The Last Word On Nothing

Father’s Day. Many of the fathers of the People of LWON’s have died, some long ago, some recently; and some haven’t died at all and are entirely alive. We have things that belonged to them, we have things we want to ask them. This sounds like it might be sad but it’s not.

Helen:

Right now, almost anything can remind me of my dad. It’s only been 6 months since he died. I often have an instant of wanting to call or email him about something, before I remember. It’s tiny, just a split second of urge, of starting to reframe my observation or thought for him. A few weeks after he died, I started keeping a list and here are a few:
The old car sold for $1685! (12/20/23)
You were right about that elm tree at Wayne’s house – it broke and took out the power lines. (1/9/24)
What should I do about the water on the floor in the basement? (1/17/24)
What kind of car insurance should I get? (2/1/24)
What are your tips for catching mice? I know you had a system. (3/6/24)
Look at this cute Japanese manhole cover! (3/27/24)
Maybe you’d like to go see this musical with me! (5/7/24)
My car is parked under a cherry tree and the birds sit over it and it is a MESS. (6/2/24)
So now, dear reader, I’m telling you, I guess.

Craig:

On the bookshelf in the foyer is a stack of painted black-on-white potsherds. They are nested into each other and sit neatly between our wedding invitation and the replica skull of a saber-toothed smilodon. The sherds come from a small broken vessel, something I inherited from my father who died thirty years ago. He bought this contemporary Acoma vessel from a dealer in Santa Fe before it was broken, obviously, and I’ve carried it gently from move to move. It was a seed jar, a style with a small opening in the top allowing seeds to be shaken into the hand. This type is significant, probably more than my dad knew. In rubble-mound villages and ruined Pueblo towns around the Four Corners, seed jars date back more than a thousand years. They have been excavated from ancestral dwellings to the tune of one per household per generation, meaning these were pre-Columbian heirlooms. The one my dad bought had been produced in the late 1980’s and I’m guessing he paid a few hundred dollars for it. I must have brushed it when I was putting something away because it tipped over and fell four feet to the concrete floor. I remember the pop. It was a satisfying sound, and turned my blood cold. I gasped as it happened, but once it was done, it was done. There are some things you never get to do over. Some of the pieces, painted in precise black lines classic of Southwest Pueblo traditions, I put in the garden knowing I’d find them over the years, and maybe they’d keep turning up for centuries. The rest I stacked on this shelf so I would think of my dad and, with the bittersweetness of entropy, I’d smile.

Christie:

My lingering childhood memory of my father is of him coming home from the squadron—dressed in his green flight suit with all its pockets and its peculiar smell—a combination of jet fuel and musky dirt. It was army green from head-to-toe with endless secret pockets here and there. The material was soft, touchable, well-worn. On his left breast was a name tag. In my mind’s eye, he’s a captain, two silver bars on his shoulders. On his right breast, another patch, this one for his squadron. The Phantoms. The flight suit came with matching accessories — green gloves that reached up his forearms with worn, gray leather pads sewed on the palms and fingers and matching boots, the soles thick, toes rounded.

When he arrived at the house, he would throw open the door and shout, “Hey, hey, hey I’m home!” My sister and I would run to the door and jump into his big bear hug. When I close my eyes and think of embracing him in his flight suit, I feel overwhelmed with love. When Daddy came home, I knew that he was safe, and I didn’t want to leave his embrace.

Jenny:

I guess it’s silly to say a photo of my dad reminds me of my dad—I mean, duh. But there’s this one that is SO HIM, it’s just extra special. I’m not sure where the actual image lives anymore—it was taken by a regular camera (my Minolta X700, no doubt) and developed at a camera store (it took at least a week!) into a thing you could hold in your hand and put in an album—but the picture is extremely clear in my mind. He’s standing in the middle of a street that’s very European; I’m guessing we were in Vienna, but it might have been Budapest. He has his black wool newsboy-style cap on (he wore one like that for as long as I can remember), and he has a Canon around his neck, a long lens in a brown leather case strapped over his shoulder, a pen behind his ear, and a fanny pack around his waist. His reading glasses are on the tip of his nose as he squints down at the map in his hands, the old-fashioned kind of map—giant and crumpled with deep folds, soft pastel shapes, tiny print, and his own black scrawl marking this and that. I remember he was always determined we would get to the next thing in record time…once he figured out where the hell we were starting. There was always a list of essential things to see and do in whatever city we visited, and checking those off (not literally, except maybe literally) was an important part of experiencing them. And each evening he’d fill his diary with details…and, as the owner of those diaries now, I’d hoped to discover them filled with his deepest thoughts about the places and people of our travels. But deep down I knew better. Because my dad was all about where we ate, what each of us had, and how much each meal cost. So, mostly that’s what he wrote down. (Museums and monuments also got a mention here and there. Because in between meals, we went to those.)

Always in the middle of the street. Always with the giant map. Fanny pack! Often looking for a restaurant. He was the tourist who was never ashamed to be a tourist, just thrilled to be out in the world with people he loved, eating local foods and checking things off his list. I miss him very much.

Ann:

I have my father’s fountain pen. It’s an Esterbrook, pearly marbled grey-green; you unscrew the top, open your bottle of ink which had a little well on the inside into which you dip the nib, lift a little lever on the side of the pen which pushes on an interior rubber reservoir and draws the ink in; wipe the inky nib with a dedicated cloth; write. For years after he died — September 18, 1978 — I used that pen to write everything, letters, postcards (the ink ran if they got wet), journal entries, papers for graduate classes. My father felt present in that pen, I felt he knew what I was writing though he wouldn’t have been terrifically interested; I felt, “I’m using your pen, Papa, my hand is holding it like yours did.” He used it to keep account of everything, every single penny, the whole family spent, I don’t know why he did that, I know only why he didn’t: he wasn’t keeping track of us, he wasn’t worried about our expenses. Maybe he just wanted the day written down in numbers. His handwriting was old-fashionededly spiky; he had a tremor and he wrote slowly and carefully, clearly. If I saw that handwriting out in the wild, anywhere, I’d know it was his. I didn’t know him well, he didn’t want to be known. I loved him then and I love him now, this minute; all us kids loved him. I would tell you that I also have his Sears Roebuck strappy undershirts, now more holes than undershirts, and I still wear them but I don’t want that picture in your head.

Cameron:

When he wasn’t at work, my dad was really into comfortable clothes: velour pullovers, fuzzy terrycloth bathrobes, slippers, down jackets. After he died I slept with one of his bathrobes for weeks because it still smelled like him. I don’t have the bathrobe any more, but I do have one of his pajama shirts. It has no buttons–too itchy!–and I don’t even wear it, it just feels comforting to have in my drawer. Sometimes when my kids wear something he would have liked–like a bucket hat, or a quirky costume, or a novelty tie (breaking the rules of comfort clothing)–they remind me so much of him, and I imagine how much he would have loved them. I imagine he loves them now. When we got some old VHS footage transferred to DVD, these were exactly the sorts of things he was wearing in the videos. It still hurt my throat so much to hear his voice again–even all these years later, he died so long ago! But I find myself wearing a giant cozy down jacket like he did more often than I need to. People get a laugh on Zoom calls when they ask where I’m from and wonder if it must be that cold. (I mean, 50s in June is cold, right?). I wonder now if I wear it so often because it feels like the kind of comfort he loved and is providing still, a hug through space and time to me.

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Photos by Craig (first); Ann (second)