It was Lulu's birthday last week and I dutifully called, hoping she was having a good time and yet hoping also for a chat. I got the best of motherhood thrown in my face when she hissed into the receiver, "I'm WITH people at a restaurant and I CAN'T TALK!" I tried to pin down a time to talk and she said something along the lines of "Later, whatEVER," and I rang off feeling old and sad. There are times when I feel my age and position most keenly--hello, rapid aging in a foreign country!--and times when it rests lightly. Trust me, it wasn't resting lightly on me. I called her back the next day--there was a quick conversation. There was no usual daily email from Sissy, and the usual silence from Dad. I felt odd, and wanted to call home, and yet I didn't, I didn't want to make some sad call home just because my precious baby girl was spending her first birthday ever away from me. (Folks, I know: she's 19.)
Then, on Tuesday, I received an email from Dad stating he had had but yet another heart attack and had a procedure over the weekend--"Roto-Rootered" as he put it. My whole family, including Lulu, knew but decided not to upset me. Lulu's not able to keep anything from me, which explains her terse attitude and her decision to get off the phone as quickly as possible. My brother in law, the magnificent Miguel, argued in favor of telling me, but Dad convinced him not to say anything. (Considering the hot water he landed in when he told another family member about one of Dad's other trips to the ER, he wisely folded.)
I feel odd about the whole thing: Dad's ticker is largely dead tissue and he could go at any time--or he could live to be in his 90's like HIS father. Dad's only 76, one of those tall thin people with killer legs (which my sister inherited) who didn't have a weight problem until AFTER his first heart attack. But hear me out--I'm glad the thought of "sparing" me meant sparing them, but on the other hand, due to this Living-In-China thing I have missed the following: my sister's wedding, the death of my darling grandfather and the subsequent wake, the death of my less-than-darling-but-still-missed grandmother, the unexpected death of our dear friend Elaine, my mother's 75th birthday (although I sent her best friend a ticket to be there for the event when I could not be) the passing of my great-Aunts Bess and Mary, who were the kind loving people my grandmother was not...do you get the idea? I go home for vacation and the first day I ask, "Where's so-and-so?" and everybody starts crying and saying "She died the week after your last visit but we didn't want to tell you!" and they've moved past their grief and I'm just entering it. (Some v-kay, eh?)
Plus, I kind of hate to mention this, what with the holiday season coming up, but my family ALWAYS die or have heart attacks or trips to the ER on major holidays. One year at Easter, and I am not kidding when I say this, my grandfather had a trip to the hospital for Congestive Heart Failure. He was out just in time for my father to have a major heart attack on Father's Day. A few days after HE got out of the hospital, he capped off the Fourth of July with a truly spectacular second heart attack to be followed by a quadruple by-pass. Hearts were popping like champagne corks that year...Labor Day saw Dad back in the hospital, Grandma's birthday saw her in the ER, my birthday saw Grandpa back in the ER for CHF, and then Dad topped it all off by slicing off part of his thumb for Halloween. (Quite a trick for the neighborhood kiddies.) I could go on: Grandpa died on Halloween (it's also the birthday of my lesbian niece, as well as my great-grandparent's wedding anniversary, two other stories entirely) and of course, when did Daddy have his heart attack? Lulu's birthday. Because that's what every girl wants, calling her grandfather on her birthday and hoping to God that this man who has been the only father figure she has pulls through but yet another surgery. The fact it was Veteran's Day also puts paid to that. (Daddy was a Navy man and served in two "conflicts.")
It's Thanksgiving next week: usually one of us is in the ER for something on that day, like a wad of toilet paper stuck against an eardrum (it was me and no, don't ask) or a slip of the carving knife or rather spectacularly one year, a broken toe from kicking a soccer ball barefoot through a plate glass window---and I'm hoping if I don't celebrate, if I don't bring a pie to work, if I just hunker down and do my job and if my students aren't crying from my bitch tongue by five, perhaps this means Daddy will be all right, and I'll only have to hold my breath through Hanukkah and Christmas and New Year's and...
If he's sick, tell me. You know the old joke about "The cat's on the roof?" So true. Right now my six-year-old friend is recovering from leukemia, my friend Gill is back in chemo, another two friends are pregnant. Life goes on. Shit happens. Dad, I want to spare you worry and grief, but I'd rather know and hope and grieve in real time than to be told after the fact. Who else is waiting to tell me something?
Post Script: When I fell through my sliding glass door onto my balcony, it was on Saint Patrick's Day, three years after I first wrote this post...
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