Movin On

I snuck out of the Writer’s Workshop class at JCCC during the lunch break and drove home, listening to my “Your Arsenal” CD, feeling like a big arse myself, a quitter, thinking of excuses to tell my dad why I just wasted $75 of his hard-earned money to not even get through an entire day of a weekend writing course he’d paid for, even though he thought writing was a frivolous endeavor and I should be studying accounting or computers or something useful. It was February 1992. I had just moved back in my parent’s house for a temporary stay, after I’d first left, full of good riddance for my father, when I was 18. I didn’t like asking my dad to help me out financially, because the strings he attached always came with a lecture about all the things I was doing wrong with my life.

As I entered the door from our garage to the kitchen, my parents were sitting at the table, not eating, as if they had expected me to walk through the door at that exact moment.

"Stella, sit down. Your mother and I need to talk to you.” My dad said without anger or judgment. I sat.

They were both drinking coffee, like old friends, and I remember thinking it was weird—they never sat and talked over coffee. I had expected my dad to be in his La-Z-Boy in front of the giant TV with the volume turned up so loud I was always surprised the next door neighbors never complained. Since he nearly always watched things like golf matches, Entertainment Tonight, and The Lawrence Welk Show, I figured they’d just drifted off to sleep before managing to come over and tell us to turn it down. And as for Mom, she should have been down the hall in her room, painting or flower arranging or whatever current craft project she had going on, not sitting in the kitchen with my father. What the hell did they have to talk about? I hadn’t seen them really talking in at least a decade.

My dad spoke more than I’d ever heard him say in my entire lifetime. He explained that my mom had asked him for a divorce, that he didn’t want one, but he understood it would make her happy, and so he would go through with it. He made it all sound like he expected it to be a shock to me, and so I opened my eyes and raised my eyebrows and nodded my head as if it were. It was all very mild and un-dramatic and rational. No one cried. No one screamed. We just discussed the situation, the plans, what needed to be done. It was agreed upon that I would move out with my mom, and that we’d go driving around later that afternoon to look for an apartment.

She did it. She finally followed through. I didn't know what to do so I sat there a long time and just stared. I looked up and noticed Mom had left the table.

Dad got up from the table, dumped his coffee cup into the kitchen sink, turned on the faucet, rinsed his cup, filled it half full, took a sip of water, dumped the water out, and set his cup on the counter. “Well, I’m going to go take a nap so I’ll be rested enough to go to my dance tonight.”

Evidently Dad had already scanned some seniors bulletin for something singles-ish and fun to do that evening. What’s the point of spending any more of his valuable time dwelling on anything, even his crumbling 22 year marriage? His second crumbled marriage.

He never questioned me about the class I dropped, and after I did move out with my mom, he pretty much stayed off my back about everything practical and responsible. Not living with my dad has been a relief not just for my mother.

I moved out for good a few months after my mom got her apartment. Mom lived alone and enjoyed her meandering independence for ten years, until she met a man online and they married six weeks later. We were all scared, what with Mom’s track record at the great race of love, but the addition of Frank Ferguson to my mom’s life has made her happier, more comfortable, and more peaceful. Just what we all want.

Skip ahead seventeen years. I’m no longer the 21 year old aspiring writer, slacker, unemployed college dropout, trying to scrape the surface of my parent’s marriage to get to the point that is no longer numb. I am now the 40 year old aspiring writer, slacker, college dropout who is gainfully employed at a job I love, and I occasionally scrape the surface of my own life to make sure I never live life numb. I see Dad a couple times a year and that's fine with both of us.

So then I opened my email one morning from my sister Cally (also my father’s daughter, from his first marriage before my mom and he married) saying could I come over to Dad’s tomorrow at 11AM to help him move out. His wife Trudie is in Santa Fe visiting her son, and my dad’s taking the opportunity to leave her, something he’s been trying to do off and on for about five years now. She’s blocked his efforts so many times before, he had to wait until she was out of town to gather the courage and the opportunity to finally move on.

After I talked to my sister on the phone and got the details, I called Dad to see if he needed any help packing beforehand. I feel like I need to pull my share of the weight, since Cally’s getting most of the burden by having him move in with her until he can find a place of his own. I asked him when would be a good time to come over and help him pack, and he asked if I could come right then.

I got there about forty-five minutes later, even though he just lives five minutes from me. I hadn’t seen him since Christmas, at Cally’s house party, where there were lots of people and not much opportunity to talk one-on-one, like we’d have anything to say to each other anyway.

He needed some help washing some pants and underwear – he didn’t want to bring dirty laundry over to Cally’s, and it was apparent that perhaps one of the things that kept changing his mind when he’d decided in the past to leave Trudie was the fact that he doesn’t know how to operate a washing machine. I distinctly remember at his and Trudie’s wedding, in October 1992 I think it was, his saying to me afterwards, during the small reception at Trudie's church, that he was glad he didn’t have to be a “Mr. Mom” anymore and it would be nice to have someone to do his laundry again.

After I showed him how to spin the dial and pull the button to turn on the washer, and how much detergent to scoop inside the measuring cup provided inside the detergent carton, we went into his office. We packed things from his desk drawer, the same desk he’s had since before I was born. The same desk I remember hesitantly approaching when I was two, at the request of my brother Murray and my sister Hazel, to ask Dad if we could get a dog.

Dad had a “LIST OF THINGS TO MOVE OUT” written in his distinctive handwriting (very heavily pushed into the paper, all caps, print, never cursive) on a yellow legal pad.

1. Desk and Chair
2. TV and stand
3. radio

On down to #9, “pictures.” I had noticed he had a box full of framed pictures of Glenda, her daughter and son, me, and my daughter sitting in the living room when I came in, sharing space with three trophies, I guessed he’d won pool playing. I thought it was funny that he had pictures as number nine on the list. It probably would have been number one on my list, a list I hope to never have to make, and I’m so lucky to say my husband is so right for me, I probably never will.

We worked pretty silently, not discussing any details, any emotions, just getting done what needed to get done. Dad hummed a little bit, like he always does when he’s working on something, not a specific tune, just a little white noise coming from a mind obviously trying to avoid whatever troubles invade it. We moved on to the kitchen. I thought it was funny he decided to bring a container of oatmeal and some sugar-free flavored drink mix. It’s odd to observe what goes through someone’s mind as they’re taking steps to move on with their life.

In the bedroom, Dad got down on all fours—something I was pretty impressed with considering he has 44 years on me, and my then-38 year old knees don’t like to be in that position much anymore—to get some luggage out from under the bed, so we could pack all his neatly pressed and starched white shirts and suit jackets he must wear to all the dances he attends now.

After about an hour, after I showed him how to put the clothes into the dyer, spin the dial, and push the start button, we went into the living room and sat down for a few minutes. I had to get back home so Hank could go to work and I could watch Stella. I asked Dad if he had any ideas of where he wanted to live. He said Johnson County, because he has dances and bridge and pool playing here. Of course it's been two years since then and he's still living at Cally's up north of the river because she treats him too good. She was only twelve when he moved out so she didn't get the privilege of experiencing him much during the teenage years.

He's a hot commodity: he's alive, he's fairly healthy, he loves to dance. That's pretty much what it appears many senior women are looking for in a man because he's had about four girlfriends since he left Trudie. My dad, the asshole. And yet it took my mom, the funniest, smartest, sweetest woman on the planet ten years to find a husband. Dad now has a fiancee and is planning on marrying her next year and moving to Independence. At age 85. He just don't quit.

Back when I was getting ready to leave after helping him pack a little when he was leaving Trudie, Dad said after he dropped Trudie at the airport Thursday, he went to a dance out south at some place called Camelot, and he “had the most fun I’d had in about thirteen years.” He said he danced with lots of women, and afterward, he went to the VFW and hung out with some friends there. He asked me to get him a directory of retirement communities in the area, and I told him I would. But he said it didn’t have to be a retirement place, just any maintenance-free place under $750 a month would do. I told him that shouldn’t be a problem, that I knew of lots of apartments he could rent for less than that around here.

As I rose to get my jacket, he stood too and said quickly, like he had to get it out before I left, “I just don’t know how much time I have left, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life miserable.” I told him I didn’t blame him at all. That’s all anyone deserves is to live the kind of life that makes them happy. What I should have added, but I'm too much of a cowardly daughter, is "as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else" like I tell Stella all the time. I can raise my daughter but I gave up long ago trying to raise my dad.

I kissed him on the cheek and said, “I love you, Dad. Cally and I will take care of you.” He kissed my cheek and said he loved me too. We'd been doing that since his second heart by-pass surgery.

I walked out Dad’s door, took a deep breath, got into my car and drove home to my husband, my daughter, my family. Dad would fix some lunch and take a nap. He had to rest up for the dance he had tonight.