“You hope your bucket of experience fills up before your bucket of luck runs out.”
~ Dad
...continued
We walked in silence for a while and then, at the same time, we both said, "Sorry...," then fell silent. I was going to say sorry I was so late, but not explain why because that would sound like an excuse and my father does not like excuses; they sound like requests for forgiveness. Don't ask others to forgive you for your own decisions, he says. Accept the consequences, acquiesce in any opprobrium due you and learn.
After a minute, he said, "I was going to say that I was sorry that you had to suffer that fool gladly."
"Oh, he wasn't a fool, just a little tipsy."
"He shouldn't have behaved that way to my daughter. That was rude to you -- and to me."
"I thought that, too, to be honest."
"He was getting at me through you. I appreciated your patience with him. I wanted to slug him."
"Why do you think he acted that way?"
Dad then told me a little about his friend. I'll call him Dick. He left the Navy as soon as his obligation was up. This would have been in the early 1980s. He got a great job with Pan American and was living large while dad was still in the Navy, struggling to rebuild the fleet after the demoralization of the Viet Nam War era and trying to modernize it and redirect it to the challenges of the post-war world. Dick's wife divorced him due to his relentless philandering and reckless spending, taking his children out of his life. Shortly after this, Pan Am went out of business and Dick was out of a job. No major airline would hire him because of his age. He eventually settled in to flying for charter and other non-scheduled airlines, picking up jobs delivering leased airliners to operators all over the world. It sounded kind of interesting to me, but dad said it didn't pay well, and left Dick uncertain where or when he would get another job. Eventually, those jobs dried up and he became a flight instructor, supplementing his income by working in real estate, then as a parts manager for a Volkswagen/Subaru dealership. Along the way, he married and divorced again. He inherited his house from a relative and lived there alone, never hearing from his children or ex-wives, spending his days, according to what dad learned from him, mostly taking long drives, watching TV, eating fast food, drinking and going to strip clubs.
"So you guys didn't hit it off too well in your reunion?"
"Sometimes, it's best not to renew old acquaintances. The things you had in common a half century ago in that brief, intense time you were sharing the adventures of youth don't persist into old age. You are strangers to each other, vaguely familiar in voice and face...there was something between you once long ago but what it was...is no more...could it have ever been...or was it what you thought it was?"
Dad fell silent. I didn't know what to say in response but I was thinking over what he said and wondering how it would apply to my life as time went by. Suddenly, dad said, "I wish I had a cigarette. I could use one right about now."
"But you don't smoke."
"Oh, I used to, before I met your mother. 'The smoking lamp is lit,' were sweet words to me."
"I never knew that."
"No reason you should have."
"We could stop somewhere and buy a pack."
Dad didn't respond right away. We walked in silence. Then he said, "No. It's okay. The moment has passed."
I thought about dad as a young man walking some lonely street in a harbor town at night, fog rolling in, pausing under a street lamp to light a cigarette, taking a drag, then walking on, disappearing into the darkness.
There were scarcely any people on the streets at this hour, but the night was warm and pleasant, rich with the scents of a seaside town. A police car drove by, slowing as it passed us. I thought, remembering a recent episode, oh, crap, not this again. I figured the cop would circle the block, come back and stop us, probably asking if everything was all right, even though we were just walking down the street. But he never came back.
I think what dad had told me was that his old friend had followed a path in life that had not led to much in the end. But my father, plodding the route of a career naval officer, staying married and loyal to the love of his youth and the children that that love produced, basically doing the same job, but in increasingly responsible positions, all his life had ended up having a more fulfilling life than had the more free-wheeling Dick. And Dick knew that and envied and resented my father. I don't know if dad meant to say that, but that's the message I got. Considering some of the dumb things I had done in my past, starting and retreating from paths I could not have returned from had I continued on, teetering on the edge of the abyss at one point, but stepping back at the last minute, sweating in fear, heart pounding.... Yeah, dad had made the right life choice. I wondered if he had had his moment of realization and what it was. I would never know.
We continued on in silence for some minutes before my father, looking at his watch and remarking on the lateness of the hour, said that we had two choices for tomorrow. One was to leave around mid-day because, although I might be able to get up at the crack of dawn, he was going to need a full night's rest. If we left around 10 or so, unless we wanted to fly long into the night, as we had done the other day, we should stop somewhere in Ohio or Indiana and spend tomorrow night there, then have a long flight to reach home the next day. Or we could lay over one more day in Portsmouth, then leave early the next morning and fly on to Eau Claire as had been our original plan of departure from Burlington. Then the next day would be a shorter flight home.
We had reached the hotel by this time and stood discussing our options in the lobby. I couldn't help noticing how ramrod straight dad stood, thin and fit, the very picture of military bearing. Funny, but I'd never noticed that before. I don't know why I did then. I asked where in Ohio or Indiana and he said he hadn't really thought about it till just now and would have to map a route out tomorrow morning. He was too tired to do it tonight. Considering that, I said that I would not mind another day in Portsmouth, so why didn't we just do that and so have plenty of time to work out the next day's route, file a flight plan and so forth. Dad agreed, looking relieved, and only then did I sense how tired he was. It showed mainly around his eyes. This day had been not only a physically tiring one, but an emotionally tiring one, as well, for him.
We walked up the carpeted stairs, one step creaking as we trod it, said our good nights in the hallway, and parted company. But before we did, dad took both my arms, pushed me back so he could get a good look at me and said, "You look just like your mother did at your age. It's hard to believe I used to change your diapers. The time goes so fast."
In my room, I stood staring out the window at the city lights for a while, reviewing the incidents of the day. Then I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. The dress I had bought because I thought it was wicked cute I now thought looked like something only a moron would wear. I took it off, tossing it on a chair, showered and went to bed.
