3. A NOMAD’S CHILDHOOD ABRUPTLY ENDS

In many cases being the youngest can make us the permanent experiment, scapegoat, sucker, and gopher for our older siblings. There tends to be a rampant tendency for older siblings to feel they can take out their frustrations because the attention, money, and possessions younger siblings kept back from their shared parents that wouldn’t have been spared had the next not been born.

My family is a replica of ‘Father Knows Best’ down to the characters. Rational is a witness to Poppy’s, (my dad) pet name for me, Kitten. Not very original but appreciated nonetheless. Being Poppy’s little girl is the upside to being the youngest. Poppy was working a lot but he always made time for me that caused great upset with my older siblings. No matter how many times Poppy tried to surprise me, the older ones always spilled the beans, spoiling it. He was generous with all of us, but because I was the toddler, I got most of his attention, which drove the older ones mad.

It was early spring, when the earth is just beginning its wake from winter. Two weeks since my 6th birthday. My family was sitting around the table eating dinner. My dad didn’t feel well and asked that his doctor come to the house. He had never done this before. All of my dad’s medical needs were always addressed outside our house. His doctor came and insisted he go to bed and rest. We’d finished dinner, and were clearing up when my mom came running into the kitchen, “The doctor said to call an ambulance! She raced back the way she came.

A sibling ran to the phone and dialed, shaking, crying and screaming for an ambulance. The only boy went still. He didn’t move a muscle. I began to cry and the time slowly crept by seeming like hours, instead of minuets since my sister had called for an ambulance.

“I’m going out front to see where they are.” Her eyes were red from crying.

I followed her out front leaving my brother in his comatose state. I had followed my sister around numerous times. We stood in the cold night. Steam seeped from our mouths and the stars were bright. It was eerily quiet. The lights shone softly through a light frost, kissing every available surface exposed to the elements. There was no sign of an ambulance and my sister was muttering under her breath what ass holes the unseen ambulance held in its unseen helm.

Suddenly she began jumping up and down. “Over here you idiots!” Waving her hands trying to get their attention. They continued to go down each long drive to see the numbers checking addresses. My sister kept screaming and I duplicated her actions and her words, action for action, word for word. Finally they saw her or heard her because the ambulance was making its way towards us lights flashing and the siren full blast.

Now it seemed as though hours had passed since the doctor and ambulance drivers had been in my parent’s bedroom. In the ensuing hours several relatives had arrived at our house. None of our relatives were as financially well off as my father. He had helped many of them in their plights for success, my dad being their mentor. Some made it, but more often then not they didn’t. My dad never held their inability to pay off their loan from him. Instead he thought of it more like an investment that didn’t pay off and felt it was a small price to pay for an excellent education. The room was crowded and no one was talking. I over-heard conversations I wished I hadn’t and my instincts were in overdrive. I’m young but can differentiate between intuition and fact.

The longer the doctor and medical technicians worked on my dad the more I felt an over-whelming notion that the end was coming. I couldn’t help from wanting to go to the very room where my dad’s life was dissipating.

I was having my first encounter with loneliness. Everyone was comforting each other and I sat by myself. I wondered why no one else wanted to break down the door and see what was happening. No one took any notice of me when I left the room we had all congregated in. The adults did everything possible to avoid eye contact or talking to me unless it was some baby gibberish. My sister and brother were gone from my sight.

I slipped into the sunroom and sat by the fountain’s edge. I stared at the carp swimming mindlessly in their aquamarine colored captivity. Their bodies moved almost effortlessly around their enclosed environment. Their sleek bodies shimmering in the evening lights, darting where ever they chose to be but still held within the confines of the walls surrounding them. Watching them I realized I wanted to know what they were doing in that room and how my dad felt.

My parent’s bedroom door loomed in front of me, and I had no expectations of what I would find. My hand was on the glass-sculptured knob, cool to the touch of my fingers. A sensation I knew then and there would stay with me in my life. I opened the door and saw before me an entourage of men encircling my dad. His body was laid out on the stretcher, his back to me. The doctor’s face contorted in horror. Then my eyes settled on my brother, looking very annoyed.

They had my dad’s left leg up in the air, while his body lay twisted and lifeless to the side. They yelled at me to leave the room. Their words struck me in my absence of mind. I ran out of the room, fighting the vomit surging wildly in my throat and made it to the top of the main staircase. I swallowed over and over trying to rid my need to throw up and remained thinking of the awful vision of my dad’s contorted nude body. We were all witnesses to a man’s life slipping out of him.

Voices came from every direction, but none that sounded familiar. I heard my parent’s bedroom door open only to hear more unfamiliar voices. From the top of the stairs I couldn’t see what was going on in the doorway of my parent’s bedroom. The voices grew closer and the men that were with my dad appeared. The stretcher came into view as well and my dad, ashen and drawn was being wheeled out of his house he worked so hard for, for the last time. I felt completely helpless and knew if my dad had not been able to crack this, I could only love him. My heart was on the verge of stopping and joining his but just as I was going to turn away his eyes opened. Those gentle eyes I had grown to depend upon looked up at me in a place where only he could see and mouthed the words, “I love you”. My first reaction was to scream out and run to him but my body was paralyzed. I froze on the stair, head in my lap, tears streaming out of my eyes knowing this is the last time I will ever see my dad alive or any semblance of childhood. It was over for both of us.

The only man I ever loved or trusted was my dad. I had spent countless hours on the many beds my dad filled in hospitals after one of his heart attacks in the first six years of my life. We would spend the time talking about what he hoped for us, what he wanted to do with us kids, his ambitions, his fears and his politics. He had these kindly gentle brown eyes that melted you with a deep twinkle that brightened and dimmed depending on whether he was amused or serious, but he never lost the twinkle. My mom would sneak me into the hospital for these innocuous visits. It became one of our games. He was in intensive care and kids my age weren’t allowed, but those kinds of things never stopped my dad. The sterile room never scared me. He always had a private room and we were left to talk as openly as we liked. My quick responses or impulse answers that would come from a 20 year old rather then a six year old would startle him and he would smile broadly. We had a rhythm that was balanced regardless of our age difference. We understood each other. I brought out the child in him and he let me be the adult I was capable of being but everyone else was scared of.

My dad was incredibly enthusiastic about the holidays. Any holiday. Fourth of July he put on a show that most country clubs would envy. My dad was Jewish and there were several country clubs in the city that would not accept his applications for membership. Undeterred he joined every other club that would accept him. From our ventures on the golf course I manifested a soft spot for the sound of golf cleats on pavement or asphalt. Bowling was another of his favorites and one played together many times. His patience is an attribute to the kind of guy he was. At my age I was neither proficient nor focused enough for either game but that wasn’t what counted.

I will never forget waking up to some noise one Christmas Eve and thought to my delight it had to be Santa Claus. I crept from my bed and walked on tiptoe down the hall. I followed the hall out in to the breakfast hall, and saw a big blob of red through the cut class that framed one of the arched doors to the living room. With my heart beating wildly I bent down and stepped over to the entrance, squatted down and peered around the doorframe. The room was alight with the lights from the tree whose tips touched the 40-foot ceiling. It looked like a fairy tale. His cheeks were red and bright and he was enjoying the milk and cookies I had set out for him while arranging packages around the tree. I sat and watched in amazement until I could no longer keep my eyes open. My parents found me the next morning curled up in my spy position but their scolding was gentle and I got what I wanted, a bike with training wheels.

I thought about times when my dad was hospitalized for various reasons. Often these visits were very rarely with my siblings although they pined as much as me to see him and spend time. The visits have become even more special to me now. My mom would drop me off and I would be snuck into intensive care to spend hours by his side in bed and my dad would talk and I would listen and I would talk and he would listen. The conversations are now seeping back into my thoughts and playing out in my head. I remember.

I always did what I could to please him. He had this favorite dress of mine that I wore without fail to each of my visits with him. It was a brown plaid pinafore and on the little white apron were buttons of all sizes and colors sewn all over it, and had sewn in script,Button, button, whose got my…?. He would tease me singing the button song and start tickling me, grabbing at the buttons on my pinafore. It made me squeal with delight.

The day my dad died I knew what was happening without anyone explaining it to me even though I wanted someone to. I didn’t understand it completely. I thought adults knew it all. They had always known what to say when he was alive, why was it so hard when he was dead? I felt a decrease in respect for these adults. I thought that they would be the ones whom could dispel my fears and confusions, but it became evident that no one really understood and not well enough to put it into words for me. They become the children, with no one to tell them what to do.

The next morning, me and my brother and sister were sitting around my room waiting to her news about my dad. My sister was draped over the upholstered chair and my brother laid on the empty twin bed. I was feeling over the engraved wood of the bed’s headboard with my hand when my aunt stuck her head into the bedroom. Quietly she said that my mom wanted to see my brother and sister. I felt a dead weight on my chest and hurt my mom had not called for me too. I didn’t know what my mom was thinking. I didn’t want to believe that she would have me sit alone in the room to wait, while they were comforting each other in the other room. My mom was announcing the demise of our dad, and I couldn’t believe I was being ostracized.

Rebelliously I followed my brother and sister into my parent’s bedroom. I met my aunt ’s eyes as I made my way into ‘their’ room, and was thinking my mom hadn’t left me out in some grand scheme to protect me, but rather had forgotten about me completely. My mom looked beat up and she was wearing cat eye sunglasses. The drapes were drawn and there was hardly any light circulating into the room. The air was heavy and stuffy and I found it hard to breath.

My mom occupied the bed they had carried my Father out of not more then 15 hours earlier. She was stretched out in Hollywood fashion, her hair disheveled. The tears continued to slide down her cheeks and the sunglasses did little to hide her pain. The three of us ran for my mom’s bed and collapsed on it sobbing for an unaccountable amount of time. My mom never said a word. I guess she didn’t have to. Some things are just known without saying them, and in that moment I understood that many people simply couldn’t say the words or didn’t know what words to say when the one they counted on was no longer by their side.