Remembering

I heard Toni Morrison say to Oprah on her show, “Your face should light up when your child walks in the room.” My daddy’s always did and his smile lit the whole room. He died 21 years ago and I have been thinking about him a lot lately. He was generous with his words, his money, and his love. One time in particular he changed his usual behavior just for me.

When my first husband left me, I called Daddy at six in the morning crying. He said, “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something. Can you go to school?”

“I can’t stay here by myself. It’s a teacher workday so I don’t have to be in front of students.”

When I got to school, I called my mother who was already at her teaching job at James Monroe High School in Fredericksburg, VA. She said, “Your daddy is on his way. He should be there in about ten hours if he doesn’t hit heavy traffic.”

When I got home from school, I alternated between pacing and staring at the sliding glass door. At 10:00 pm the empty frame of the door was finally filled with the sight of him. I jumped up, hugged him, cried, and began the long sordid story. He did not interrupt while I talked till midnight. I couldn’t sleep so about 2:00 am I crawled in the guest bed beside him and finally slept with my back to his back.  

The next day he continued to listen. Before that Daddy always talked and told you what to do. I told the tale until my tears dried up.

Then he took me out to eat. I said, “I can’t eat.” He said, “Take a little bite, chew, take a sip of water, then swallow….OK, keep doing that until you have finished half of the grilled cheese.”

As soon as I was fed and watered, I began to cry again. After two days, I said, “I feel like every decision I’ve made for five years is wrong. I’m going to make another one that might be wrong. I’m going home.” I was in my third week of a new teaching job in Nashville, TN. I come from a family of do-right teachers--you don’t miss school and you certainly don’t quit. I did anyway.

Daddy went to the phone, called my mother and said, “Get out here. I need some help. She’s coming home.” His not giving advice and listening for two days while I cried was a lifetime gift of grace that nourishes me still.

Love Me Do

January 50 years ago I rode a train to Durham, NC, with my friend Stevie Danahy to be a date for fraternity rush week at Duke. I had never been to Durham but knew the name, Duke, as a high class college. I danced to “Love Me Do,” a great song by a new group called the Beatles. I had first heard the song early one morning before school on my small green and white transistor radio that sat on the top of my chest of drawers while I was brushing my perfect beehive hairdo in front of the full length mirror on my closet door. I put down the brush and began to dance and asked myself, “Who are they?”

I soon found out and the huge deal of their coming to America to be on the Ed Sullivan show was like a national holiday. Almost everyone in America stopped what they were doing to watch them on Sunday night, February 9, 1964. My husband’s minister preached a short sermon and had everyone go to the basement social hall to watch on multiple TVs he had had set up. I watched with my family in the living room on William Street. We didn’t go to Sunday night church. I loved them, but I did think the screaming, fainting girls on TV were ridiculous.

But before their coming to America I had heard a live band in the Duke fraternity house play “Love, love me do, I'll always love you....” I absolutely loved the song and the dancing.

50 years later I am keeping my seven-year-old grandson for four days at my house. He lives in Durham and his parents were married in the Duke Chapel, which was only the third time I had been back to Durham since 1964.

Last Saturday I rode the train from Charlotte to Durham at 7 am and back to Charlotte with him at noon on the same day because I thought a train ride would be exciting to him. His is the last of the three one-on-one excursions with each grandchild I had planned for the summer and pulled off with a lot of driving and prayer.

The last night he said while he continued to improve his pool game, “What kind of music do you have on your phone?”

“The Rolling Stones,” I answered. I got my phone and played the song I dance to after I walk each day--"Honky Tonk Woman." That didn't do it for him. 

“Do you have Prince?”

“No.”

“The Bee Gees?”

“No.”

“Evis?”

“No.” But I liked the direction he was heading in even though I had no idea how he knew this music.

“The Beatles?”

“I think I have a CD of them.”” I got it and the player.

He played first, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” because I said I liked it. Then “Eight Days a Week” and “Hey Jude.” Then he chose “Love Me Do.” We both loved the beat and the words and I flashed back and thought, “Yes, this might have been my favorite rather than “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” We played it at least 30 times in a row and got more powerful with our singing each time. While I moved my arms and swung my hips, he added a fast running round off (a special kind of cart wheel) that began with “plea-ea-ea ease” and ended with us pointing our fingers at each other and singing a loud, “Love me do.”

 A past and present connection separated by 50 years floored me with mystery and marvel. How can this be? Something that I loved when I was 18 and so full of questions about what my life would hold. Would I have a husband? children? I couldn’t even imagine grandchildren. The youngest of my three grand children brought home a memory and reminded me of desires of my youth that have been so wonderfully fulfilled.

White Dogwoods

I love white dogwoods.  My daddy loved them.  He planted many.  He went to the woods once and dug up a wild small one, which was illegal in Virginia.  He took me along, and I was nervous someone would see us much like I was when several years later he took me to the same country road for my first driving lesson the week before I was to take the test for my learners permit. 

I got in the driver’s seat and Daddy sat close beside me so he could grab the wheel if need be. When I was driving slowly, a police car appeared in the other lane and drove over the hill behind us.  Daddy said, “Stop the car and let me behind the wheel.” The policeman turned around, came back and stopped us.  He said, “Was she driving?”

Daddy said, “She is not driving now.” 

The officer stared at us. He didn’t like it, but he let us go.

When I told Mama about it, she said, “I don’t know why he couldn’t wait one week.”

But I digress. All his dogwood trees died.  The last one was a four-foot baby that was still living when I fell on it while I was backing up for a badminton shot.  It broke in half, and I felt my heart drop to my knees.

I didn’t want to tell.  I wanted to wait and say, “Someone else did it,” or “I don’t know what happened,” but I knew my face would give me away.

Mary Frances, my playing partner, and I stood and looked at the remaining stalk for a while.  Finally I walked in the back door and said, “I killed your dogwood. I am so sorry.” He took it well, but I could feel his disappointment.  Not long after, the city said cars could not be parked on the street in front of our house. He covered all the grass in the backyard with asphalt so two cars could be kept there with room to turn around and drive out to the busy street facing forward. Then only roses could line both sides of the blacktop.

Daddy planted two dogwoods in the yard of our first house in Charlotte.  They lived, but then we moved to Florida. We stayed there for twelve years, and he was gone when we moved back to Charlotte.  I hired a professional landscaping company to plant one that was too big to break in the front yard of my second Charlotte house.  It has thrived. 

Two years ago I asked the same company to plant two in the backyard where a big tree had come down.  My husband had said, “Let’s give them to each other as Christmas and birthday presents.” They died, but they were guaranteed so two more were planted last year.  They bloomed beautifully in April, but in the fall they didn’t look right—they didn’t produce the tight little buds under the red leaves that would be next year’s blooms.

I called the grower in February.  He said, “If they are dead, I won’t replace them again. You must have bad soil back there.”

For the month of March I looked at them several times a day and said to myself—you have to let them go just like Daddy did, and I felt what seemed an irrational sadness that was bigger than just the loss of the money although that was significant. 

April 1st I looked out the window and thought something seemed different.  I ran outside and saw what I thought might be the beginning of leaves.  When I got back from a business trip, three days of 80 degrees had made it definite.  They wouldn’t bloom this year, but they were not dead. They had leaves. I am and Daddy would be so happy.