I began to trust that soon I’d be inside the
comfortable womb of a heated conveyance.
As we neared the curb I saw a rudimentary gate consisting of two
horizontal boards that were now open to admit passengers. I didn’t know why, but each person stopped at
the gate for just a second, even though it was open, before climbing the steps
into the bus. Dad shuffled up to the two
boards and stopped, then moved forward.
Now I remembered where
I had seen this hesitation at the gate. In
church the priest and altar boys stopped for a second when crossing from the
aisle through the railing onto the chancel of the altar. Almost like knocking on heaven's door.
I stepped up to the gate. It slammed closed with a vicious thwack.
I became angry and scared at once, but something deep in my soul
prevented me from trying to scoot under the boards or crash through them. I did not want to be left there alone.
“That’s my Dad,” I shouted, to no one in
particular. “I have to be with him.”
My father stopped, turned and retraced the
three steps he had advanced beyond the gate.
“I guess this is it, then,” he said. “I’ll see you when you get there.”
“Why can’t I go with you?” I cried.
He shrugged his shoulders. Good old Dad always accepted what was
expected of him.
He reached out, but was too far away to
touch me. He turned and walked to the bus. He climbed the stairs and soon became
invisible to me. The bus pulled
away. I scanned the windows, straining to
see him. When I didn’t, I hoped he was
demanding the bus driver come back for me.
But Dad was never a very demanding person.
Now first in line, I
looked up and down the street. Traffic
increased as I stood there. A furniture delivery truck from a local department
store edged toward me as it came near the curb, bumped up over it and sped past
on the sidewalk. The truck's rear view
mirror sliced the air above my head as it coursed it's way south for fifty feet
and dropped into Bleecker Street, where it made a
sharp right turn and sped west toward the Hotel Utica. I felt
exposed. Since he no longer stood in
front of me, the large form of my father ceased to cast a shadow of protection
over me. And eventually his influence would
begin to wane.
I was disappointed in
the dream to be on my own, but I never for a moment doubted his best intentions
and hope for my success, his love for me.
As I stood waiting for the next bus, my thoughts roamed through the life
Dad and I had together. And at my young
age in the dream, I found myself wondering why he had stopped kissing me.
At age 4 or 5 I’d sit down on his lap and kiss
him on the cheek before going to bed. I
can still feel his rough five o’clock shadow and smell the soap he used to wash
up at night before coming home from work at the newspaper. And I remember the evening he put his hand
out to stop me and said. “You’re a big
boy now, we should shake hands, not kiss.”
So that’s what we did. At ages
five and thirty-seven, we shook hands before bed each night. I didn’t care about the kiss, I missed the
closeness and the smells.
And he never said he loved me. It wasn't a
phrase someone from his stiff-necked Irish background was allowed to use. I wondered if he believed you could only love
God, and if so, what did he say to my mother?
He was not a hard man. He was
gentle and long suffering. He was humble
and he was certainly pure, or at least took mighty steps to be so. He instructed his boys to lead pure
lives. We were never allowed to see a
movie indexed by the Legion of Decency beyond “A - Morally UNobjectionable.”
After the night we began shaking hands, he
never gave me a hug. Today I and my wife
and adult children hug all the time and say we love each other. That phrase ends just about every long
distance telephone call from the kids. “Love ya, Dad, Mom.” This has come about because when the kids
were in early high school, a time when they would have rather kissed a dead
walrus, I forced them into hugs and I always said, “I love you.” I don’t remember how many years, but it
probably took a few before they returned the sentiment. They may have been in their last years of
college. But I never gave up. I had come from a family that certainly loved one
another but showed no outward expression
of it. I didn’t want to produce another
family with the same handicap. I didn’t want my children standing on a bus
stop some day thinking I’d never told them I loved them or allowed them to hug
me.
In his last year I was able to tell my father
I loved him. It seemed to make him
uncomfortable. About six months later,
as he lie in Faxton Hospital at the very end, I
wanted to repeat it, but I did not. I
wish I had. And kissed him, too.
As for the dream of the two of us at the bus
stop on the Busy Corner, I don't
remember how it ended. I guess I’m still
waiting there. It seems such a long time
since he climbed aboard and disappeared into his bus to heaven. In the years since I have built a good life,
and I believe a spiritual walk that worked for me. It was seeded by my father, and made with God's
grace and my own travails and insights, plus the inestimable help of everyone
who ever touched me, whether they casually brushed by me or married me.
Each of us reaches the head of the line in
life when parents and mentors pass beyond, leaving us to stand more exposed to
the world than we did before. We get used to it. We learn to trust our own insights and
judgments. We get on with it. We grow up.
We grow old. One morning we’ll look down the street and see the bus
coming our way.
"I'll see you when you get there,"
he said. I hope it comes true.
Copyright by David Griffin, 2016
The
Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
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