Column A fathers heart returns to a daughter
By JEANNETTE BATZ
Reaching the end of a speech that
bored even me, I sit down feeling useless, tired of my own voice, disconnected.
A few people come up to talk, and I fight the urge to argue with their
compliments. Thank you, I say, wincing. Thank you for saying
so.
A young man is about to engage me in a debate about the death of
the print medium when an older woman steps forward, standing a little closer
than anybody else. My names Peg, she said. I knew your
dad.
Chairs stop scraping in the background, papers stop shuffling, the
young mans nasal voice vanishes into thin air. All I can hear is
Pegs slightly hoarse, kind voice. I worked with him at the ad
agency, she continues. He was quite a guy.
Something Ive always wanted to believe. My father dropped
dead of a heart attack -- on the golf course, of all places -- when I was 9
months old, too young to connect strong, cradling arms and a rough wool lap
with character traits. Then, when my mom left their white-frame house in
Webster Groves, Mo., for a studio apartment, the movers lost the cardboard box
packed with photos and love letters.
My mom didnt want them anyway; she was busy trying to forget
two happy long-awaited years of marriage and to raise me alone. Never one to
dwell on the past, she wiped away the memories like a professor furiously
erasing a failed equation. By the time I was old enough to demand stories of my
father, she had to stop and think.
She could always muster a few anecdotes, but her voice had a
vague, dreamy, far off quality that left me wondering whether it all really
happened. Maybe there were never any photos at all. Maybe my father never
existed. Over the years it came to matter less and less. People would ask how
Id lost my dad, and Id give an often rehearsed, bare-bones
chronology, my own voice a little vague.
Now Im 39, 10 years older than my mom was when he died, and
a woman named Peg is telling me stories.
One day, she bubbles, I was on deadline, working
furiously, and your dad shows up in the doorway holding this ridiculous
floppy-eared pink bunny. Huge, clutched to his stomach. Isnt this
great? he kept saying. I cant wait to see her face. I
tried to tell him I didnt have time to talk, but he had to play the music
box for me, and waggle the bunnys ears, and finally I just had to stop
working and tell him it was wonderful, youd love it.
Im nodding along like an idiot, wanting a dead man to know
how much I loved a bunny I cant even remember.
Anyway, I heard you were here and I just had to tell you
that story, she finishes, hugs me and moves away into the crowd. Turning
back to the anxious young man, I blithely reassure him that print is very much
alive. Lousy speech forgotten, Im as giddy as a teenager whose crush just
asked her out. He loved me, I keep thinking. He really did
love me.
This is, of course, something I have been told for years. But the
ridiculous floppy-eared bunny has made it real. A silly act of kindness has
collapsed 38 long years like a Slinky, bringing my dead father close.
A few weeks later, my husband came home from the film
Gladiator quoting a favorite line -- something like, What we
do in life echoes through the ages -- and I thought again of the bunny.
Im sure my hard-driving father never dreamt, when he snuck
out of some executive meeting to head for the toy store, that his sweet
foolishness would stick in a coworkers mind for nearly four decades. He
could have let his secretary place the order or at least retained his dignity
by swaddling the pink plush in a discreet brown bag. Instead, he opened his
heart, and the consequences traveled through time to reassure a daughter long
grown.
If this is karma, Ill take it.
Jeannette Batz is a staff writer for The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis. Her e-mail is
jeannette.batz@rftstl.com
National Catholic Reporter, August 25,
2000
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