Last week, I went to a wake for Mr. N. He was a strong member of the same church as my Dad. They have six kids in their family too. I went to school with E., my best friend grades 1 through 6, until the Kevin R. episodes... The N family is a Westwood dynasty, athletic, smart with amazing bone structure and hair. Truly striking family. They are like the Kennedys of Westwood, well, one of the families that remind me of that clan, but without the scandals. Our family is a little more like the Marx Brothers even though we are mostly girls.
As I stood in the pew, I had that surreal feeling again. Those Nee kids are all too little to lose their Dad, I am too little to not have my Dad. Why aren't we just at a regular old Sunday mass, with our whole families, looking forward to donuts and the funny pages. How can we all be grown up looking? Oh right right right right right right. We are grown up, sort of. I am 45. So is E. I wonder what E's life is like now, or her sisters. I like her suit. She lives in Colorado, where? I dove in and out of this reverie for the entire service even though I still said all the right things at the right time. I am a good learner of routines. Amen.
This morning, I heard the ice cracking on the canal. The sound came through the fog, deeper and louder than just ice cracking in a cocktail glass. With all that fog, if it wasn't for the river, it would have been like being at the moors. Oh, Wuthering Heights. A Canada geese honked as it flew along the frozen and unfreezing canal. It flew low, its belly area only about a foot above the cracking ice.
I wanted to speak with my Dad suddenly, so suddenly, I felt dizzy. Swoopy. I heard the sound of his voice, as if I called him right then to tell him what I was seeing. He would be interested. First though he would answer the phone by saying something like, "We don't accept calls from Lo-well." or just "Helloooo there" in some funny, nasal-ly way. He had this kind of Italian accent way of saying, "I love you too much" that I love love love.
I went through a whole imaginary, re-created conversation with him as I walked. The canal, the ice, the fog would make a good photo and my Dad liked to take photos. I took one with my eye. My cell phone camera just wouldn't get it right.