St. Patrick’s Day: A Family Portrait

My dad grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. He was a mail carrier, that is a rural mail carrier. It is a necessity I that insist on this difference because a rural carrier does not wear ridiculous outfits with gray shorts, and knee high socks with dark stripes along the sides. This was fitting, for my father may have been ridiculous at times, but he was never uniform.
There’s a particular event that I still joke with my brother about. My dad drove up to the window at a McDonald’s drive through, paid for everyone’s meals, and to the shock of the window attendant, decided to abruptly drive away in his orange Volkswagen Bug. After ten muted minutes of driving north on 27; and before driving past the turn for Lake Jackson, he turned to my brother, “where in the hell do you get your food? Was there another window? Was it the same window?”
“There was another window, dad,” my brother said.
After work he would place a six pack of Natty ice (Natty is short for Natural, but there is nothing Natural about Natural Ice) in the out-door fridge located on the patio, light a black and mild, and sit back. It was his way of regaining some of the vitality that a nine to five job sucks away. My mom would be sitting next to him, a cigarette in her hand.
“I haven’t seen any humming birds around lately,” my mom would say.
“Oh, they’re here. I saw a red one the other day,” my dad would add.
Sitting in the wooden rocking chair in the living room one day, my dad took a brief turn as an ESPN analysis. After deftly tapping loose a clump of ash into an empty can of Natty Ice, he repositioned his black and mild loosely between his thumb and index finger, “the issue with Jeff Bowden is imagination.” His voice rose steadily as he continued and his upper lips curled into a smile, “all this would be taken care of if he would just take one drop of acid. I guarantee after a hit the offense will not be predicable.”
The image of Jeff or any Bowden for that matter taking acid is delightful. Can you imagine Anne Bowden, her salty tears running down the multiple layers of caked on make-up when she hears that her son is taking acid? I can, and it is also a delightful image.
My mother is from Massachusetts. She’s worked for the adoption agency in the state of Florida for over twenty years and could burn a picture of Jeb Bush into flakes of ash with simply her eyes if she had the time. She cooks more then she should, and works more then she should, but that’s the type of individual she is. She does more then she has to. I’m the exact opposite in that regard. She drives too fast in her silver Honda Accord because speed limits are mere suggestions to her. She smokes Virginia slim ultra lights. Let me say that there are few things as unique as buying a pack of Virginia slim ultra lights at a gas station. “And um, yeah, they’re for my mom.”
“Sure they are, guy, I’m not judging. You smoke what you want to smoke.”
My brother, like me, is fair skinned with an abundance of freckles. He did have red hair as well, but the pool-boy in charge of the gene pool decided he was in line for a bald head before he turned thirty. He is currently a diver, as well as a litany of other things for the Coast Guard in Honolulu, Hawaii. He does drive a boat at times, I do remember that. It unconformable holds about three people as it glides along, breaking the surface of the crystal clear water of Honolulu. There is a blue metal bar attached to the narrow cockpit to grab onto. It is aptly termed the ‘oh, shit bar’ for those of us without concrete blocks attached to our feet.
My brother and I both share a love for the beach, which is ironic due to our skin pigment. It’s as if we’re both dating a woman who’s never sure of what she wants. The only difference is instead of emotional scarring we get physical scarring in the shape of sun-burns and skin poisoning. Farmers tan, I loath you.
The two of us differ on music. It’s not that we exactly differ. It’s that I dig for what is underneath my perceived endless piles of cookie cutter music acts. On his latest visit I was able to introduce his iPod to the accessible music of: Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, Kings of Leon, and The Black Keys. An attempt was made to import The Flaming Lips and Broken Social Scene, but they were too different for him. Great music is out there when the radio is turned off.
On St. Patrick’s Day my dad passed away. It was poetic in a way. He always wanted to be Irish; I always had that on him. It was a massive heart attack a report stated that I read on the kitchen counter one Sunday afternoon. “I really don’t know anymore, I’ve never heard of this disease, James. I just don’t know,” my mom said, smiling. She was trying to soften the blow as she washed a white dinner plate in the sink, but the blow was already delivered and would continue to land.
I walked over to the wooden rocking chair in the living room and read over the report again. I felt my mom’s eyes me as I read it over and over. A heart attack made perfect sense to me, particularly after you consider that his figure resembled a marathon runner and that he took enough vitamins and supplements to put Barry Bonds to shame or at least provide the ornery slugger cause for a momentary pause of admiration. I find dark irony in routinely seeing forty year old, three hundred-pound obese individuals walking around when my dad, who worked out every day and weighed maybe one hundred and fifty pounds, dies due to an insidious heart disease.
Sometimes I really wonder about this god, or gods, or whatever the hell people want to call it. I for one don’t call ‘it’ much, if anything at all. Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain die at the age of twenty-seven, but yet we get endless years of Bon Jovi and Knickleback records. Something isn’t right here.
I didn’t think I could write this paper without bringing up Cobain. I listened to Nirvana’s unplugged covers of “The Man Who Sold the World” and “Jesus Doesn’t Want me for a Sunbeam” for a month straight after my dad passed away. Both songs shared a forlorn, desolate, and drenched in melancholy theme. My friends would come into my room at night and try to get me to come out, but I resisted. I’d close the door and turn the music back on. I was the man who sold the world and I wanted to sell it. I wanted to look like a man with a thick, unkempt beard, and worn through clothes with patches of holes. I was diving as deep as I could, heading to the very bottom of depression and looking for as many rocks as possible at the bottom of the lake floor so I could stay down as far and for as long as possible. I could picture myself on stage, strumming along with the rest of the band.
Recently, I was listening to “Breath” by Pearl Jam, and staring at a picture of my dad when I came to a conclusion on a difference between the two biggest Seattle bands that came out during the early nineties. Nirvana dove into the lake of depression and never resurfaced. Kurt Cobain gathered as many rocks as possible on the muddy bottom, placed them in his person, and wrote as many songs as he could until his oxygen ran out. Pearl Jam came upon the same lake, took a swim, and even dove down to the bottom to examine the contours of the same rocks, but they came to the surface. I started to breathe again as I listened to their song. I was in the audience this time, singing along instead of living the lyrics. With each verse I belted out, I dropped another rock, and gradually lifted up to the surface.
The service was held at my parent’s house. I should say my mom’s house now, though. I’d tell you how many people were there but I was in a haze and tremendously hung over due to a risky combination of Busch Light and cheap whiskey from a plastic bottle. Always avoid the plastic bottle, I do now. I saw my mom after the service. She was sitting near the front in a white, fold out chair, staring intently into the wide trunk of the oak tree that now carried my father’s ashes. She held my hand, looked up at me with watery red eyes, and said, “He was happy. He really was.” Our gaze then moved in unison to the bright beam of light that was shooting through the broad canopy of the oak tree. Later, as the evening waned, a group of friends and I sat around a campfire, exchanging stories and swigs from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Watching flames kick and lurch into the air in a mixture of white and orange brought a sense of peace to the day.
The same week my dad passed away I was turned down for the senior level creative writing classes. I never told him. I was going to tell him, but obviously circumstances would not allow this to take place. It is because of this that even with a Literature degree, I will make the walk up to the fourth floor of the Williams building, staple my writings together, and wait for my time to strike.
As for now, I’m listening to Jimi Hendrix’s instrumental version of “Bold as Love.” It’s hopeful, dauntless, beautiful, and sublimely inspired. At the forty-five second mark I come to the conclusion that the music from the pentatonic scale has never sounded so natural and free on a guitar. I can tell this is a song composed by someone who would never sell the world. Be as bold as love; a theme that will never cause one to sink. That’s how my dad would have it.