A friend sits across the table.  She nurses a beer; I have a finger of wine.  On the square plates before us,  servings of my root vegetables and her kimchi.  We’ve eaten our fill.  Talk turns to life, to survival, to the crashing waves on the shores of our lives.

Her sister died at three; my brother at thirty-eight.  Her parents never recovered from the child’s death.  They divorced.  I gaze into my glass and remark that I had a family member go through the same thing.  They re-married though,  I say.  I was so glad; I always thought of them as the perfect couple.

She laughs.  We exchange the usual glances of people who’ve known others at their worst, in times of divorce, of bankruptcy, of accusation.  How many perfect couples have we seen, who did not make it? she asks.  Then we fall silent.

After she leaves, I stand in my living room.  My mind has wandered east.  On a table by the front door stands a small frame with a faded photograph of my parents dancing at my brother Kevin’s wedding.  How many years ago?  I can’t even say.  My mother has been dead for thirty.  Was that 1980?  1975?  She wears a mother-of-the-groom dress.  My dad has on the less formal of his two suits.  He saved the black one for funerals, his own being the last it saw.

I lift the photo and study it.  What do I see here?  His hand raising hers?  Is that a hopeful smile on her face?  His eyes met the camera. Does irony lurk; did the photographer catch Old Stoneface off-guard?

One of my sisters remarked, after my father died, that my parents had cobbled together a functional marriage for the last five years of my mother’s life.  My dad apparently stopped drinking.  They sat in their chairs, in front of the television.  He worked the crossword puzzle from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  She knitted or quilted.  They took the occasional day trip.  Grandchildren came to visit and my father worked next door, at Mr. Hawkins’ upholstery shop.  I can’t say that they had a good life.  But appearances can be deceptive.  What would they say, if I could ask?  If there were a direct-dial number to the here-after?  

People walk down the street.  They pass you in the hallway, in the aisles of church, in the grocery store.  What you see does not begin to tell you their story.

I put the picture back on the table.  I remember something that happened many years ago, when my nephew Nick was about five.  He always called my father, “Grandpa Sport” because Dad called his grandsons “Sport”.  He had called my brothers the same thing, but in a far different tone.  For Nick, he used his gentle voice.

So there was Nick, chattering about something Grandpa Sport had built for him.  My brother asked Nick, Do you know what Grandpa Sport’s other name is?  He intended to elicit “Richard” or maybe, “Richard Corley”.  Instead, Nick crowed:  Oh Yes, I know!  Grandpa Sports other name is “DICKKK!  GET IN HERE!”

A perfect imitation of his grandmother.

The house grows still.  If you could see me, here, sitting at my desk, I might seem bereft.   I might even seem forlorn. But  I am not necessarily what you think you see.  It’s the third day of the twenty-sixth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Once-upon-a-time, I had a dozen different dreams for this day, for this month, for this year.  But I’m not complaining.  Life continues.

 

 

Post-Script:

 A special birthday shout-out to one who is very dear to me, but who prefers not to have birthday celebrations.  You know who you are.  Happiest of birthdays.  Welcome to your new decade.