You Wanna Feel Old After 42 Years, Keep Dropping the Hammer and Grinding the Gears

Tomorrow would have been my father's birthday. He'd have been 77 this year. It's wild to think of him that age. I honestly don't know if he'd have made it even if cancer hadn't taken him first. I never remember thinking of him as young. He was 40 the year I was born and people frequently mistook him for my grandfather with his weathered face and mostly silver dark hair. He was tall and lanky everywhere but across his shoulders and arms. I sure do appreciate that, Daddy.

I remember that he always moved deliberately. He was careful in a way that made me believe that moving might hurt, or it might not. He'd come in from work, and I learned young how to unlace speed laces and yank off boots. I did it because he always acted like it hurt to do it himself. Maybe his back. He'd had back surgery at 30 and spent the rest of his life treating that. These days, he'd have a rating with the VA and maybe we could have lived a little more comfortably. Same story, different decade. He didn't think he deserved it. Maybe that's another layer of why I do what I do. I'm taking care of that child I was and that man my father was in every bit of paperwork I do over there. So I'd help him take off his boots. I'll still do anything to help someone I love that much who loves me the right way.

He drank coffee in the morning and sweet tea in the afternoon. He'd start when he woke up at 4:30 with no alarm clock and drink a pot of coffee before heading out to work. Gabriel likes that kind of slow wake up too. I'm too jealous of my sleep for that. I'd bring him his tea after we got the boots off. I remember one specific time that was probably a thousand times, when he sat on that white wicker chair on the screened back porch, there under Lookout Mountain in the summer shade of the big trees and the light breeze that usually drifted through those soft hills.

I've been missing him more than usual lately. Wishing he were here. I suppose it's the time of year and thinking about how if you live long enough, you'll outlive everyone you love. Or it could be that someone else is bringing me cups of coffee these days, complete with the conversation about how strange and sneaky grief can be, the way it creeps out of the shadows when you least expect it and stabs you right in the back.

Or maybe it's the way my heart has thawed. It came to me about the same time that Nanny died and I think it was hard to look directly at it with that fresh loss so heavy. I've been told recently that people find it easy to talk to me. I think that's the greatest compliment of my life. I want nothing more than for people to know that I am a safe and comfortable place. I think that would make Daddy proud.

Someone said that it was because a lot of people would prefer to talk to a woman, and that I'm not "prissy." For anyone to tell me that cussing like a sailor, being unafraid to get in there and get dirty, being absolutely intolerant of bullshit, and speaking my mind articulately is admirable makes me feel seen for the first time in a very long time.

I remember his hands most clearly. I got the shape of the bone in my wrist from him. I got the length of my fingers and the way my knuckles wrinkle from him. I got deep, beautifully-shaped nail beds from him. I got the giant, ugly veins across the backs from him. I got my love of using my hands from him. I remember his dark hands, absolutely covered in calluses. Those wide nails always had white paint under them and a few more spots across the rest of his hands. I remember one time, he clapped me on the shoulder and it was meant to be an affectionate gesture, but because his hands were as rough and hard as a tree trunk, it hurt like hell. I didn't let on. His eternal insistence that I was delicate and needed protecting was probably half the reason I grew tough. I wanted his pride in me, but I never wanted him to think that I was any less than the boys in any capacity. I didn't know then that he thought I hung the moon and the boys were just okay.

I remember the way I felt when he was disappointed in me. Nothing in this world has ever hurt more than letting him down. I wanted to live up to what he believed I was. I've been trying to do that my whole life. Where Nanny always told me I could be better, he believed I was better and was disappointed when I wasn't. His natural state was pride in me. To this day, that kind of support is what feeds my heart the best. I've been praying hard for that. That person out there for me will need that. I'd give up a whole lot of other things in a person for that one thing. 

I remember evenings spent watching Star Trek reruns together. He had a good imagination for things like that. We'd just sit on the edge of the bed and watch that tiny television up on the mantle. I wonder what he'd think of this monstrosity on my wall now. He'd drape a long arm over my small shoulders and while I know he told me he loved me, I don't remember that. I remember that arm, always across my shoulders.

Looking back on pictures from then, I was damn near transparent. I was always small and practically translucent with my almost white curls and pale eyes. Seeing pictures of us together, the contrast is almost comical. I was always just kind of peeking out from wherever I was, and always, always, always right by him. I've always been that way with people I love the most. 

I remember the color of his eyes. They were dark, but dark eyes are so rarely ever "just brown." As he aged, the milky cataracts turned them olive green, shifting in starlike spikes to polished mahogany around the pupils. Eyes matter and I always look hard at eyes. I study them so that I can remember and when I mean to, I notice everything. I think that's why I get so anxious in crowds. I get overstimulated with the sounds and watching people and the way they move and speak and trying to study too many people at once is intense. It's nice to have someone near me who makes me feel grounded when I get that way. Be my anchor.

He was observant. He didn't talk like I talk. He watched. Every once in a while he'd voice an observation. Some of those observations were my first glimpse at self-awareness and self-reflection. Never assume that someone who's not well-educated isn't profoundly bright. Not to mention talented. The things he could make with his hands impress me even now. I wish he were around to show me how to sand and stain and paint the way he could. He could get a mirror finish on cedar that I've never seen again. I wish he were around to come up with one of his out-of-the-box sort of solutions to a problem. I guess I get that from him too.

He's how I got this nickname that's been over my lifetime a crown and a curse. I remember when I neared 21, I went to a bar that I haunted innocently mostly for the music (including both the Drive-by Truckers and Jason Isbell touring behind his album "Southeastern." If you don't know that one, go listen to the original version of a song you probably know if you like country and fall in love with what real emotion sounds like). I walked in and heard across the bar and across the decades "Possum, is that you?" I could have crawled all the way under a high top to die or just play possum.

The story is that when I was tiny (as I ever was, considering I was 9lbs, 13 oz. the day I was born, still the biggest baby in the family and leaving an impression even now), he would lay me out on his long thighs (thank you for that too) and kind of sway at the knee and talk to me. I guess about the time I figured out that when you're happy, you move your face a certain way, I crinkled up my nose and grinned. Just like, you guessed it. I suspect someone saw exactly that Monday night of last week and almost said something, but instead voiced that I might get self-conscious about it if he let on. He's one of those who notice every tiny thing. Writers, man, we're a whole other species. And that name has stuck. It's really all I have left of him, so now I wear it just like a crown. I need someone to come hold my hand while I get that tattoo my ex-husband told me I couldn't get. I have an artist picked out. And Nanny can't be mad about it now. I wonder what Daddy would say about my tattoos. He didn't have any.

I'm going to share with y'all a picture from when he was young. This would have been before Vietnam. Before he felt like he had to drown whatever happened there. He'd never talk about it. And the two things he ever said were jokes. Maybe that's why I laugh at what hurts me the most. He was handsome with his bright teeth and wide smile. The way his eyes crinkled looks familiar too. We won't even talk about the ears. And yes, I had someone once say "you sure got his ears" without ever having met the man and barely even knowing me. Hm, I just noticed in this picture that I think My Only got his teeth too. That gorgeous child really did somehow get the best of the beautiful of all his contributing ancestors.

I've been writing so much this past week or two. I don't think it's darkness trying to get out though. I'm just feeling so much. Most of the feelings have been good. Some have been heavy, and a few have kind of felt like getting punched in the stomach. I have been so quick to smile and I've spent so much time smiling and laughing. I want to paint, but I just don't have anything that's calling me to paint it. I had one idea, but I'm not sure if that will ever materialize.

One of the best conversations I ever had with him was about faith and all that fun stuff. He identified as Baptist, but I can count on one hand how many times his shadow fell over the threshold of a church in my life. I asked him one time why he didn't go to church. He was quiet for a moment, pensive, and then he said "because my relationship with God is more important than my relationship with a church." Of all the things that ever stuck with me. I think maybe that conversation is part of what brought me back. No matter how much people in the church hurt me with their notions of my goodness or worthiness, my relationship with God is all that really matters. And we're cool these days. I think he'd like that too.

Maybe I'm feeling his birthday extra-hard this year because of the things I've been doing this year and the people I've been around. Our Stephen reminds me so much of Daddy. The way he listens. The way he watches. The way he looks from under his eyelashes sometimes when he's not quite sure. Something in his chin (that I only just recently saw for the first time and it was weird). That man is the brother I never had. And I thank all the circumstances that brought me here for that. And I thank my Daddy for that.