Dad

The Next Chapter

Posted on by Lauren

At 88 and 93 years old, this moment has been building for decades and yet much like the arrival of a newborn, I still feel wholly unprepared. 

While Emmett’s dad passed away shortly after our eldest was born, his mother has remained a steadfast presence in our family’s life. 

Home to the great pecan tree where our girls picked up its bountiful offering numbering in the thousands, Fairfield, NC was our family’s escape from the rat race of city life. Fairfield was where we spent every Easter and Thanksgiving. Offering its wide-open spaces and clear, starry skies filled with the ever-present sounds of migratory birds, frogs and the wind, Fairfield felt like home.

Home to the pool, where my dad taught me how-to-swim, my father’s top-floor condo overlooking Towne Point Park and the Elizabeth River, offered expansive views. A docent at the Chrysler Museum for years, my dad’s walls were covered in beautiful and valuable art and yet; the girls cartwheeled through the living room as if it were home.

My dad moved into a long-term care last month and this month, my mother-in-law moves into a nearby senior community providing us the opportunity to see them more often. 

Emmett and I are a decade apart and yet here we both are; cleaning out his mom and my dad’s home. Discovering old photographs and letters. Claiming furniture and special mementos. 

Saying goodbye. 

Saying thank you. 

It’s the end of an era. 

It’s the beginning of the next chapter. 

The Greatest Gift

Posted on by Lauren

“You need to tell her. You need to get into your car right now, go over there and tell her.” my husband encouraged. 

It was the eve of my birthday. We were on our front porch and I had just read aloud a letter I’d found while cleaning out my father’s condo. Apparently, he had kept a file for each of his children. In mine I found every report card, parent/teacher conference record and a collection of letters. 

What a treasure trove of memories this was for me to dive deeply into. 

But the one dated December 11, 1987 left me breathless.

If you’ve followed my blog, then you know the story of my beginning. I am the illegitimate love- child of a long-term affair. My parents worked together but no one suspected, not even after I was born. My older sisters, who also worked with my parents, knew me as “Pam’s daughter” but did not learn I was their half-sister until I was three. 

My mother was a powerful business woman. She was charismatic, magnetic, and inspiring. She meant much to many across the entire country but it was me, who wanted her attention the most. 

I spent so many years of my life resentful and angry for the time she’d spent building her career in place of a closer relationship with me. Now that I have a daughter very similar to me, when I was a child, I understand how challenging it must have been to forge that relationship. I didn’t make it easy. 

I finished this letter and instantaneously, my anger evaporated leaving nothing but remorse in its wake. 

I desperately wanted to call her and tell her how sorry I was for failing to recognize the love she had held for me my entire life. I was so busy focusing on her shortcomings that, as a result, I completely missed her devotion and steadfast love. 

My mother advocated for me. She encouraged my father to maintain a relationship with me not just in this letter but in other letters I found in the file: inviting him to conferences, recording my thoughts to him pen-to-paper when I could not yet write. 

How could I ever thank her enough for that gift? The gift of the presence of my father? 

What if I had found this after her death and had never apologized? 

What if my father hadn’t kept these letters for me to one day find?

But he did and she’s still here and my husband willed me to go to her. 

I couldn’t get a hold of her until the next day but when she answered, I started by telling her how much I loved her followed immediately by how sorry I was for remaining angry with her for so long. I thanked her for loving me anyway, in spite of my anger. For never giving up on me. Not then and not now. 

It was my birthday. 

And it was the greatest gift I’ve ever received. 

Love, forgiveness, and gratitude. 

Love is Love

Posted on by Lauren

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Electricity

Posted on by Lauren

The crowd gathered round. 

Electricity. 

You could feel it in the air and we all wanted to witness.

Most didn’t know what for but I knew. 

These were my parents. 

Illicit lovers so long ago. 

Not meant to be forever. 

But meant to make and love me. 

Years passed but their magnetism never did. 

If only we could all be so lucky to love, at least once 

Just like that. 

Far

Posted on by Lauren

I spent the better part of my first forty years desperate for others to understand how far I’ve come from where I started. 

Surely, they’d respect and understand me more?

But now I know, we all have stories, untold. 

And it’s best to approach all with the grace we’ve always wished upon ourselves. 

Hold my hand. 

Lean in. 

We’ve come so far. 

Camille Vaughan Photography

All the Pretty Lights

Posted on by Lauren

Tonight held one of those moments in life when you recognize it’s special, while it’s happening.  

The kind where you know you are making unforgettable memories, real time.  

We went to see The Jesse Chong Band playing at Harborfest.  Today happens to be June 10, just one month exactly shy of our 13 year wedding anniversary, where Jesse and his band entertained a full dance floor.  

This time, we brought along our brood of four.  He played my most favorite cover of his:  Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon- a song I requested at our wedding. 

Afterwards, as we walked to my dad’s condo, we awed the most incredible sunset- a sun so red and large, you could have plucked it right out of the tree.  

Then, we were bedazzled by our first drone show, right alongside my aging dad.  He’s lived in that front row seat on his balcony for so long, the fireworks have ceased to surprise him.  But tonight, at age 91, he saw something for the first time- and witnessing that experience for him was something I’ll never forget.  

It’s never too late.

LIfe continues to amaze.  

All the pretty lights.  

Helpers

Posted on by Lauren

The teacher asked us to take notes.

I had no idea what she meant by that. 

Pauli saw the panic. 

She met me where I was. 

She calmed me down and step-by-step, taught me how.

I will never, ever forget her kindness. 

“Look for the helpers.”  Mr. Rogers said. 

I did. 

And I still am.  

In fact, I’ve become one. 

Camille Vaughan Photography

Grounded

Posted on by Lauren

Dear Daughter,

As your grandfather reaches the end of his life, I find myself craving more. 

More time.  More information.  What was his life really like?  How did he come to be who he is today?

So, I figured I’d make it a little easier on you. 

I was born in the early 1980s, when TVs still had antennas, or as we liked to call them: rabbit ears.

If the show was fuzzy, I had to get up and move the rabbit ears to try and get the station back in tune.  

There was no remote. Instead, I had to get up and turn the knob for the very few channels available to us.  

There was no choosing what we wanted to watch.  We watched what the stations offered.

Sometime in the 1990s, we got a tv with a remote and cable which offered a lot more channels.  Still, we found out what was playing by reading the newspaper, The Virginian Pilot, which printed a schedule of shows by the hour.  

I vividly remember channel 99 because we didn’t “subscribe” to that channel but there was a lot of moaning and an occasional boob or two amidst the fuzziness- chaotic, zig-zag lines that perpetually moved down the screen so you couldn’t get a clear view.  I was equally confused and fascinated, wondering what these people were doing. 

Yikes. Now, I know. 

My grandmother had a rotary phone- one where the numbers were displayed in a circle formation and you rotated the dial on the front for each number.  I loved it when someone had a nine in their number because I got to move the dial almost a full 360 degrees!  

We had a phone with a very long cord so that my teenage sisters could walk into another room from the kitchen and close the door to have their private conversations.  

Sometime in the 1990s, the “sneaker phone” was all the rage and boy, you know I had one, too!  It looked like a shoe but was actually a phone (with a cord of course)!  That was the bees knees.  

When I heard a song on the radio that I loved, I had to quickly find a blank cassette tape to record the song if I wanted to be able to hear it again.  Cassette tapes were four inch long plastic cases that held magnetic recording tape.  Sometimes, I accidentally recorded over another song that I loved and there was no going back.  Once it was replaced, it was gone.  

I lost many a tragic recordings to this oversight. 

I also eventually got a boombox that had TWO cassette tape players, which meant I could copy one tape to the other, making “mix tapes” for my friends.  I would create a playlist of my favorite songs, decorate the plastic cover, paper insert and plastic case and give it to them as a  sign of my love and friendship.  It took a long time, so it was a gift from the heart.  

The same went for movies.  We had VHS tapes, not DVDs.  If you wanted to jump to a certain part of the movie, you had to fast-forward.  If you wanted to go back and re-watch, you had to rewind.  It wasn’t as easy as choosing a “scene”, so you really had to want it to make the effort. 

I think that’s what I’m learning from my dad. 

He was born in 1931. 

Everything took more effort, then. 

And even in the 1980s, things took more time. 

Now, it’s faster. 

And yet, I frequently feel the need to slow down. 

Your dad, born in the 1970s, really works hard to keep you all grounded. 

To keep you playing outside.  

Often shoeless. 

So, when things feel too fast.  

Cast off those shoes. 

Head outside. 

Remember where you came from.  

And slow down.  

Dear Daughter,

Stay grounded.  

Share

Posted on by Lauren

I was in the room when the doctor announced “There appears to be a mass behind your aorta.”  

My father is an intelligent man and although we spent the rest of the week in the hospital for the biopsy and a week more for results, we both knew. 

Fucking cancer. 

I wish I had words for the experience of breath leaving your body. 

It’s as if time stops.  

Short enough for no one else to notice but long enough to recognize when it begins again. 

She left the room. 

And we just stared at one another, half smiling. 

“So this is how it ends.”  He almost chuckled.  

Even when you’re 91, you never expect it. 

And ignorantly, neither did I.  

Weeks later we were having breakfast together, discussing death (as one does when upon death’s door) when he did one of my favorite things:

He spoke in poetry. 

“Death, be no proud, though some have called thee . . .”

I asked him if he had a copy of the poem and he described the color, size and feel of the book I should look for on the wall-to-wall bookshelf.

I found it, along with many of his other favorite poems and (as one does when upon death’s door), I asked him to share. 

Because at the end, isn’t that what we all seek?

Time to share. 

Time.

Let us share. 

Written by John Donne. This poem essentially laughs at death.
Death thinks he wins but in the end, we live eternally in the after-life.

Father

Posted on by Lauren

“This is my dad,”

I introduce my step-dad to my boarding school Headmistress.

“And this is my Dick.”

I introduce my biological father. 

We all inwardly and outwardly cringe.

“I mean, this is Dick.  My father.  Dick Parise.”

Crawl in a hole. Die. I’m 15. Please, just let me go ahead and die.  

Here they both are- a rare moment- both of my fathers.

The one who created me and the one who raised me.

A chuckle. A laugh.  An inward mortification. We move on to pleasantries.  

But then came my wedding less than a decade a later. 

I’d always imagined both of them on each arm. 

But then he said, after their divorce, “You know that would be hard for me.”

I paused and reconsidered the definition of “dad”. 

And then, I walked down the aisle with my father.