.  She carried her fleshy body around as if men would find her irresistible (and they did); I tried in every way to camouflage mine.

Anna always played devil’s advocate.  If I was being hard on myself, she’d point out how and why I wasn’t giving myself a fair shake.  But the opposite was true too.  She’d call bullshit when she heard it.  When I complained about not being able to do something our administration mandated, she said, “But you can.  You don’t want to, but you can.”

And Anna loved her students.  I mean, unconditionally.  Like many inner-city schools, ours had some pretty needy kids:  abused kids, violent ones, pathological liars, kids with undiagnosed and untreated disorders, crack babies, everything.  Anna loved them all.  And because of the relationship she had with her students, she could afford to be, shall we say, unconventional.

One time, a boy was transferred to Anna from another fourth-grade class because the other teacher was about to blow a gasket.  I’m not going to say it was like “Stand and Deliver”, but MONTHS went by and this little guy didn’t get sent to office.  He even did some work and learned a few things.  Finally, I asked Anna how she was controlling this formerly wild-ass kid.  She held up a fist with the knuckle of her first finger stuck up into a point and said, “I used to dig this into the side of his neck when he got out of line.  Now I just have to hold it up, and he gets his act together.”  I stared at her.  She laughed her gravelly laugh and said, “What can I say?  He’s a kinesthetic learner.”

Older Sister, Younger Brother

Me:  Sit.  Good girl, Violet.  (I unhook her leash.  She sprints away.)

Redford:  (bucking like a bronco) I WANNA GO I WANNA GO I WANNA GO.

Me:  Then you need to sit.

Redford:  There I sat NOW CAN I GO.

Me:  Nice try.  Sit.

Redford:  (sits, trembling) Aw man. (I try to unhook his leash.  He bolts and nearly chokes himself.) OK OK OK.  (sits, trembling)

Me:  Good boy.  (I unhook his leash.) OK.  (He sprints away.)

Redford:  VIOLET WAIT UP oh my gosh I’m running so fast hi Violet did you see how fast I runned?

Violet:  Ran.

Redford:  Yeah ran.

Violet:  No.

Redford:  Oh, well I runned really fast wait I gotta poop.  (poops, sprints to catch up) Hey wanna go this way?

Violet:  No, I’m going this way.

Redford:  OK how bout we go the way you’re going oh wait I gotta poop.

Violet:  Go poop, then.  I don’t need to hear about it.

Redford:  (poops, sprints to catch up) Hey Violet wanna play chase?

Violet:  Not unless a deer is ‘it’.

Redford:  OK let’s go find a deer oh wait I gotta poop.

Violet:  Ugh.

Redford: (poops, sprints to catch up) I can run faster than you Violet wanna see here I go!

Violet:  So?

Redford:  I gotta poop.  (poops, sprints to catch up) Hey Violet what’re you smelling?

Violet:  Something.

Redford:  WHAT IS IT can I smell too oh my gosh it SMELLS LIKE POOP AWESOME!  (drops and rubs his neck across it)

Violet:  (sigh)


RFK

Concentration 1.01

No crystals

Red cells-yes, white cells-no

LOT of protein

Bun 103 (34 is normal)

Creatinin 3.7 (2.3 is normal)

Thyroid and liver enzymes normal

This is what my vet told me yesterday before he said:  “You have a renal failure kitty.”  No wonder Maxwell has been peeing all over the house. Dr. Mac said Maxwell will eventually stop eating.  The good news is he’s not in any pain and he’s had a really good 16-and-a-half years.

He’s Gone

The first dead human I ever saw was the dad of one of the kids in my high school band.  I remember the kid played percussion, and I think he was one of the Michaels that we referred to as Michael with a last initial.  Pretty sure the dad died of a heart attack.  Anyway, I went to the viewing with my best friend David, who was also in the band, and as we stood there in line with my middle school band teacher, we had one of those totally inappropriate jokey moments and were all shuddering silently, trying to conceal our laughter.  Michael H.(?)’s dad wore a suit and was laid out in a fancy coffin, and I was struck by two things, his stillness and how much he resembled Michael.

I also went to the viewing of a co-worker’s father in 2004.  This was when I was teaching in New York City, and I didn’t even know the guy very well.  But he’d always been nice to me and he had given me one of my top three pieces of teaching advice:  “If you see a kid doing something wrong, acknowledge the kid who’s doing it right.”  The father looked stiff in his tuxedo, clownish in his make-up.  Mr. Yount (working in an elementary school, learning first names is optional) seemed truly appreciative that I had come, but I felt uncomfortable and left as quickly as I could without being rude.

I’ve seen lots of roadkill in my life, including my own pets in childhood, and a few months back, I watched a white cat dash into the road and get hit by a pick-up truck, flipped and torn apart by the tires.  That experience gave me some mini-PTSD, I think, as I kept thinking about it for weeks.  The image still plays in my mind when I drive down that little stretch of 70.

(I’m pretty sure I myself ran over a squirrel last year, but I didn’t see it in my rear-view mirror so I prefer to think it escaped and is scampering around Mt. Moriah Road gathering nuts for this winter.)

And then, of course, there’s Boone.  When my brother-in-law took him out of the Animal Control truck, he just seemed heavily asleep.  E. put him down on a piece of wood in the driveway.  I knelt sobbing and touched my forehead to my dog’s side.  When I ran my hands over his chest, I found the bullet holes; my hands came away bloody.  His glassy eyes stared, and his tongue hung comically out the side of his mouth like in the cartoons.  E. and I dug a hole in my front yard.  I lifted Boonie up, carried him to the hole, and laid him in his grave.  We mounded the dirt on top of him.  The next day I planted a little flower garden there and sank bricks into the ground for a border.  I look at that little garden every day.

Anyway, I’ve just been thinking about this because before Boonie died, I never understood the tradition of viewings.  But a few months after his death, I was discussing the concept of acceptance with somebody, and I realized that that’s what seeing, touching, carrying his dead body had done for me.  It helped me accept that he was dead.  At the time, I wished I could turn back the clock, I played all the what-if games with myself, and six months later, I still cry about it.  But he’s dead.  He’s dead, and I accept that.

Single-wides and Double-scoops

I told him, “I want a goldang white picket fence.”  I told him, “If I’m gonna move into a goldang single-wide with you and Tabitha and Travis Jr., you’re gonna put up a white picket fence that I can look out at and say, ‘That there’s my white picket fence.'”  I mean, if I’d of known seven years ago what I know now, I never would of left the Dairy Joy with him that night.  He was all, “You’re purdy” and “Come for a ride” and I did, and Lord Jesus, what a ride it’s been.  I can’t even set foot in that Dairy Joy no more.  First of all, that Bronco wadden even his—it was his daddy’s—and on account of them not speakin to each other after that fishin mishap, that was my first and last ride in it.  Travis drives a Escort.  When it runs.  Which is not too goldang often.  Next up, the money he used to buy me that double-scoop Oreo sundae, it runs out.  He only got $450 from the city for gettin his thumb caught in the elevator door at the courthouse. Tell the truth, they shouldn’t of paid him a dime cause, for starters, that elevator didn’t hurt him none.  He took a blue magic marker to his thumb before he got that picture took.  And second of all, he was at the courthouse because he owed the county $518 for speedin tickets!  The way I see it, they should of just deducted the four fifty from that and asked for the rest.  Anyhow, he thought he was gonna get some big settlement so he told his boss over at the Hostess factory to shove it and by the time he went snivelin back, Dwayne had already filled his position.  So ever since two weeks after we met, we been livin on what I make down at the old folks’ home.  I used up all the money I’d saved for that secretarial program down at the community college, just gettin our bills paid.  That’s why I told him, “Buddy, you hain’t given me nothin but heartache and gonorrhea so I figure you owe me one white picket fence.”  Anyhow, I preciate you listenin to me like that, but I see you got other tables to get to.  I’ll have a double-scoop Oreo sundae.  Thank God for this Dairy Queen.

Not Nine Days

At 3:15am, I was driving through a deluge to Durham.  My sister and brother-in-law, looking a little shell-shocked, packed up and headed for the hospital, and I lay down on the couch.  Ah, blessed sleep.

MMMMRRRRRRROW.  That was what their old, deaf, blind cat started shouting at me about 45 minutes later and kept shouting at me until 6:15 when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet coming out of the kids’ room.  The little feet stopped short at the sight of the little feet’s parents’ room, which was empty of course.  I called out to my nephew, and he came running into the living room.

Him:  Did Mommy and Daddy have to go to a meeting?

Me:  No, honey, they had to go to the hospital because they’re going to have the baby!

Him:  That’th tho exthiting!

Me:  You wanna snuggle on the couch with me?

Him:  Yeah.

He pulled the cover over him and then yanked it right off.

Him:  Now I’m weady fow bweakfatht.

A little later….

Him (nodding):  Mommy will be home latew today.

Me:  Not today, buddy.

Him (still nodding):  But maybe tomowwow.

Me:  No, probably three or four days, buddy.

Him:  But not nine dayth.

Me:  No, not nine days.