If the Fates Allow (pt. 1)

Christmas 2014 was already destined to be slightly off-kilter given the absence of our family's matriarch who decided only two months ago that 95 years on the planet was sufficient lest she wear out her welcome, but Christmas is shaping up to be a doozy all its own for so many other reasons.

After two turbulent legs of flight, during one of which me and the two men seated in my row grope for our puke bags numerous times, I land safely in my hometown of Kansas City. I am both tired and hungry. My plane arrives at midnight, and though I suggest I hail a cab to drive me out to the burbs, Mom and Dad insist upon picking me up. They arrive at MCI Airport to retrieve their eldest daughter for yet another “fun-filled family Christmas.”

If you will recall, I was greeted upon last year's Christmas vacation arrival by my father whose enthusiasm for whisking me immediately off to Dixon's for all-you-can-eat tacos and free saltines was conveyed to me with a suspicious level of eagerness. He is unable to offer me this same extravagant dining experience at midnight on a Sunday in the middle of America's heartland, so he is anxious to get me and my mother home so he could whip up his new favorite "sandwich" for his famished daughter. Mom's giggle as he professes this desire in earnest should have been foretelling, but I am too tired to read into anything as I stare out the back window into the night, until...

Apparently, the abandoned Smuggler's Inn near the airport is a frequent topic of conversation with my parents. A topic of great concern, in fact. Earlier this morning, Mom and Dad had dropped my baby brother, Jason, and my sister-in-law, Sara, at the airport so they could make their way to Sara's hometown of Mexico City for the Christmas holiday. It was then that Mom and Dad finally accepted the fact that the Smuggler's Inn on I-435 was indeed closed for business, for good. They had apparently spent a lot of brain power attempting to figure out why the parking lot was like a ghost town each time they made the 30-minute trek to the airport, and why the lone red truck that was always parked amidst hundreds of empty parking spaces, was now no longer there. I listen with familiar confusion as Mom and Dad hypothesize the closing of a business that obviously could not have survived in the vast barrenness of a highway that lay empty for miles. Obvious to me, anyway.  To them, it is as perplexing as the plot of that damn book Mom read for hours during last year's annual summer trip. I still don't think they've gotten over the fact that the protagonist named her white cat Cleo, and I don’t dare surmise how long it will take them to recover from the defeat of the Smuggler's Inn near the airport.

I sit in the backseat amazed that precious airwaves are being utilized for this conversation, feeling immense gratitude that 34 years ago Coach Bates taught our entire cross country team how to will ourselves into a deep sleep for a 20-minute power nap.

Instead of napping, however, I decide to engage the crazies with other conversational topics of interest.

"So, what's exciting in your world, you two?" I offer, then cringe, worried that the Smuggler's Inn is going to be the highlight.

Thankfully, Mom and Dad spend a lot of time reminiscing about years of old, and we the conversation somehow evolves via various tangents to the time Dad and I were hiking hundreds of feet above the Missouri River, and he tripped in a mossy creek bed and nearly fell to his death.

I, at 12 years old (along with Julie at 10 1/2), witnessed this terrifying moment with my own eyes, and the memory comes flooding back as if it happened only yesterday.

Mom, Jerrod and a 2-year-old Jason are resting at the campsite while Dad, Julie, and  I hike together on an overcast day, engrossed in conversation. The three of us approach a creek bed, and as Dad leaps forward to hurdle the mossy depression, his foot catches on an upwardly protruding rock and he falls sideways onto smooth, wet stone that acts in this moment like a Slip ‘N Slide doused in vegetable oil. He begins to slide away from us, heading to the edge of the cliff.

As I watch Dad struggling to stop himself from the seemingly fatal slide down slippery rock, he disappears over the edge of the cliff. My screams fill the air and echo off the high rock walls across the river. I carefully yet frantically make my way to the edge of the cliff where my Dad's flailing body has disappeared from view, trembling with fear that he has fallen to his death. As I approach, I hear his strained voice muster a fear-filled yet emphatic yell, "Née Née!  Juice! Don't come near the edge! Stay where you are! Please!"

Tears streaming down my face in disbelief that he has not free fallen down to the river bed, I ignore my father's directive and crawl on hands and knees to peer over the edge of the cliff to make certain that my dad is actually safe, and that I am not hearing the voice of his spirit in the afterlife.

For Dad, fashion pales in comparison to sentiment, so he is wearing his dress shoes he had on when we began our camping adventure by picking him up from work and heading east. Mom had forgotten to pack his hiking boots, but Dad was not about to forfeit a bonding hiking experience with his daughters just because of unsuitable footwear.

So Dad had slid down the creek bed on his back, attempting to grab onto anything that would allow him the slightest chance to slow his body's quickening trajectory. To no avail. After he disappeared from my view and just before falling hundreds of feet, my father had jammed his heels into a rock crevice and fought gravity by leaning back and hugging the wall with his back and outstretched arms.  

He then shimmies the wall to a place that offers him sure footing, and dizzily climbs back up to me. Dad collapses in shock and exhaustion, and the three of us lie together on the wet ground, me with my face buried in his chest, crying, and him holding Julie and me as he offers prayers of thanks to God.

As Dad later describes the miracle of escaping his certain death, my mind conjures an image of Michael the Archangel, buff and handsome, singlehandedly holding my father's body to the cliff, as if Archangel Michael knows that my siblings and I still have far too much to learn from this man whose ego and pride are essentially non-existent (unless that pride has to do with his Irish heritage), so much so that he can ruin dress shoes for an adventure with his children.

Dad's equilibrium is knocked completely out of whack due to that fall, and Mom and I spend the rest of the camping weekend helping him walk or crawl to the showers and bathroom, stopping at trash bins or the side of the road to allow him to vomit. It’s the least I can do as I celebrate the seeming miracle I witnessed. Thank goodness Mom neglected to pack Dad's hiking shoes that day. Dad's life was spared thanks to the heel of a men's dress shoe, and Archangel Michael, of course.

It seems Dad put his life, knowingly or unknowingly, into danger for his daughters on a regular basis when we were little girls. Camping trips were frequent for our family, though I'm not sure why since every time we camped, some tragic event transpired. Like the time Dad contracted the tick-borne disease rickettsia and we thought we would lose him, or that time Julie and I thought it would be fun to chase a herd of cows by banging our walking sticks hard against the rock floor of a dry creek bed so we could experience the resounding echoes along with the thunderous strikes of stampeding cow hooves running from us.

When, inevitably, Mama Cow has had her fill of our annoying cowgirl roundup game, she turns with a loud snorting exhale and charges my little sister and me. I run at the speed of a bat-out-of-hell as Julie takes up the rear (in her later retelling she sees me sprint away from her with my ponytail bobbing frantically side-to-side). At that point Dad leaps atop the picnic table in a single bound, jumps from table to ground, and sprints even faster straight toward us, screaming a terrified combination of, "Noooo! No! Yaaaaw! Yaw! Run, girls, run!”

In what I recall was a single swipe of his arm, he scoops me up without breaking his stride, continues running, grabs my tow-headed little sister into his arms, then wheels and runs back the other way. That poor man. I'm certain he rejoices at the fact that he and Mom had two boys after Julie and I were born. I don't think he could have survived more daughters.

Remembering those moments, I lean back into the backseat of the car as an immense feeling of love and gratitude washes over me for the two nutty people seated in front of me whom I am lucky to call Mom and Dad. This nostalgia remains with me until we arrive at the house I've called home for my entire life, and my father builds for me his favorite sandwich.

Remember bologna? Yeah, that hideous stuff that used to grace our lunch boxes and lived between two pieces of bleached white bread? Dad's palate has apparently followed his cognition down the eccentric path. His new favorite sandwich entails a single slice of bologna plus peanut butter (chunky) spread in an oddly disorderly fashion and rolled into a flour tortilla. I think it is a joke until he takes a bite to prove to me how delicious it is. Even my mother shakes her head in disbelief, and I begin wishing Dixon's was actually open at this hour. I allow Dad to enjoy his precious "sandwich" as I default to rummaging through the refrigerator the way all of us kids do anytime we return home.

Mom and Dad and I stay up past 2AM discussing life's befuddlements, such as the Cloud. Mom's aversion to technology is in full force as she contemplates the place in which the Cloud resides. It seems to her a concept much like heaven in that it should have a physical location, but you can't really pinpoint it on a GPS, nor can I explain it in any intelligible way that will make sense to my mom. The fact that one can "send things" to the Cloud is even more baffling to a woman I'm convinced would rather use an abacus than a calculator. I know that as she and Dad discuss this mysterious technological storage locale, Mom is secretly worried about what will happen to all that data if the Cloud somehow explodes.

Dad asks me if I have brought enough clothing for eight days, and if I have a warm coat. I know he is nodding to the fact that I’m notorious for forgetting or leaving behind a critical article of clothing anytime I travel. My last trip's oversight was a black jacket to cover my arms during the funeral and burial as we sent my Grandma Rellihan to her resting place. On that trip, I shared my plight with Dad, and he of course had an instant solution.

“Née Née, I have a great black jacket that will keep you warm,” he says as he exits the living room and makes his way to the hall closet. I know the contents of that closet, so as soon as I hear the familiar sound of the knob turning and the door opening, I shake my head. 

That closet contains dinosaur-era attire, with none of which a nostalgic pair like my mother and father dare part.

If you will recall, Mom and Dad had for years been sleeping on a mattress that essentially morphed into a bowl because my dad held on to the lovely sentiment that every one of us kids had been conceived in that bed, and he refused to discard such a sacred relic. Ugh. How many times do I need to be reminded of a fact that was frankly made evident almost nightly given that my bedroom was just below theirs? The mattress didn’t just bow, the box springs squeaked– and I don’t think ranch houses built in the 1960s came with sound-insulated floors. Since the laundry room was just outside my bedroom door, and because I learned self-preservation at an early age, I would put a slipper or a shoe in the dryer and turn it on so I could enjoy the drumming beat of that shoe over the rhythmic movement of the bed above me.

Over the years, when Mom would inquire as to why there was always a lone slipper in the dryer, my siblings were clueless, and I would go about my business as though I didn’t hear her question. It remained a mystery to Mom until I was in college and could appreciate that my parents had a beautifully rich love life, and I could finally disclose that it was I who kept our electric bill inflated by running the dryer all night. Mom was embarrassed. I was somehow liberated.

[I digress. I was sharing my father’s remedy for my lack of a black coverup to wear over my dress at Grandma’s funeral].

Dad walks back into the living room carrying a hanger dangling what appears to be a black flight jacket with a red, white and blue “USA” embroidered on both arms, and a huge American flag embroidered on the back.

I look at the jacket, then up at him with a look on my face I’m certain he has seen hundreds of times in my 48 years as his daughter. He smiles cautiously and explains, “But Née, it’s black, and it will keep you very warm at the gravesite.”

My expression barely changes, so he dispiritedly states, “It’s the USA down the arms that you hate, isn’t it? Just look beyond all that, baby girl.”

I squint my eyes in disbelief, shake my head, punch him in the arm (hard) and walk into the kitchen, doing my best not to anxiously consume a croissant from the trays of food being marshaled into our kitchen by consoling friends and members of St. Mark's Parish.

Grateful that I did in fact sufficiently pack for this trip, I kiss my parents good night and retreat to my room for some much-needed sleep.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I walk into the living room as Mom is struggling to pull the large Lazy Boy recliner across the floor from the place where it otherwise sits year round.

"Mom, what the hell? You're going to kill your back!"

"I'm putting it downstairs to make room for everyone for Christmas brunch tomorrow."

"When did you begin this back-breaking tradition? And where are you taking it?!" I exclaim as she heads toward the front door.

Mom replies between strained grunts, "I'm taking it downstairs."

I roll my eyes. "Should I help you?"

"Nope, I've got it," Mom says with an I-Am-Samson sort of confidence.

I look on in amazement and disbelief as Mom finally balances the recliner on the first  step of the descending staircase. I can't wait to see how she is going to pull this off, "Mom, seriously?!  Are you just going to throw it down the stairs?!"

"No, honey. It will gently glide down," Mom casually responds.

Mom releases her white-knuckled grip. The recliner plummets down the stairs in a fashion that in no way resembles gliding. When we finally hear the loud thud below, Mom looks up at me, wide-eyed, and begins laughing hysterically.

In the distance, I hear what sounds like Old Man Parker in A Christmas Story as Dad mutters something under his breath in the shower. I throw back my head, close my eyes and exasperatedly walk to my room to practice "O, Holy Night," a song for which I've been volunteered against my will to sing at Christmas Eve Mass this evening.  

Little do I know that in a few hours an absentminded, toupee-topped organist resembling Uncle Louis in Christmas Vacation will inadvertently sabotage my solo in front of a crowded cathedral congregation.

–To be continued–