Ironies

When my beautiful, gracious mother died at age twenty-four of cancer, my father was swept into a vortex of pain, anger, and confusion. He lived there for the best part of the next twenty years.

After traveling with his infant son of thirteen months across the country for a while, he finally placed the child in the care of his own parents on a farm just outside Thackerville, Oklahoma. It was in that large, bustling household that I lived for the next four years. It was an environment of love and discipline and I thrived there.

Daddy worked the oil fields, fished the Red River, and, in his own words, "caroused." I have no idea where he lived at the time. There was a succession of girlfriends and working-fishing-carousing buddies. I remember him most in those years by his absences, though a child's mind has a way of distorting and exaggerating the reality of things. When he did come to the Big House, it was always with presents and exciting curiosities. I remember him coming once with a trunk load of writhing, flopping catfish, and I used to love to play with his oil field worker's hard hat. And he always brought his ebullient self, full of talk and laughter and stories.

When he left, I cried, but he always promised to see me again. "I'll see you again next Saturday."

I remember one such Saturday. I must have been three or so at the time. It was a warm day, so early in the morning I scooted my little red rocking chair out on the front porch that extended across the full length of the old house so I could sit and watch the long road for a first glimpse of his black Ford. And there I sat for the best part of the day. When evening fell, my heart began to fall with it. All day I had watched and no Daddy. After supper, I returned to my sentry post until dark, when my "Big Mamma," my grandmother, came and gently said, "He's probably not coming today, honey. Come on in." I do not remember crying or saying anything. I do remember the sense of loss and disappointment that filled my young mind. It would not be the only time that such a thing happened.

Fast forward forty years. I was living in West Virginia and literally traveling the world. My trips to see my Daddy, then living in East Texas, were infrequent, too infrequent.

On April 9th, 1998, Daddy turned seventy. I was, on that day, three hundred-odd miles north of him in Tulsa, Oklahoma, taking part in the ordination service of one of my pupils. It was an engagement that I could not excuse myself from. I had told my Daddy about it all and he was sadly resigned to the thing. I was conflicted and guilty about missing his seventieth birthday, but my sense of duty won out.

Late in the day, after the ceremony and services were over, I phoned him to wish him happy birthday and to send him my love. How was your day? How are you feeling? Who did you hear from? Were any of the family members there?

He was fine. It had been a day much like any other. No one had showed up. He had received phone calls from his brothers and sisters and some of the other children. He and his wife had eaten a dinner of catfish at home, alone. And then,

"I watched the road all day long, thinking you might come," he said.