“I really have to go. Breakfast is ready.”
“Ok.”
“Wait! Don’t you want to know what we’re having?”
“Yes Beth.” He doesn’t mean it. But it doesn’t matter. This is part of my Teach Dad by Example campaign.
“Local eggs, sweet potatoes, quinoa and black beans.”
“Sweet potatoes for breakfast?”
“Think outside the box, Dad!”
“I only think out of the box.”
Pause.
“I don’t even have a box.”
This is true.
“Ok. Gotta go. Oh wait, John is turning 30 on Friday!”
“Good thing you’re getting married, you’re both old.”
“You think?”
“30 was the best year of my life.” Ignoring my question.
I can hear that thing in his voice, that time-traveling tone. Both reverence and sadness for the passing away of time.
“What was so great about being 30?”
“I was single and I owned a bar!”
He says this very matter-of-factly, like this is the universally celebrated Holy Grail of “Best Year of Your Life,” requisites. If we were sitting next to each other, and not talking on the phone, he might have slapped me on the back of my head for affect.
“That was also the year you got me you know!?”
I’m his personal historian, if for no other reason to ensure my place in the story.
“Yes. That’s another reason it was the best year.”
Yeah right, but I’ll take it.
“Bye dad. I’ll call you later.”
Dad’s best year gave me one of the best days of my life. I remember exactly no more than the first hour of this fantastic day.
I wake up in my new bed, a princess waterbed (don’t laugh!) a bar patron gave Dad to help him accommodate his new roommate: his seven year-old daughter.
I dress, put my hair in the customary ponytail, brush my teeth and then poke my single, bar owning, 30 year-old, dad’s arm until he wakes up.
On the way to school—the ancient and dilapidated only public school in town—he asks if I’ve had breakfast.
We pull over at a convenient store and walk in together. Is this the first time I’ve gone alone with Dad to a store? I think so. Until this morning, I never went anywhere without my little brother and sister in tow. Things are different now. They live with mom. I live with dad.
I pick out a plastic wrapped banana-nut muffin and a pint of chocolate milk. I play it cool so he doesn’t think he’s spoiling me. Every Roberts child knows: nothing ruins a good time, in our family, like an entitled kid.
Then, Dad does the coolest thing anyone has ever done in the history of cool things: he drives around the school block (twice!) to give me time to finish eating my giant muffin.
I hop out of the pickup truck just as the other kids are filing into the red brick building.
It’s the first morning I’ve ever walked into Roosevelt Elementary donning a chocolate milk mustache over a smile.
For this second grader, best days come easy but not often.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
SEX, BUSES and OTHER AWKWARD CONVERSATIONS
My dad never talked to me about sex or what it meant to be a woman, although he did ask me if I needed anything from the store once.
“Do you need anything from the store?”
A highly unusual question indeed. “Um, no.” Immediately wishing I’d
said ice cream.
There are plenty of great treats to be found when you live above a
bar: an endless variety of individual sized bags of potato chips, a
half a dozen choices of soda from the gun, deep fried anything,
barrels of ranch dressing, un-inventoried Zimas.
But never ice cream.
He asked again. “Are you sure you don’t need anything?”
What was the strange emphasis on “anything” for?
“Are you sure you don’t need something?” Third time’s the charm. I got it. He was asking his 13-year-old daughter if she needed “something” he wasn’t comfortable saying from the store. Gross! One of his bartenders must have told him it was time to start asking me what I needed from the store.
I’d rather eat raw onion than ask him for “something,” from the store.
I missed out on the New Kids On The Block phenomenon because I didn’t have the guts to let dad think I liked little-girl stuff. Instead I endured wearing Motley Crew t-shirts to slumber parties, when the other girls all donned full length JOEY nightgowns. Mothers whispered about my “street smarts,” and politely suggested to their daughters that I be left off the next birthday party invite list.
It’s true; I went to great lengths not to be mistaken for a kid. But I never said I wanted to be a woman.
I was across town visiting my mother for a weekend when she sat me down for what would be the only Sex Talk of my life.
She started into the conversation with the same subtlety I’d come to expect from her. “Your cousin Jenny is pregnant.”
Jenny is five years older than I. Only a few years earlier she was my favorite babysitter. Once, when I asked for cheese on my hotdog, she tossed a slice of American right into the pot with the boiling hotdogs. We still talk about it.
Mom continued, getting straight to her thoughtful advice, “Don’t have sex. But if you are going to have sex, get one of your friends”—she said “friends” kind of snidely, she resented my having friends—“and get on a bus and go to Planned Parenthood in Scranton.”
That was it. Everything I needed to know about sex in under a minute.
She stood up and left for another room. I slipped a single Marlboro cigarette from her soft pack—I’d been eying it the whole time—and walked out.
Who does she think I am? My friends and I haven’t even started to think about...Public Transportation. I’d only ever been on yellow buses, the kind you don’t have to tell the driver where you’re going, the kind of buses that haul kids around like cattle on the way to the slaughter house, or school, whatever.
Scranton was 16 miles north. Who knew how far away Sex was?
“Do you need anything from the store?”
A highly unusual question indeed. “Um, no.” Immediately wishing I’d
said ice cream.
There are plenty of great treats to be found when you live above a
bar: an endless variety of individual sized bags of potato chips, a
half a dozen choices of soda from the gun, deep fried anything,
barrels of ranch dressing, un-inventoried Zimas.
But never ice cream.
He asked again. “Are you sure you don’t need anything?”
What was the strange emphasis on “anything” for?
“Are you sure you don’t need something?” Third time’s the charm. I got it. He was asking his 13-year-old daughter if she needed “something” he wasn’t comfortable saying from the store. Gross! One of his bartenders must have told him it was time to start asking me what I needed from the store.
I’d rather eat raw onion than ask him for “something,” from the store.
I missed out on the New Kids On The Block phenomenon because I didn’t have the guts to let dad think I liked little-girl stuff. Instead I endured wearing Motley Crew t-shirts to slumber parties, when the other girls all donned full length JOEY nightgowns. Mothers whispered about my “street smarts,” and politely suggested to their daughters that I be left off the next birthday party invite list.
It’s true; I went to great lengths not to be mistaken for a kid. But I never said I wanted to be a woman.
I was across town visiting my mother for a weekend when she sat me down for what would be the only Sex Talk of my life.
She started into the conversation with the same subtlety I’d come to expect from her. “Your cousin Jenny is pregnant.”
Jenny is five years older than I. Only a few years earlier she was my favorite babysitter. Once, when I asked for cheese on my hotdog, she tossed a slice of American right into the pot with the boiling hotdogs. We still talk about it.
Mom continued, getting straight to her thoughtful advice, “Don’t have sex. But if you are going to have sex, get one of your friends”—she said “friends” kind of snidely, she resented my having friends—“and get on a bus and go to Planned Parenthood in Scranton.”
That was it. Everything I needed to know about sex in under a minute.
She stood up and left for another room. I slipped a single Marlboro cigarette from her soft pack—I’d been eying it the whole time—and walked out.
Who does she think I am? My friends and I haven’t even started to think about...Public Transportation. I’d only ever been on yellow buses, the kind you don’t have to tell the driver where you’re going, the kind of buses that haul kids around like cattle on the way to the slaughter house, or school, whatever.
Scranton was 16 miles north. Who knew how far away Sex was?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
A Picture Worth 746 Words
If you’ve ever seen a picture of the Roberts children, no doubt it was of three kids dressed in their best, standing in front of a Christmas tree or on the steps of St. Roses Church. Invariably, two of these children would be shining smiles.
The third, however, was perpetually on the losing end of a teary battle of wills with a curling iron wielding, aerosol hairspray toting stepmother. The eyes of the oldest Roberts child would be red and puffy, though not as puffy as her bangs.
I have one photo in my possession that stands as an exception to the customary holiday spectacle. From what I can glean, this rare image was captured for no reason at all. In fact, the only thing the three of us are doing is sharing a playpen. At age four, I’m holding my infant sister. Our middle brother is holding himself upright, no small feat for his age. Our faces are frozen in varying degrees of bemusement. The carpet is green and shaggy. My hair knows no stepmother or curling iron. In fact, the most remarkable thing about the photo is its unremarkableness.
Long before parents began uploading daily shots of their kids onto the internet; this picture was taken with film. If my parents had the option to view the image before printing, it would have likely been as fleeting as the moment itself. But this unexciting photo lives on to supply a sliver of illumination onto those early and formidable years.
And so, one last detail about the photo: Draped on the side of the playpen is a gray softball jersey.
Cue the creaking of the door to my imagination.
“Hey kids, how about you hang out here for an hour or so! Daddy has a game!” says the shirtless man. Snap. Parenting is easy! “Be good for mom!” Dad grabs jersey, three kisses and he’s gone.
When my memory does come into focus, I’m at a park and I’m yelling, “Wiggle your butt Franny!” to my dad, who dutifully does wiggle his butt just before cracking a softball with an aluminum bat.
Whack!
Three years later, I’m the youngest and smallest on my Miss C softball team by years and feet. A gaggle of girls huddle around a cardboard box full of new, yellow, team shirts. I want the shirt with the number four on it badly, but I’m not about to embarrass myself over it.
Sidebar: I might have still been reeling from a mortifying incident a few months earlier when I mistook the YMCA’s deep-end for the shallow-end and jumped in for a quick and terrifying dip to depths unknown. All this only moments after the mother of another swimmer pointed out the girl who wore a dance leotard (complete with sleeves) to the first day of swim lessons. (I self-rescued from the submersion but have never been able to dress myself properly).
Back at practice now, eyes squeezed closed, I reach into the box and pull the number four shirt. Holy cow Batman! I run to the pick-up truck where dad is waiting. I don’t have to say anything. I hold up the backside of my shirt. We drive away, both beaming.
I’ve heard the best way to become a doctor is to be born a doctor’s child. Police work, firefighting and teaching also seem to be inherited like a Roman nose. Likewise, many great hobbies are passed down through the generations. Sailing, I’ve gathered, is a birthright.
Beer league softball is like that for me.
At age 20, for the first time in my life, I boarded a plane. Seven or so hours after landing, I found myself in Telluride, Colorado. I picked up a Daily Planet. On the front page of the paper: A girl, sliding into home plate. She’s wearing a purple wig.
The soft ball that is my head went swimmy. My heartbeat stomped around the bases.
Two years later, I moved to Telluride for Beer League Softball. I stayed for the Beer League Softball.
Dad still plays. And all these years he has worn the same number: Four. It’s the number he picked his first season, back when that was the age of his oldest child and all his kids fit into one playpen.
When I come up to the plate on Sunday for our team’s season opener in Telluride’s Town Park, I’ll do what I always do, I’ll wiggle my butt for Franny.
The third, however, was perpetually on the losing end of a teary battle of wills with a curling iron wielding, aerosol hairspray toting stepmother. The eyes of the oldest Roberts child would be red and puffy, though not as puffy as her bangs.
I have one photo in my possession that stands as an exception to the customary holiday spectacle. From what I can glean, this rare image was captured for no reason at all. In fact, the only thing the three of us are doing is sharing a playpen. At age four, I’m holding my infant sister. Our middle brother is holding himself upright, no small feat for his age. Our faces are frozen in varying degrees of bemusement. The carpet is green and shaggy. My hair knows no stepmother or curling iron. In fact, the most remarkable thing about the photo is its unremarkableness.
Long before parents began uploading daily shots of their kids onto the internet; this picture was taken with film. If my parents had the option to view the image before printing, it would have likely been as fleeting as the moment itself. But this unexciting photo lives on to supply a sliver of illumination onto those early and formidable years.
And so, one last detail about the photo: Draped on the side of the playpen is a gray softball jersey.
Cue the creaking of the door to my imagination.
“Hey kids, how about you hang out here for an hour or so! Daddy has a game!” says the shirtless man. Snap. Parenting is easy! “Be good for mom!” Dad grabs jersey, three kisses and he’s gone.
When my memory does come into focus, I’m at a park and I’m yelling, “Wiggle your butt Franny!” to my dad, who dutifully does wiggle his butt just before cracking a softball with an aluminum bat.
Whack!
Three years later, I’m the youngest and smallest on my Miss C softball team by years and feet. A gaggle of girls huddle around a cardboard box full of new, yellow, team shirts. I want the shirt with the number four on it badly, but I’m not about to embarrass myself over it.
Sidebar: I might have still been reeling from a mortifying incident a few months earlier when I mistook the YMCA’s deep-end for the shallow-end and jumped in for a quick and terrifying dip to depths unknown. All this only moments after the mother of another swimmer pointed out the girl who wore a dance leotard (complete with sleeves) to the first day of swim lessons. (I self-rescued from the submersion but have never been able to dress myself properly).
Back at practice now, eyes squeezed closed, I reach into the box and pull the number four shirt. Holy cow Batman! I run to the pick-up truck where dad is waiting. I don’t have to say anything. I hold up the backside of my shirt. We drive away, both beaming.
I’ve heard the best way to become a doctor is to be born a doctor’s child. Police work, firefighting and teaching also seem to be inherited like a Roman nose. Likewise, many great hobbies are passed down through the generations. Sailing, I’ve gathered, is a birthright.
Beer league softball is like that for me.
At age 20, for the first time in my life, I boarded a plane. Seven or so hours after landing, I found myself in Telluride, Colorado. I picked up a Daily Planet. On the front page of the paper: A girl, sliding into home plate. She’s wearing a purple wig.
The soft ball that is my head went swimmy. My heartbeat stomped around the bases.
Two years later, I moved to Telluride for Beer League Softball. I stayed for the Beer League Softball.
Dad still plays. And all these years he has worn the same number: Four. It’s the number he picked his first season, back when that was the age of his oldest child and all his kids fit into one playpen.
When I come up to the plate on Sunday for our team’s season opener in Telluride’s Town Park, I’ll do what I always do, I’ll wiggle my butt for Franny.
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Deer on the Bar Story
by George Greenbank and Beth Roberts
In 1973, George Greenbank, Kent Ryan, Buddy Crane and Wayne Watkins were working in construction in West Telluride, (today’s Hillside). One particular day on the job, above all others, lives on in infamy.
It started with an old stag that came down off the hillside looking for grass under the new snow. A new-comer, probably an east-coaster who only knew deer that looked like Bambi, stopped while driving out of town to observe the hearty Mule Deer.
The gawker’s dog was interested too. It jumped out of the back of the truck bed and started after the deer scaring the deer over the fence and onto the plowed highway.
George and the others observed the scene from their position atop the roof they were working on. Wayne, a transplant from California, was particularly sensitive to the buck’s plight. He went down to the road and cut the top wire of the fence, with hopes of giving the deer access back to the meadow.
Not much time passed before the Town Marshal, Everett Morrow, a tough, hippie-hater, drove up in his Ford Falcon police vehicle. Morrow appraised the deer and the broken fence. In an instant his mind was made. He walked toward the now worn-out buck and drew his revolver.
Wayne went nuts: screaming, running and waving a hammer as he ran from the construction site down to the highway.
But it was too late. Morrow had shot the deer. Now his smoking gun was turned onto the hysteric and hammer wielding Wayne.
Morrow didn’t pull the trigger again, despite Wayne’s onslaught of insults, objections and threats. Instead Morrow returned his gun to holster and himself to his Falcon. Without a word, he drove back into town.
The crew quit work at 5p.m. Before leaving to meet their ski patrol buddies, as was their custom, at the Sheridan Bar, the men helped Wayne load the dead deer into his jeep. Something had to be done. Within minutes they found themselves lopping a dead deer onto the Sheridan Bar. No one objected.
They told anyone that would listen that night about the day’s injustice. They drank, waited, drank, and waited some more, all the while expecting Morrow to show up to face the deer on the bar of the Sheridan.
Morrow never showed.
The mayor, Francis Warner did. He told everyone to go home. The old dead deer on the bar was removed by a miner who, over the course of the night’s debauchery, bore witness to the crew’s indignation and ultimate unraveling over a deer’s death.
By spring the hippies were organized. At the next election, five new-comers, including George Greenbank and a hippie backed mayor, were elected. Change had come.
Only too late for the old buck.
Immediately following the swearing in of the new council, an emergency meeting was held. Marshal Everett Morrow was fired on the spot. Council promptly requested his badge and gun.
Morrow, indignant, whipped the badge across the chamber floor toward the council. His hand went to his gun.
What Morrow said next would be the closing line in the two Western movies that were being played out in Telluride, the one in which Morrow was the villain and the one, in his own mind, in which he was the hero.
“The badge is yours. But the gun is mine.”
In 1973, George Greenbank, Kent Ryan, Buddy Crane and Wayne Watkins were working in construction in West Telluride, (today’s Hillside). One particular day on the job, above all others, lives on in infamy.
It started with an old stag that came down off the hillside looking for grass under the new snow. A new-comer, probably an east-coaster who only knew deer that looked like Bambi, stopped while driving out of town to observe the hearty Mule Deer.
The gawker’s dog was interested too. It jumped out of the back of the truck bed and started after the deer scaring the deer over the fence and onto the plowed highway.
George and the others observed the scene from their position atop the roof they were working on. Wayne, a transplant from California, was particularly sensitive to the buck’s plight. He went down to the road and cut the top wire of the fence, with hopes of giving the deer access back to the meadow.
Not much time passed before the Town Marshal, Everett Morrow, a tough, hippie-hater, drove up in his Ford Falcon police vehicle. Morrow appraised the deer and the broken fence. In an instant his mind was made. He walked toward the now worn-out buck and drew his revolver.
Wayne went nuts: screaming, running and waving a hammer as he ran from the construction site down to the highway.
But it was too late. Morrow had shot the deer. Now his smoking gun was turned onto the hysteric and hammer wielding Wayne.
Morrow didn’t pull the trigger again, despite Wayne’s onslaught of insults, objections and threats. Instead Morrow returned his gun to holster and himself to his Falcon. Without a word, he drove back into town.
The crew quit work at 5p.m. Before leaving to meet their ski patrol buddies, as was their custom, at the Sheridan Bar, the men helped Wayne load the dead deer into his jeep. Something had to be done. Within minutes they found themselves lopping a dead deer onto the Sheridan Bar. No one objected.
They told anyone that would listen that night about the day’s injustice. They drank, waited, drank, and waited some more, all the while expecting Morrow to show up to face the deer on the bar of the Sheridan.
Morrow never showed.
The mayor, Francis Warner did. He told everyone to go home. The old dead deer on the bar was removed by a miner who, over the course of the night’s debauchery, bore witness to the crew’s indignation and ultimate unraveling over a deer’s death.
By spring the hippies were organized. At the next election, five new-comers, including George Greenbank and a hippie backed mayor, were elected. Change had come.
Only too late for the old buck.
Immediately following the swearing in of the new council, an emergency meeting was held. Marshal Everett Morrow was fired on the spot. Council promptly requested his badge and gun.
Morrow, indignant, whipped the badge across the chamber floor toward the council. His hand went to his gun.
What Morrow said next would be the closing line in the two Western movies that were being played out in Telluride, the one in which Morrow was the villain and the one, in his own mind, in which he was the hero.
“The badge is yours. But the gun is mine.”
Thursday, January 13, 2011
In the beginning, we did everything wrong.
I always wanted a dog, even when we occasionally had one.
Maybe because he knew he wouldn’t give her kids of her own, dad gave his first girlfriend (after the divorce from mom) a Samoyed named Yukon. Mom coached us kids to call the dog Pukon. That’s all I remember about Pukey; the relationship didn’t make it past house-training.
Later, when dad re-married, we acquired Rocky: a German Sheppard who ate rocks. Rocky, like everything else nice in our lives (the BMW, the electric piano, the yogurt in the fridge), had the distinct feeling of belonging exclusively to Nancy, evidenced by the disappearance of all of the above after the divorce.
By the time I had a Driver’s License we were again dogless and newly living in the house dad had grown up in. He bought the house from his parents, having sold The Bar, and not a minute too soon. I had already stolen my first Zima, which I sipped, alone, in my attic bedroom, while watching of all things: Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments.
One afternoon, dad came home with a puppy that was meant to be a purebred, only the breeder’s stud Labrador literally ate through a kennel to mount the breeder’s German Sheppard, an animal instinct my sister and I confused for romantic.
For no memorable reason, we named the puppy Hobie. Being a weekend we then did what teenagers and single 30-somethings do: we each went Out, only to return, hours later, disheartened. It was non-negotiable: the dog could not be named Hobie.
It was the ‘90s and everyone on planet Earth was watching Baywatch. We learned that night, as so many people were compelled to talk about it, one of the show’s stars was named (and I bet you knew this) Hobie. We weren’t a Baywatch house we were a Sci-Fi house, damn it! So, and hardly believing this wasn’t our first instinct, renamed our dog we did: Obi-Wan Kenobi.
In the beginning, we did everything wrong. There was no kennel and hardly a leash. We invited Obi onto furniture (OK I did). Our favorite party trick was a demonstration of how gingerly Obi would take a tortilla chip hanging from my teen-aged mouth.
Dad likes to say, “Plant potatoes. Get Potatoes.” Well, for what we lacked in discipline, we might as well have moved to Idaho. Every day after school, I’d hold my breath as I opened the front door, afraid to learn what shoes he’d destroyed, what door he managed to scratch through, basically, what hell he’d unleashed.
On one particularly motivated day for Obi, I opened the front door and the first words that popped into my head surprised me almost as much as the scene before me. Of course, I’d heard the words before, but I never put them together in my own mind: Home Invasion. I honestly thought, at least briefly, that someone had ransacked our house, like you hear about in big cities and in movies.
How could a dog pull carpet back 35 feet from the front door? How could a puppy move furniture across different rooms? How could Obi, our dog without thumbs, pull up iron grates from the floor?
We had a cat, a witness to it all. She too looked shocked as she navigated Obi’s interior musings. Note: there are entire websites devoted to emotional looking cats, in case you question that detail.
On this morning, 13 years later, dad choked back tears as he told me, over the phone, only the facts: Obi needs to be put down. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. His hind legs can’t hold him up anymore. He’s in pain.
In that first year we had Obi, the dog not only ushered in an era of new shoes, carpet, stone tile at the front door (try to dig that up!) and furniture; he also demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we were not ready to have a dog.
But alas, Obi grew to be protective like a German Sheppard and playful like the best Lab. He’d leap through an open window into the front seat of the car the moment you even thought: ride. He’d fetch his own leash and never hesitated to bark madly for help whenever I locked myself out of the house. Obi was the dog that would easily win the affection of dad’s third wife and keep them company when I went off to college and later when I left Pennsylvania for Colorado.
With the same duplicity demonstrated by dad’s affinity for pouring scotch on top of beer, he managed both hot-headed infuriation and undying affection for Obi. Despite being unprepared, inconvenienced, challenged, taxed emotionally and tapped economically, dad loved Obi unconditionally; without hesitation. Not at all unlike the way my young, occasionally-single, father found himself loving his kids.
Maybe the ability to pull that off is as prepared as anyone can be for this life. And, maybe, this is an Ode to Dad as much as it is an Ode to Obi.
Maybe because he knew he wouldn’t give her kids of her own, dad gave his first girlfriend (after the divorce from mom) a Samoyed named Yukon. Mom coached us kids to call the dog Pukon. That’s all I remember about Pukey; the relationship didn’t make it past house-training.
Later, when dad re-married, we acquired Rocky: a German Sheppard who ate rocks. Rocky, like everything else nice in our lives (the BMW, the electric piano, the yogurt in the fridge), had the distinct feeling of belonging exclusively to Nancy, evidenced by the disappearance of all of the above after the divorce.
By the time I had a Driver’s License we were again dogless and newly living in the house dad had grown up in. He bought the house from his parents, having sold The Bar, and not a minute too soon. I had already stolen my first Zima, which I sipped, alone, in my attic bedroom, while watching of all things: Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments.
One afternoon, dad came home with a puppy that was meant to be a purebred, only the breeder’s stud Labrador literally ate through a kennel to mount the breeder’s German Sheppard, an animal instinct my sister and I confused for romantic.
For no memorable reason, we named the puppy Hobie. Being a weekend we then did what teenagers and single 30-somethings do: we each went Out, only to return, hours later, disheartened. It was non-negotiable: the dog could not be named Hobie.
It was the ‘90s and everyone on planet Earth was watching Baywatch. We learned that night, as so many people were compelled to talk about it, one of the show’s stars was named (and I bet you knew this) Hobie. We weren’t a Baywatch house we were a Sci-Fi house, damn it! So, and hardly believing this wasn’t our first instinct, renamed our dog we did: Obi-Wan Kenobi.
In the beginning, we did everything wrong. There was no kennel and hardly a leash. We invited Obi onto furniture (OK I did). Our favorite party trick was a demonstration of how gingerly Obi would take a tortilla chip hanging from my teen-aged mouth.
Dad likes to say, “Plant potatoes. Get Potatoes.” Well, for what we lacked in discipline, we might as well have moved to Idaho. Every day after school, I’d hold my breath as I opened the front door, afraid to learn what shoes he’d destroyed, what door he managed to scratch through, basically, what hell he’d unleashed.
On one particularly motivated day for Obi, I opened the front door and the first words that popped into my head surprised me almost as much as the scene before me. Of course, I’d heard the words before, but I never put them together in my own mind: Home Invasion. I honestly thought, at least briefly, that someone had ransacked our house, like you hear about in big cities and in movies.
How could a dog pull carpet back 35 feet from the front door? How could a puppy move furniture across different rooms? How could Obi, our dog without thumbs, pull up iron grates from the floor?
We had a cat, a witness to it all. She too looked shocked as she navigated Obi’s interior musings. Note: there are entire websites devoted to emotional looking cats, in case you question that detail.
On this morning, 13 years later, dad choked back tears as he told me, over the phone, only the facts: Obi needs to be put down. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. His hind legs can’t hold him up anymore. He’s in pain.
In that first year we had Obi, the dog not only ushered in an era of new shoes, carpet, stone tile at the front door (try to dig that up!) and furniture; he also demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we were not ready to have a dog.
But alas, Obi grew to be protective like a German Sheppard and playful like the best Lab. He’d leap through an open window into the front seat of the car the moment you even thought: ride. He’d fetch his own leash and never hesitated to bark madly for help whenever I locked myself out of the house. Obi was the dog that would easily win the affection of dad’s third wife and keep them company when I went off to college and later when I left Pennsylvania for Colorado.
With the same duplicity demonstrated by dad’s affinity for pouring scotch on top of beer, he managed both hot-headed infuriation and undying affection for Obi. Despite being unprepared, inconvenienced, challenged, taxed emotionally and tapped economically, dad loved Obi unconditionally; without hesitation. Not at all unlike the way my young, occasionally-single, father found himself loving his kids.
Maybe the ability to pull that off is as prepared as anyone can be for this life. And, maybe, this is an Ode to Dad as much as it is an Ode to Obi.
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