Mind the Gap

What do you say to a father you haven't spoken to  in over twenty two years?

"Hi!"

 "Father,  it's been a while."

 "Wow, you've aged!"

Sissy and I, along with my nephew's then finance, Erica,  volleyed answers back and forth over the  four hour journey, our voices punctuated with anxiety, our stomachs percolating  like the old Farberware electric coffee pot that pumped out tongue scorching java for years until Mr. Coffee walked in.


None of these felt quite right and as we approached the old man's 50 acre spread in upstate New York,  we decided to name the mission. 

The Gates of Heaven or Hell?

What about "Storming the Gates," I suggested after seeing photographs of the impressive wrought iron gates that stood guard at the two entrance ways to his property.

"Showdown at the Gates."

"The Gates of Hell."

We stopped at the nearest bar and I downed two bracing vodka and tonics and knocked back an Ativan. Sissy had two goblets of red wine and we figured the world would be closer to a utopia if along with morning coffee and tea, we all popped an Ativan.

"I'll have a skim milk latte with a two milligram chaser of Ativan, please."

No wonder why so many housewives, including mom, were so placid  in the 70's. They didn't give a hoot if their popovers didn't rise, they were floating along life's turbulent waters on a Valium raft.

But we wondered how we would react seeing a man who had once been our father. Had he aged? What did he look like? Had his voice changed? Was he in good health? Would he yell at us? (That booming voice used to stop us in our tracks) Dismiss us like naughty children? Tell  his German Shepard's to attack? (Wear your sneakers, Sissy, in case we have to sprint out the door) Or simply just keel over at the first sight of his now middle aged daughters? ( I don't suppose we're in the will)

He'd always been an impressive and  imposing man, standing over  6 feet tall with hazel eyes, and wavy black hair that refused to lay flat on his head unless it was clipped every couple of weeks at the local barber's shop.  He even tried having it straightened but the solution burned his scalp, leaving red, weepy sores on his head for days.

Dressed in bespoke suits and crisp white shirts,  he made his fortune in the courtroom, his good looks, rehearsed posturing and deep voice won over jury after jury. And ladies, too. Lots of them.

The drive to earn more, to win more, all stemmed from his childhood days where he spent years battling an alcoholic father who provided little for his family. We remember Papa as a gentle man, with eyes as blue as a Cape hydrangea, who'd drive us to the penny candy store on Partridge Street and let us stuff bit-o-honey, bubblegum cigarettes and yards of dots into those little paper bags. 

Worn clothing, holes in his shoes, a stutter, Dad was our very own Horatio Alger who lifted himself from poverty and abuse by putting himself through college and law school while working full time and supporting a wife and three kids. He managed the local paper's distribution route, taught English at our community college, built several houses during law school. He moved us to Atlanta while he took graduate courses at Emory and we came back with enough y'all's to rattle our Yankee grandparents for months.

"My, my" our grandmother tutted. She'd been against us heading south. And we suspect against her only daughter marrying the scrappy kid who barely made it out of high school. He married my mother because he had to. He never loved her. 

We remember those early days with some fondness- a mischievous father who was always up for a water fight with the neighborhood kids, who climbed up on the roof one snowy Christmas Eve and rang sleigh bells, who taught us to ski by snowplowing backwards down the slope, who took us for ice cream at Ross' where the smell of french fries, cheeseburgers,  and onions rings punctuated the thick summer air with their salty, greasy scent.

But painful memories have a way of darkening even the happiest ones, eclipsing smiles and laughs, leaving gaping black holes where sunny recollections once shined, and  as we drove through his property, on a frigid January day, I slipped down into the car seat, wishing I could dissolve into the soft cloth and disappear.

Yet sissy surged ahead, her bravery fueled by Cabernet and more than 50 years of wisdom and strength.

"You're strong sister," she said. "Besides, no one fucks with the Cade sisters."

She was right. We'd been living without parents for over two decades. Had our worlds turned upside down, with little left to salvage. Been rejected once before. But we survived.

Could a second one be anymore painful? 

Sing Walter Sing

He died in a small rural hospital in western Massachusetts with his small family holding his hands, gently singing the old gospel hymn "In the Garden," http://bit.ly/kHLI0u one of his favorite songs learned decades ago from a Christian missionary, even though he and his wife Mary were Catholic. I'm not sure Walter even believed in a higher power but he knew it was best to go along with Mary, a headstrong gal who Walter doted on until he died. 

Lexi in Walter's kitchen. Note the cherries and chocolate!

Walter J. Fleming was 93 years old and lived across the street from us for 16 years. We met Walter even before we signed the purchase and  sale agreement when he came shuffling over using a metal cane, looking both ways before he crossed our relatively quiet street, holding a stack of photos he had taken while the house was being built.

He'd been a photographer in the air force and flew across the continent during WWII taking photographs on reconnaissance missions and thought we'd want to know where our septic tank was just in case.  He handed us a stack of photos showing the progression of our septic tank installation, each photo with Walter's hesitant writing marking the date. A survivor of polio, his hands shook, his gait unsteady and his voice sometimes muffled by his excitement that  neighbors had finally moved in.

Walter chatted with us just about every day, from a simple wave while he picked up his mail to an extended visit in his garage, listening to patriotic songs blasting from an old record player. He'd join in, his shaky voice struggling to reach the high notes, but by God, he remembered every word and sang with conviction and pride.



And once our kids came along, Walter and Mary became surrogate grandparents, dispensing some interesting advice along the way with plenty of hugs, kisses and one hell of an improvised zip line that tempted safety and raised a few eyebrows because if the kids didn't stop, they'd run the risk of smacking into a big old oak tree that Walter covered with a thin seat cushion to soften any blows.

The kids would scale the wobbly ladder, grab the  plastic handle and jump off, zipping along the nylon cord, yelling and screaming until they reached the seat cushion.

Lexi and neighborhood Pal, Jake in front of the fridge!

He let the kids push each other in an old fashioned office chair, the kind with big wheels that moved across the pavement like skates on ice and the kids would spend hours pushing each other around Walter's semi-circular drive.

He'd lower himself into an old green lawn chair, rest his cane across his lap and smile as he watched the kids play for hours with his handmade rigged up toys.


 One of their favorite toys was a garbage can that Walter had strapped to a dolly. While one kid was pushing the garbage-can dolly, the other one was inside, holding on tightly, their head just cresting above the rim. Waves of screams and laughter would roll down the street as the pusher of the garbage-can dolly would break into a sprint. It tipped over a few times so it was a good thing Walter had an never ending supply of band-aids and freeze pops.

When the kids grew tired of the dolly, Walter nailed four wheels on a small platform, put on two handles and tied on a long rope on the front. The kids would fasten the rope around their waists and race down the street, and around Walter's curvy driveway, gaining so much momentum that often the passenger wouldn't stay on for very long; they'd fly off when the platform rounded a corner, rolling into the Rhododendrons.  

He'd shepherd the wounded  into his garage, dispensing fudge pops and  popsicles followed by bottomless cans of Dr. Bob, Stop and Shop's equivalent of Dr. Pepper, and Archway and Lorna Doone cookies. Walter's old pink freezer was filled with treats for the kids, and the rusted old exterior masked by dozens of their photos and three cans of pink spray paint.

The kids were always welcome

The kids spent years at Walter's house, gradually seeing him less as they all grew older. He'd wave to the kids; they'd wave back, but the days filled with laughter and joy had come to an end. The kids had schoolwork, after school sports and activities, but Walter still kept his freezer stocked with treats, his pantry filled with cookies, the remnants of the old zipline overgrown with moss, the garbage-can dolly on its side collecting stagnant water. The basketball hoop rusted, the outside table and chairs were covered with vines.

Then he fell and became too unsteady on his feet. Mary showed signs of dementia. They moved out to western Mass to be closer to their daughter.

We cried when he left.


When Walter died, he was buried in the military cemetery with taps playing softy in the background. A small crowd gathered from the neighborhood at our local clubhouse where his family had poster boards board filled with the kids' pictures, from their days as toddlers to barely teens, their faces sticky with ice pops and chocolate, their smiles so wide and pure. 

"You give  me a reason to live," he told the kids over and over.


Walter J Fleming was the grandfather they never had and  a little bit of us all died that day, too.

The Great Curtain Fire and the Lady Cave

A backyard burn. Incriminating Evidence? Sissy says so.

I've always had a little thing for fire.   

From my days as a blond haired and woefully under-aged three foot package of energy, I loved those sparklers just as much as my GI Joe's, cap guns and freeze pops.

Those were the days where parents let their kids play with matches, saws, knives,  rope- just about anything so long as they left them to drink their martini's in peace. 

I'd spend hours lighting sparklers, mesmerized by  the white tip of the metal stick as I scrolled my initials into the dark sky.

They made my little pyro toes twinkle.

Though sparklers now fail to ignite those childhood passions, give me a pile of brush, some gasoline and a book of matches and I somehow morph into cave woman. 

I'd like to think I'm getting in touch with my Neanderthal brothers and sisters.

One of the greatest advantages of living on Cape Cod, besides the icy Atlantic Ocean, Wellfleet Oysters and  sweeping vistas, is that you can burn your junk in the backyard. Not cars or trash, but garden debris, like branches, rotten fence posts and the occasional wheelbarrow load of leaves.

I'm a responsible burner, most of the time.  Okay, I do toss in a few leaves here and there. Maybe a pizza box or two. A chair went in one time. And I'm having a flashback of dragging up  a desk from the basement and it ending up on the fire. I can't help it, I get carried away.

Fire is cleansing.

I've got my own little backyard baptismal font.


But if you happen to  mention my passion for backyard burning to Sissy, don't listen to whatever she says because she still blames me for setting her eyelet curtains on fire when we were in high school. She'll tell the mailman, the toll taker, anyone who'll listen that I'd been smoking in her room, had left a match burning on the dresser, which ignited her favorite curtains. A wide open window on a blustery spring day  gave that little match what he needed to incinerate Sissy's curtains.

I swear on Dot's grave  I didn't start that fire.

In fact, Sissy should thank me for my cat like reflexes and quick thinking because I sprinted into action, racing into our bathroom, grabbing the four ounce water tumbler and battling the fire like a trained professional, saving her frilly canopy  from going up in flames.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

But no matter how many times I tell Sissy  it wasn't me, she just opens those big brown eyes, raises an eyebrow and mouths, "Guilty as charged."

"You always wanted my room."

Okay, I admit, when we moved into our new house, she nabbed the best bedroom, a spacious and sunny front of the house room that overlooked our neighborhood, which in those days, was pulsating with teenage hormones, Schwinn Bikes, basketballs and sprouting facial hair.

She spent hours flipping through the sample books, picking out a plush cranberry wall-to-wall carpet so thick, pennies would bounce off it. I got stuck with a yellow scalloped patterned shag  that took on a decidedly mustard glow because I was too busy pulling up my tube socks and dribbling my basketball around the new neighborhood to look through the giant carpet books.

My room overlooked the back yard, a pretty boring place for a nosy tomboy who liked being smack in the  middle of the action. Sissy had the VIP seats in the house; I looked at Mom's new rock garden. She had the double canopy bed; I had the twin. But what I really envied was her closet, a double wide cavernous hideaway because she was able to squeeze a vanity and a Hollywood style lighted mirror inside. She'd spend hours tucked away in the dark mysterious room picking zits, plucking eyebrows and trying to subdue her wildly crazy hair.

She really pioneered the lady cave long before man conquered his subterranean refuge.

Her entire room was off limits, a highly secured big sister vault and she guarded it with ferocious drive. She'd unleash a cacophany of screams even if I touched her carpet with my big toe, or craned my head around the door, hoping to catch a glimmer of her lady cave.

So I'd have to sneak in when she wasn't around being careful not to leave my footmarks on that damn carpet.  My friends and I would tip toe in, slide open the doors to her lady cave and lust over her lighted mirror, the Clairol steam curlers, the Conair blow dryer, the makeup, the magazines. Her lady cave would stay warm long after she'd finished blow drying her hair.

It was like looking into someone's diary or handbag, because once you started, it was impossible to stop. I'd always snoop around in there, jealous that I didn't have my own little lady cave, but I was always on alert because when she caught me in there, she'd pinch me.

The  Cade sisters' are big boned gals and when Sissy pinched me, her big paws squeezed out more pounds per square inch pressure than a croc and left a welt that would hang around for days.

So when her curtains went up in flames, shooting across the room, threatening to ignite her canopy bed, she blamed me. 

I'm certain I didn't start that fire.

I think is was my mother's lucky strike. 

Or it may be been my sister, Debbie.

But it wasn't me. No matter what Sissy says.
















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