FRAILTY

My father was an interesting dad. One of the things he did that drove my mother insane was to sit down when we are all watching TV and open up an encyclopedia. He would read quietly for a time, then impart some interesting fact he’d found. I loved it. I am sure that this is the reason that I developed a love of learning for fun.

 One thing that made my siblings groan were our trips to historical places. We spent most weekends traveling up and down California seeing what there was to see. Much of this time was spent on the gold highway. Like it or not, historical education with my father was a required course in our family. Few events could get you out of these outings. He believed that we needed to know our history to understand the present and possible futures. Likewise we were also assigned reading material to be discussed after finishing the books he selected. But that is another matter.

It was not the most comfortable travel, which is the major reason they groaned, but also because they would rather be hanging out with friends. By this time I was in junior high and they were both in high school. The two oldest sisters were off and married. The three of us teens were jammed in the rear seat of a 1965 Mustang.

I do not know what my brother and the Medusa were grumpped over because I was the one stuck in the middle. If you know vintage Mustangs, you understand. The rear seat rests on the drive shaft in the middle. I had about two inches of padding under my rump that topped what amounted to a steel pipe. My legs had to straddle the “hump” of the drive shaft on either side, which led to foot fights for space. In the end I often laid my legs down the hump to rest just to the rear of the shifter. Meanwhile my butt went numb. I was always happy to reach some site and jump out of the car if for no other reason than to get the feeling in my fanny back.

One time he was on his way home from a race. My dad was pulling the race car behind on the trailer. I cannot recall what track he had been on, but they swung by Santa Cruz to pick me up from a month of bad behavior with my funch bunch. I squeezed into the middle of the rear seat… myself in my first year of high school now and the Medusa in college, my senior brother a football back. My legs drifted down that hump to rest against the shift.

Some fool opted to cut my dad off. Two things happened in rapid succession. First, my father grabbed my foot and shifted. Well that didn’t work out well! Then my father, who never uttered a swear word in my hearing in my entire life said some very shocking words. All of the occupants of the car dropped their chins in disbelief while I reeled my legs back into the back seat. He deftly steered the car and trailer off the side of the road, escaping disaster by inches. The car sat there in silence for many minutes. No one would have dared to say a word. Not even my mother, who was queen of the world in dad’s eyes. We may have been an hour down the road before anyone tried to speak… and then it was my father, who apologized for his behavior.  I admired that.

All my life my father had chosen his curses carefully. There was “dad gum it, dog gone it, for the love of Pete” (Who was Pete that we did things for the love of him?) and my favorite, “cheese and rice!” Now that we are all adults, I do hear him swear like he was born to it. But not then. I was shocked despite my own colorful language use at the point in time. Somehow I deluded myself into thinking that he did not even know those words.

My father believed in educating his children himself. Some day I tell you how he taught me to drink. Ha. Or how he taught me to drive… very entertaining, both. C4C was a participant in the drinking training. Not to worry, her folks had a similar attitude. Kind of like the plan to keep me from smoking on street corners. Sometimes our plans backfire. Enough said.

It's shocking when we realize that our parents are human like the rest of us. If I had been another person, I might have thought worse of my father. Instead, I found his being human being with all their flaws a comfort of sorts. That perhaps I had this thing in common with a man that I had previously felt was so far above me that I could never manage to measure up to his level of quality. Yes, it did open my eyes a bit, but not at all in a bad way. In a very odd way, it made us more equal and gave me permission to be human too.