I sat in my parents’ living room reading when my dad shuffled by on his way to the backyard garden. Marilyne and I were gypsies at that point, drifting back and forth between our old life in California and our new life in France. During the transition, I visited my family in Missouri as often as possible.
“This book’s pretty good!” I offered up, trying to lure him into sticking around. I’d picked up Danger! Explosive True Adventures of the Great Outdoors at an Ozark flea market. It was a gory compendium of stories about manly men fighting wild animals published in 1970.
“That’s cool,” he mumbled as he continued out the backdoor. Frankly, the book wouldn’t have been his thing. My dad was resolutely opposed to animal violence. He once spent an entire week in the garage of the lake cabin we rented every summer, trapping a mouse so that he could set it free in a field a mile away. He loved animals and they loved him back.
Not that he was opposed to acts of senseless masculinity. He and the other Lake Madison dads would buy megatons of fireworks every Fourth of July. Although their pyrotechnic displays were intended to blossom majestically across the water, they’d inevitably ended up setting a neighbor’s roof on fire.
The midwestern evening heat combined with the macho subject matter of my book made me crave a couple fingers of the Maker’s Mark my dad kept in his laundry room cupboard—a drink he often tried to ply on me. As a Frenchman, alcohol played a huge role in his psyche, an important part of celebrating, grieving, relaxing, and bonding. Unfortunately, my whiskey palate had matured alongside his diabetes and failing kidneys. Drinking was no longer a relationship builder for us. That didn’t stop him from trying, although he’d backed off recently, maybe finally understanding how much it frustrated me given his failing health.
But a lot of things frustrated me; that was my role. My sister Sara was the present one, always there, always caring. My sister Debi was the absent one. Not that she didn’t love us all; she just wasn’t there. I was the frustrated one, showing up periodically, thinking I knew best, and stressing out when my solutions weren’t followed to the letter.
I put down the book, put aside thoughts of bourbon, and followed him outside.
The cicadas screamed as I crossed the patio and climbed down the stairs. My dad, with his stooped back, presided over the pair of raised veggie patches he’d built using what looked like giant Lincoln Logs. When I was a kid, he was a giant of a man. I eagerly anticipated growing to his height. That never happened. Eventually, life bent his frame and compressed his spine so that we were now the same height.
He fiddled with a pump sprayer he bought that afternoon at the Tractor Supply Store. I’d tagged along, partially to be with him and partially to find gloves for Marilyne to garden with in France. I wanted to buy her leather Carhartt work gloves since Carhartt has a mythic appeal in rural France. All the store had in women’s sizes were delicate fabric gardening gloves. This frustrated me. My dad tried to help by pointing me to the women’s socks, which just frustrated me more.
He explained that he’d bought the sprayer to stop the squirrels from “drinking” his green tomatoes. I furrowed my brow, trying to figure out why a guy who had lived in the United States for over half a century still mangled the English language. He’d seen this look a thousand times, so he responding with pursed lips, a look I’d seen a thousand times right back. It meant he knew exactly what he was saying. He explained that during the hot summer months, squirrels use the tomatoes for hydration; they “drink” the water out of them.
He’d made a cocktail of water, dish soap, and cayenne pepper powder to coat the plant and deter the drinkers, but the sprayer wasn’t working. Maybe the powder was clogging the nozzle.
I asked why the squirrels didn’t drink out of the birdbath instead. He didn’t really answer. I wasn’t sure he heard me. He had hearing aids but they didn’t seem to work much of the time.
I pumped the sprayer vigorously, thinking the issue might be that my dad wasn’t strong enough to build up pressure. This didn’t work, so we took the whole thing apart. I started blowing into each section to find the clog. He suggested against this, warned me the cayenne would burn my mouth. I proceeded regardless. The first couple blows were fine, but on the third blow, the tube retaliated, squirting soapy cayenne solution back into my mouth.
I spit into the garden, repeatedly. My dad’s eyebrow raised slightly as a gentle “I told you so.”
Thirty years ago, his gloating might have been more obvious and my ego might have been more fragile. There might have been an argument. This time, as much as my tongue seared and my eyes teared up, there was no fight in me. As he approached 80, my dad was prone to eccentric advice—but this time, he was right. I’d ignored him and I paid the price. This was how a father-son relationship should be.
Eventually, we found the clog in the nozzle. He asked me to remove it. I used my teeth to squeeze it out. I was already in pain, so whatever.
We reassembled the contraption and pumped. It worked perfectly. I stood back and watched him hose down the tomatoes as he mused about how my mom hates tomatoes and how he couldn’t eat tomatoes because potassium wasn’t good for his weak kidneys. He didn’t really know why he was growing them.
Maybe he should have just let the squirrels drink.
I stood there, trying hard to take the moment in until I absentmindedly itched my eye. The residual pepper on my fingers blinded me instantly. I stumbled inside to flush my eye in the sink.
When I came back, he was done spraying. He gave me a tour of the veggie patch, including the curled lettuce he felt he’d planted wrong, the parsley, the mint, the dill, and the elephant ear plant. He explained how he would harvest the bulbs from that last one for the next year. He also told me you could make poi out those bulbs. I asked if he’d ever done that. He said he didn’t care for poi.
I told him a joke that the clerk at the Tractor Supply Store had told me when he saw my driver’s license. “How do you get to California from Missouri? You go west until you smell the shit and then you turn right.”
“Yeah, that’s a good one,” he said, distracted.
“I can’t wait to get out of there,” I added.
“California?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m excited to move to France fulltime.” Our farm was about an hour from Limoges, the town of his birth. I wanted him to visit, to see the new life Marilyne and I were building in his—in our—ancestral land.
“California has been good to you,” he said.
He was right. The sweat, love, pain, and resources required for our next chapter all had roots in Los Angeles. California had been very, very good to me.
The conversation shifted to the two maple trees in his backyard. He trashed the arborists who wanted $5000 to trim them. I thought that “arborist” didn’t mean what he thought it meant, but I didn’t furrow my brow this time. Later, I checked the definition. He had used it correctly.
I told him they were fine trees, great for climbing. I thought about how I might have climbed them when I was a kid, but I was lying to myself. I wasn’t much of a risk taker when I was little. That came later. All those years ago, when he climbed on the neighbor’s roof with a garden hose to put out his pyrotechnic mistake, in my eyes, he might as well have been a wildfire smoke jumper. He was the risk taker. He was a giant of a man.
He agreed about the trees. He also liked the foliage that surrounded them.
He then pointed to the bird bath, how its shape made it tough for squirrels to climb in, which is why they didn’t drink from it. He’d heard me after all. I wondered what other things he’d heard without commenting on over the years.
Later, I sat down in the patio to listen to the cicadas and read about more bear attacks. My dad came out and offered me some chamomile tea. I said no thank you. An 80-degree Missouri night wasn’t my ideal tea time. He offered to ice it. I still said no. The real reason I didn’t want tea was because their Keurig machine, with its wasteful pods, frustrated me. I drank their coffee in the morning because, you know, coffee, but I could hold out on evening tea as to save a little plastic.
As dusk hit, the fairy lights they’d installed around the patio switched on, seemingly by themselves. My dad came out, gently delighted at my confusion, and showed me how he’d used the remote to turn them on. I asked him if he was going to join me. He demurred, saying he was retiring to his study to look at his iPad. He spent hours on that thing. I thought about asking him to hang out here with me, but decided not to. He had his patterns and an inner world that needed attending to.
He shuffled into the house and I promised myself not to be frustrated by him—or anyone else—tomorrow.
Two weeks ago, my dad, Dan “Popcorn” Faye, passed away during open-heart surgery, a few days before his 82nd birthday. I like to think that he had a heart so big that beat so true for so many people that it was just a matter of time before it gave out.
I was supposed to call him before the surgery and forgot. My dad had countless surgical procedures and medical scares over the years. He just kept pulling through. Why would this one be different?
Sara texted me from the admitting room. She strongly suggested I call. I cut a work meeting short and caught him just before they were going to wheel him back. We talked for twenty minutes. He seemed happy, not that nervous. He was surrounded by people who love him. My sister, my mom, my niece.
He reminded me to call my aunt—his older sister—in Bordeaux. I’d been putting it off, mostly because speaking with her in my fractured French intimidated me. He said that didn’t matter. She loved me and would be overjoyed to hear my voice.
The next day, I would call her to let her know that her little brother—my dad—had passed away.
He never made it back across the Atlantic to La Villatte, to his old country and his son’s new country. That doesn’t mean his soul won’t be there. Next time a sweltering evening comes along, I’ll insist he take a seat with me. Together, we’ll sip bourbon or chamomile tea and discuss how best to protect les tomates from thirsty squirrels.
I don’t even know where to begin but I’ll try. I‘m honored to get such an intimate glimpse of a moment in life with your dad, filled with vivid, raw detail. The connecting, the not connecting, sadness, pride, love, hope. I’m so sorry for your loss, Denis. What a beautiful piece of storytelling to come out of it.
Denis, I'm so sorry -- I'd fallen behind on my reading, am just now seeing this, and now I understand why you've been in Missouri. I hope the happy memories help to carry you through the feelings of loss.