Young At Heart

If he had stubbed out the Camel unfiltered before taking off, I didn't notice.  50 yards, give or take, was the distance my dad challenged me to run.  Recognizing an easy win, I accepted the challenge.  My dad was in his mid fifties, and I was a lithe 15 year old kid with energy to burn and pink lungs.  I could hear my dad's snoring and hacking from any room in the house, so it was preposterous to believe that he had a snowball's chance in Hell of outrunning me.  Hell must of had the air on that day...he beat me by a long shot. 

I was born on my dad's fortieth birthday, brought along to keep him young...as he liked to tell it.  My parents were tired and frankly, kind of parented out by the time I arrived; but I still consider them to have been the best parents for me.  I spent my early childhood being questioned about my grandpa...which is what most people mistook my dad for.  While my friend's dads were young and involved, my dad was old and distant.  He worked...a lot.  And for most of my childhood, he was my bi weekly dad.  Bi weekly, that is, until we moved to Georgia, to be closer to his job and to live as a family unit.  Basically, this is where it all fell apart.

Me and dad...like oil and water, but also like two peas in a pod.  A bittersweet relationship to say the least, we were just as repelled by each other as we were drawn together.  Turbulent teenage years did not help the matter at all, and I spent plenty of time wishing we could go back to the days when it was just my mom and I.  I think my dad sensed this, still being the outsider even though we all dined at the same table.  But, there were moment, like the race.  There were moments when we could put aside everything and connect.  These moments were often quiet and unexpected...and fleeting. 

When I left home for college, I insisted that I go alone.  Truth be told, I did not want my parents there...crowding the moment I had waited all my life for.  My parents agreed to this, and watched as I loaded my Mustang with my worldly possessions.  I said good-bye to them and sped away...on my way to my future.  Reality set in once I parked my car on campus.  I would now have to unload all this crap alone.  There were dads everywhere.  I felt so stupid!!  People weren't going to look at me crazy because my parents were there, they were looking at me crazy because they weren't!  I looked and felt TOO independent at that moment.  Like I had ventured out too far in the gulf and now was unsure how I was getting back to shore because I had not yet learned to swim.  I managed though.  The next morning, I awoke to a ringing phone.  I answered the pay phone in the hallway and heard my dad's voice on the line.  Seems there was an OJ and Egg McMuffin with my name on it at the McDonald's just off campus.  Another fleeting moment had presented itself.  After that, my dad assisted me every September.  A grey haired man among the young hip dads...but also the only one NOT using a dolly. 

On the way to my wedding, in the car, my dad and I rode in silence.  It was just us, my mom had been banned as she was spazzing out.  The closer we got to the church, the more nervous I got.  My dad chose this time to inform me that once I left the nest, I could never come back.  It wasn't a threat, more of an observation.  I was about to get married, had just bought a home, and was now expected to live like a grown up.  No more bringing my laundry home.  No more filching snacks out of my parents cabinets to take with me.  No more charging gas on my dad's account.  The Sunday paper that I had grown used to receiving out of my dad's hands first thing in the morning, gone.  I would now be expected to get my own paper.  I was in too much of a hurry to be grown, so I didn't pay much attention to what he was trying to say.  I think I even rolled my eyes.  He was in his sixties by then....so far out of touch with the world today, or so I thought. 

When I shed myself of awful husband number one, and decided to move to Memphis, my dad was there with the U-haul.  When I made a feeble attempt to come home again a few years later, there he was with another U-haul.  And when that didn't work out...well let's just say that I should have bought stock in U-haul.  The years ticked past, and it never occured to me that either of us was getting any older.  After awful husband number two left, all I really wanted to do was to disappear into my couch.  But, Dad would not allow that.  Every Saturday morning, without fail, he appeared at my door to take me to breakfast and then ride around.  It pissed me off beyond belief, but I felt obligated.  I didn't want to hurt his feelings and he was obviously lonely.  It didn't occur to me until years later that he was the one doing me a favor.  When I finally got old enough to provide my own moving service (but not old enough to stop jumping ship), my dad continued to hang around.  Watching me unpack.  Watching me paint my new place.  Sweeping the cobwebs off my porch.  It got on my last nerve sometimes.  But there again, hindsight is 20/20 and I now see that his presence is likely what kept me from dangling from the ceiling on those occasions. 

When my surprisingly healthy dad passed out last December, I knew it was time to pay the piper.  It was too damn bad that he didn't want to go to the doctor...he was going and that was it.  All those visits to the doctor led up to a grim diagnosis and in three days, a surgeon will open him up and repair his heart.  Turns out, all those times I accused him of having a pea sized heart...the opposite was true.  His heart had worked so hard all those years that it became gigantic.  In his seventy five years, my dad had seen far more disappointment than happiness and it finally caught up with him.  Parts of his heart had given up and just simply shut down.  Amazingly, aside from the passing out episode, he had no other symptoms.  It is like his heart didn't realize it probably shouldn't still be beating, it just worked harder to compensate; much like my dad.  I don't think he realized that he was entering his "twilight years", preferring to remain middle aged as long as he could.  When the doctor delivered the bad news, I was certain that my dad would say "AW Hell Naw, nope, I am not having any heart surgery.  Nuh Uh."   I just knew he was going to put on a stoic face and wait to die. 

But, I was having none of that.  Just like my dad showed up for me, I was going to show up for him.  And much to my surprise (though it shouldn't have been a surprise at all, I now know) he was ready to fight.  Just when I thought he was ready to lay down and die, his spirit rallied and he was ready to race again.  It was like his heart told him that he was old.  And my dad, true to form, slapped his hand down on the table and said, "The Hell you say!"  It has been twenty years since our race that summer.  I feel fairly certain that if we did it today, he would likely not win.  However, once his heart gets it's extreme makeover...I wouldn't be so sure.  The day after my dad's heart surgery, I will lose my job.  I am not the least bit sad about this fact, because I can see that while I will be unemployed, I will have a far more important job.  I will finally have to fulfill my purpose of keeping him young.