WHERE WAS LOVE?
by Grant Young
"I don't know why we need a map. I know every major road in California." I said just to be talking.
Coming out of the Big Sur area we headed into San Simeon when my cell phone rang. It was my sister telling us my father had just died. This was not unexpected. He had been a cardiac patient for the last 10 years. Still I expected to react more strongly. My father was dead. Wasn't I supposed to feel something?
My fiancé assumed control and called her brother in San Diego to say that we weren't coming after all. She clicked off the phone and guided us over to a motel in San Simeon along the cliffs.
"Let's stay here for the night. You're probably too upset to go on."
"I suppose. I wonder if they have any good restaurants within walking distance?"
"You're not supposed to feel hungry at a time like this."
What was I supposed to feel? Loss? Sadness? I wished this was like football where each team member was issued a playbook and knew what he was supposed to do. In the motel I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling as my fiancé showered. I thought back to the late 50's in the Los Angeles area where my family lived. My father worked 75 plus hours a week as an aviation engineer. We could afford a cleaning lady and the laundry was done by a service. This left my mother with a lot of time on her hands.
"Come on kids, get in the station wagon" mother commanded.
As we drove through downtown LA I looked out the windows at the old black men sadly shuffling along the sidewalks, going nowhere. They were dressed in frayed sport coats, slacks and hats. I didn't see any love in their eyes.
"OK, I have some important business in this office. You kids to stay in the station wagon and behave or I will paddle you behinds when I get back."
Our mother often left us in the car. Usually it wasn't for more than 45 minutes. One time we were parked right in front of a real estate office and I saw the agent slip his arm around her waist as they walked through a door and into the back. Mother had spent a lot of time with real estate agents all over LA and yet we never bought a new house.
I never saw my father except on Sunday mornings. He sat on the couch, read the Sunday Herald-Examiner while drinking coffee and smoking Winstons. I liked Winstons because Fred and Barney smoked them on the Flintstones. Right there in the show would be Fred and Barney taking a break from mowing the lawns with their dinosaur mowers and they'd pull out a pack of Winstons and light up. I didn't realize it was a commercial and not part of the show because it seemed so normal for a grown up to smoke Winstons.
"Come on kids, we are going to be late for church" my mother would announce as she herded us out to the station wagon.
"How come daddy doesn't go?" I asked.
My mother's response was a whack to the back of my head.
"Your father works very hard and he deserves to rest on Sunday. When you grow up and have kids asking idiotic questions then you'll know how come."
My father didn't even lower the paper as he admonished us to behave in church. All I saw was a cloud of smoke rising from behind the sports section.
Years later my father confessed to me he felt he was a failure at life. I was visiting him one weekend when he launched into an impromptu soliloquy.
"My own father could never hold a job and we drifted all over the Midwest. But the one thing I remember was that there was always love in our home. My father loved his family and we loved him. As much as I hated the Midwest I always liked visiting my folks. You could feel the love in that home as you came in the front door. It always made me remember the good times we had as a family and seemed to chase away the memories of the poverty we lived in. I sure do miss the folks. Can you understand that? How the love made it all worthwhile?"
What do you say to that? Gee dad, I haven't a clue to what you're saying. Love? We never even heard the word growing up. But he was trying to make peace with his life and this was no time to kick him.
After my fiancé got out of the shower we took a walk along the cliffs and stopped to watch the Sea Otters play in the kelp beds.
"You look pretty happy for a guy who just lost his father."
Oh yeah. I had forgotten. My father was dead and here I was having a wonderful afternoon by the Pacific.
There was no funeral. No memorial. It was as if my father never existed. This was one of those dysfunctional quirks of my family. I wondered what my father's siblings thought. And to be honest it seemed that the only one who mourned his passing was his dog. She stared at the door looking for him to come home and generally acted depressed for the next few months until one morning my mother found the dog dead on the back porch. She put the dog's body in a garbage bag and placed it on the curb. It was trash day.
A couple years later my sister and I had to put our mother into a rest home. Mother checked her mind at the curb like airline luggage and the attendants promptly lost it.
Occasionally someone will ask how I feel about my parents passing. I wish I had that playbook so I could come up with a proper response.
Grant: After living in California for 49 years I have fled to the tall corn of Iowa to write. Contact Grant.
