Mar. 29, 2003 - 01:37:37
Dear Vincent,
I've been over at the community college theater helping to build a set a few days this week. I've been using a lot of the spray on adhesive stuff in the aerosol containers. Not to hold the set together mind you- just to keep fake picture frames on the 'walls' and to keep other odds and ends in place. Yesterday I had to laminate a bunch of panels with fabric and spray on adhesive. I worked for about two and a half hours before I decided I had to have a break. I came to the conclusion I needed a break when I was whistling and thinking, I'm very happy. Abruptly my whistling cut off as I wondered, suspiciously why am I happy? Not that I need a definite reason to be happy, it was just that covered in a thin film of adhesive, hot, sweaty and mildly irritated by the trouble the fabric was giving me usually does not equal bliss. Suddenly I became acutely aware of the adhesive floating in the air around me, and regarding it dolefully I put down my scissors and decided it was time for fresh air. So I went to take a step and found I couldn't. So I tried again and I still couldn't move. It was then I realized that the aerosol adhesive must has settled around me and I'd stood in it... and gradually, it had dried. It took some prying but my feet came up. Not before some of the other set design people noticed though and made bets on how long it would take me to wrench my feet from the floor.
While I was at the theater I listened to a theater group's first rehearsal of "Our Town" as I worked. Before they began the director was trying to put them in the mind set of the times. She was talking about how you could go to the movies for a penny etc. and so forth. "What did the milk man bring back then?" she asked. The cast looked at her as if she were daft and one offered meekly, "Milk?" "Yes," acceded the director impatiently- "but what else did the milkman bring?" The cast rustled slightly and one guys shouted, "Sex?" The cast dissolved into laughter.
During that same rehearsal the guy who was playing the paper boy made his first entrance, opened his mouth and began delivering his lines in a southern drawl. The director waved her hands impatiently for him to desist and when he stopped she looked at him quaking with laughter and said, "Paul, this play takes place in New England. Don't talk like you own a plantation." "Right!" he said enthusiastically... in a southern drawl.
Saskia goes to protests in D.C. about once a month, of late she's gone a little more frequently than that. The schedule dates vary but the big ones are scheduled none the same. Granted there are protests of all types and lobbying in D.C. everyday. Once, walking past the White House I was accosted by a lobbyist for the Soil Conservationists of America. Usually, I am pretty environment friendly but the conservationist would not stop talking and I had somewhere to be. So I cut his spiel short by asking, "So what you basically advocate is "Save the dirt?"" He looked baffled and opened his mouth to answer, thought the better of it and I walked on.
If you are traveling significantly over the speed limit D.C. is about an hour and five minutes from my home. If you are driving at an "I'm a menace to society" speed and you miss the exit D.C. is an hour and forty five minutes from my home. Walking consistently it's about two days away. As the crow flies... well I'm not sure, I don't know how fast crows fly. Driving at a reasonable speed it's about an hour and a half.
I'm sorry your back has it in for you. All I can offer are get well wishes and perhaps more stories to keep your mind off your back.
And so, a story, sort of. (If you are adverse to a sort story about my dad stop reading now.) (And my thoughts do have some natural progression, my dad is the topic choice because he's had a back problem for as long as I've known him.) Lest you believe I'm falling down on the 'writing' job I'm not going to virtuosity of language, but for veracity.
I have a fantastic father. I really mean that, I am lucky that way. He is my mother's antithesis in every way. Don't ask me to explain why they love each other because I'll never understand it. They are exactly wrong for each other. My father is an equal opportunist- he hates everybody equally. With the exception of a few people, so few in fact, that I can list them. He loves my mother, my sister, Lilly my cousin, Joe, also my cousin and his sister my Aunt Lenore and his godchildren (my cousins Mary, Zach and Marc). He likes my Uncle Tony and Aunt Rita and the men he works with. He tolerates
certain people if social occasion demands. There are three groups of life that my father gets along with impeccably: children, animals and plants.
My father has been a police officer for more than twenty five years. He went into the job with the youthful ambitions of defending the innocent. Over twenty five years later the beat has changed him Vincent. He is suspicious of everyone and looks for ulterior motives when there are none to be found. He seems to operate under the assumption that the innocent to defend are a diminishing group. Perhaps this is why my father gets along so splendidly with children. Finding in them no malice capable of measuring up to the type he deals with everyday he enjoys their company. Oddly enough- they enjoy his. For all the fawning women and girls do over little kids it is my father they seek out at events. My dad is patient beyond belief. All those years of questioning criminals have made him both a good prompter and listener. He knows exactly what to say to keep children talking, and they love to talk to someone who seems interested. And it's not even that he just seems interested. You know how adults pretend to be interested in what children say, my father honestly is interested.
My father works with a collage of characters almost cartoonish in nature. Their names are: Wooby, Scooby, Leslie, and Jay. Comedic in character as well as in name- but their stories we will save for another bad back day. My father is a legend of sorts in the police department. He is old enough to have caught the last glory days, if there ever were glory days in Baltimore, of being a police officer. He is of the "old guard" because he can twirl a three foot night stick menacingly or just swirl it in a brown blur as he walks his beat. Since I was two he has been a Lieutenant. And for all the commissioners that have breezed through Baltimore on their way to better things my father has neither found favor or disapproval with them. It is for this reason, that my father has been a Lieutenant for so long. Putting it bluntly, excuse the language, my father refuses to kiss anyone's ass. The police department is as political a place as any but my father won't play, he never has. So when Commissioners flip flop my father has never been the man to be frozen out of work when the new commissioner seeks to adjust department politics. Then again, he's been a Lieutenant for so long for this very reason. When I was little inter department rumor had it he was to be offered a promotion. Jay still talks about how my father made a bee line to the commissioners office to inform the commissioner that if he tried to promote him, he would resign. When the commissioner asked why, my father told him that he wouldn't give up the time at home.
My father is beloved by the men under his jurisdiction. For years they tried to get him to come out with them for beers and poker and that kind of thing. They've stopped trying now- every once and a while a new cop will ask, "Why don't we invite Lt. Allen?" and they respond "He won't come, he wants to go home." They like him for more reasons than I know of. He bends over backwards to get them time with their families on holidays. He stands up for them. My dad is good with finance, he was an accountant at one point and he helps them do their taxes. They seek his advice on investment plans and stocks. They discuss their marital problems, their health problems their everything with my father. Like the children, they like him because he listens. Really listens, and is really interested. Whenever someone in the department has a problem the joke is, "Go see Lt. Allen for any life advice you need." And I don't know all this about my dad because he tells me. When I talk to the men he works with they tell me things like this, unsolicited.
A few years ago he tried to retire. His superiors told him he couldn't leave- they would have to hire three people to fill his position. They told him he could stay on any conditions. So he cut down his hours so he could come home more, and stayed.
A year after he almost retired his boss left and he got a new one. My father suspected that the new boss might not recognize his arrangement. That was fine by my father, he had twenty years plus, he could leave any time he wanted. The first day his new boss was at the station he found my father and said, "In the Central district they told me I should do anything and everything to keep you. I think you and I will do great together." My father eyed him skeptically and said, "I'll give you a try." Just like that.
My father speaks slowly. He doesn't think slowly, but he considers things carefully before he spews them forth. When I was little my father and I had our best conversations in his pick up truck. I'd talk, and when I'd talk I'd talk to get advice. I usually never came out and asked what he thought I should do about things, but I ended almost every lengthy recitation with a "So..." that tapered in volume until it died away. This was his cue. He would drive quietly. Long after the time for proper social conversation responses had passed he would respond. Always very little, but also always very clear and logical. And from the time I was little my father always treated me as his equal. If I asked he told me the truth. I go to my father for frankness on most subjects. (The most recent of which have been politics and tax deferred annuities...)
My soccer playing years were defining years in my relationship with my father. I played with the same team from the time I was 4 years old until I was 13. The older we got, the more competitive the game got. He brought me to practices and games and made sure my soccer socks got a few inches cut off the top because they were too big for me. And when the age came when the other coaches screamed themselves blue over a child's game my father stood apart. He always physically distanced himself from the other coaches and spectators. He wasn't like them, he never yelled about soccer, in fact he was silent. And after games, when other girls got lectured he told me I did a good job. My father's role in my life has been very much like his role in my soccer years. A constant, yet not stifling source of encouragement and approval.
My father can make anything grow. He has no tricks of the trade- he knows of no special blend of compost and fertilizer that makes plants grow. His only garden philosophy is that there is no real philosophy of gardening. He maintains: "The flowers grew before man was here to grow them. They'll grow." Remarkably, grow they do. Unlike most males, he will read the instruction manuel to set up the VCR but he won't read planting instructions. The year I decided I wanted my own garden he spent hours helping me till the soil. Anticipating the planting to be the longest part I was slightly flabbergasted when all we did was scatter a heckle speckle mixture of seeds into the garden and sweep small hand fills of dirt over top. In a few weeks the result was a riotous mass of tangling, teasing, testy, tasteless and tremendous color. There was a tomato plant in there somewhere but I always had to hunt for it.
When my mother and father were first married they were having dinner outside on their deck. Suddenly my father rocketed from his seat almost turning the table over in the process and dashed down the street. When he returned abut 20 minutes later my mother found he had chased after the neighborhood tomcat, who had a baby chipmunk clasped between it's jaws. My dad didn't want the cat to eat the chipmunk.
My mother once told me that when she married my father she thought she was smarter than him. She'd gotten her masters in English and he was a cop. She was a scholar of sorts, he was a blue collar worker. But the truth is, and was that she isn't and wasn't smarter than my father. The difference is that my mother's expertise is in one concentrated area. My father knows a bit about a great many things. His knowledge is very all encompassing.
The summer I was 14 my father rescued two baby bunny rabbits from their burrow as a cat tried to dig them out. (My apologies Vincent but my father and cats seem to operate on a certain mutual level of distrust.) We named them Thelma and Louise and Vincent they were not more than small, soft masses of warm fur in my hand. I could hold one easily in one cupped palm and stroke their small ears with my pinky. We kept them until they were old enough to survive without their mother.
There are a million and one pictures of my mother, my sister and I. At all ages, separately, together. My father has been diligent about preserving us. He's a talented photographer. (Saskia is always throwing fits about all the great photographs she sees that he's taken because she insists he should take a photography course...) There are rolls of me when I was a baby. The interesting thing is that my father did not confine his photo endeavors to special occasions. Over the years he's collected a massive amount of photos of day to day life. Sorting through packets of film last year around Christmas time I let them slap to the floor. With each slapping sound I could swear I heard someone whisper "devotion." And indeed my father is devoted.
Only a few years ago the police department informed my father he must submit his résumé for 'reevaluation'. He sent it to them on a post it note. But he's still a cop...
Occasionally my father would accompany my mother to a social event when I was growing up. My mother would seek my father out consistently to check on him. Progressively, the longer he spent with the men his hand would inch up toward where his holster would be if he were on duty. When his hand was on the holster, my mother knew he could tolerate no more. He never liked the men because they asked him about work all the time. "How good can work get?" he once asked me. "I watch people die everyday. True we save a few but I watch too many more die."
When I was two the stairs were my playground. I went up and down repetitively for extended periods of time. My mother remember this about me because it was the first time I laughed aloud. My father loved to watch me. In his radio car one day he wrote me a poem. It was about two year old me finding joy on the steps. I finally convinced him to let me have it a few years back. Vincent it's an awful poem. Bad imagery, poor word choice but Vincent I love it. I have the poem memorized by heart. The paper itself is pressed securely between the pages of my favorite book. On the back of the paper is scrawled: white male, about 32, 6'1'', brown hair, blue eyes, jeans and green sweatshirt- it was the description for a suspect my father got a call on after he finished the poem.
My father says he hates people. He doesn't. He hates man's capability to be ambitious and cruel. More so than many perhaps because he deals with it so consistently and in such strong dosages everyday. He could maybe live without people in general. But he could not live without his family. My father, lacking though he may be in social graces has also never developed a hint of the sticky coating of polite and acceptable that everyone learns to wear.
It comes down to this Vincent: I have a fantastic father. I love him completely. When I was little he would leave early for work so he could be home for dinner. In the wee hours of the morning when I was still asleep before he left he would creep into my room and whisper, "Daddy loves Meghan." I know this entire letter is very sappy- but it's the truth that I have been very lucky in having my father. My father is fantastic because everything he has ever done has been a labor of love. Becoming a police officer, the photography, the planting, the refused promotions, working to let men go home to their families and the poem. His life is a labor of love and I love him for it.
And when I broke the plates my mother and father had the "she gets this from 'you'" argument right before I got grounded for a week.
Cumulonimbusly,
Meghan
what they said - what they will say
