Fig Life

I’ve been thinking about my Daddy Bob a lot today. I guess I’m thinking of him because it’s Memorial Day and he was a veteran. Of course, he didn’t die in a war, but I still think of him on anything relating to the military. I should probably write this post on Veteran’s Day instead, but I can’t help when I think of him.

Daddy Bob was my stepfather. My mom married him when I was only about 2 years old, so I grew up with him, which is why I usually called him “Daddy Bob”. (I am also close to my real father, whom I call Dad, but that’s for another post.) Bob and I had plenty of conflicts growing up. I often felt that he was too demanding. He seemed to demand so much of me and I complained a lot about this requirement of perfection. Later I began to understand that he expected a lot from me because he thought so much of me. It was partly because he loved and cared for me and wanted me to do well. He was not the kind to express his love easily, at least not until we were both older. I think it was not until my senior year of high school that I began to understand Bob a little better and we began to talk more together.

I can hardly begin to tell you everything about Daddy Bob. He led such an amazing, busy life. He had several professions over the course of his life: teacher, principal, preacher, farmer, salesman–just a few of the hats he wore. Of course he was also a soldier–in the Korean War, which is why I think of him on Memorial Day. He didn’t talk much about the war, except that I seem to remember him saying he learned to bake pies on the boat on the way to the war. He could make a really darn good apple pie. I mean a really delicious pie. Yum. He also really liked that show MASH.

Daddy Bob also experienced a lot of tragedy in his life. When he met my mother, he was a widower. His previous wife had died in a car crash, along with his youngest son, Adam, who was just a baby. When I was in college, his oldest son, my stepbrother Scooter, died when his truck was hit by a train. Bob experienced plenty of other hardship, but I don’t want to list all of it here.

Bob also had a lot of illnesses, some perhaps exacerbated by his time in the war. He always seemed to have trouble with his lungs, though he’d never smoked or anything like that. As he got older, he spent more time in hospitals. I remember one time in particular. I was home from college for the summer. My mother had left town for a work trip. While she was gone, I had to take Daddy Bob to the hospital and help admit him. I remember the shock of seeing him on that hospital bed and suddenly he looked so old and frail to me. It was the first time he seemed weak to me, in spite of the past illnesses. I think I managed to hold it together in front of him but then I cried and cried when I left the room. It suddenly hit me that he could die. Of course I was plenty old enough to know that everyone dies, but I’d never really contemplated it happening to him. He was always so big and strong to me.

When I was away at college (I went about 1,000 miles from home) I would often get a sort of urgent feeling to call home and it would happen just after Daddy Bob had gotten sick again. Bob also seemed to have a sort of psychic sense when I was struggling. I don’t know why I seemed to have this spiritual connection with a non-blood relative. It is also surprising that he talked about the connection we had considering he was from a church that wouldn’t normally embrace such “spacey” ideas. It was during this time that Daddy Bob became more expressive of his feelings. He often told me I was like his own child, not just a stepchild. He told me it was like God gave him me to make up for the loss of his baby son Adam. This was of course one of the sweetest things anyone ever told me.

Well, a couple years ago, Daddy Bob died of cancer. I was very sorry that I didn’t get to see him just before the end, and I wasn’t even able to go to his funeral. I’m still sorry about that. At the time I was living in London and had a newborn baby. Ewan didn’t have his passport yet (we had an appointment to get one, but it was still a month or more away at that time) and I couldn’t leave my newborn nursing baby behind and travel to the U.S. without him. So I stayed in London. I got the message he’d died on my cell phone while at a post office in London. I wish I could have seen him one more time, but I know he’d understand. I also named that baby Robert (though we call him by his middle name, Ewan) for Daddy Bob. I was grateful at least that we’d been able to tell him before he died that we’d named the baby for him.

I still think of Daddy Bob a lot, particularly on significant days–his birthday, Christmas, Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, his anniversary with my mom, etc., but also during day-to-day life. I look at my son and remember his first name and smile. I think of all the goofy jokes Daddy Bob told (like, hey! Look at that four legged bird…………..dog”) or the fact that he liked to call me Dusseldorf or Knothead. No, I have no idea why Dusseldorf–perhaps because he liked the shortened version–Doozey, so much. I’m glad he was such a big part of my life and I’m glad that I seemed to bring some joy to his life as well. I know he had a great influence on me and I even married a man who has some very similar personality traits to him (though not the corny jokes). I hope he’s watching from above and knows that I still love him and keep his memory close.

I once had a duck who thought he was a dog.

He didn’t start out as a dog. He probably started out as just a duck, though I’m not sure since our communication was limited. I will begin at the beginning. One Easter (I believe I was 11 at the time), I was sick at home with the flu. I had missed tryouts for the junior high cheerleading squad and I was quite miserable. A well-intentioned stepsister brought me an Easter gift in consolation. It was an adorable downy little duckling. Let me take he opportunity right here to say that a gift of a live animal is usually not the wisest surprise gift, though at least we lived in the country where there was some room for a duck. I can only imagine how my mother must have felt, but for some crazy reason, I got to keep the duckling. Being a precocious child, I ambitiously decided to name him Marcellus Demetrius. I called him just Demy most of the time, but my stepfather took to calling him Homer.

When he first entered our home, Demy was a delightful tiny little bundle of yellow fuzz. He would sit on my shoulder and peck at my ear. I couldn’t wear large dangling earrings, which was tough since it was 1985 and as far as earrings were concerned, the bigger the better. I also had to change my shirt several times a day. You can figure that one out. Anyway, I loved Demy and he was a constant companion. When he wasn’t on my shoulder or flapping at my heels, he was living in a laundry basket with a Trivial Pursuit board on top to keep him in. If out of his basket he would follow me around the house quacking all the way. If he was in his basket and I had the audacity to leave the room without him he would quack vigorously in protest. It was as if he thought he was human and I was his mother.

This all went along well for a time, but then I had to leave town for three weeks to visit my father. Demy was getting too big for the laundry basket and my parents insisted I should move him outside before I left. With the dogs. I should explain at this point that we had two dogs, Pogo (a small terrier and my own dog and favorite pet before Demy) and Ivan the Terrible (a chow). I couldn’t imagine my poor baby out there with dogs and foxes and who knows what else, but I had to give in and move him outside. It nearly broke my heart to leave him but I also looked forward to my three weeks in the big city. So I left.

When I returned, Demy had definitely become a Homer. He had grown even larger and hardly seemed to remember. He was way too big for my shoulder and wouldn’t come and sit on my lap. Instead of acting human, he had begun to act like a dog. It seemed that he had now decided that Ivan the Terrible was his mother and he followed him around all day. Ivan himself followed Pogo, so they were quite a trio. The dogs did not entirely accept Homer, but they knew better than to attack him. They seemed to sense that he was also a member of the family, albeit and irritating and feathery one. I had to give up on the close friendship I had with my duck and I was bitterly disappointed. I felt betrayed that he had so quickly forgotten me and that my parents had allowed it.

At this point, we moved into the center of town (a very small town) and life went on and Homer continued to follow the dogs and tried to join in their life as much as possible. He even acquired his own hanger-on; a mangy (possibly hungry) stray would trail after him as he followed Ivan, who in turn followed Pogo. I would walk to the post office a couple blocks away and a funny little train would follow: Pogo, Ivan, Homer, Stray. I must admit I rather enjoyed the attention we received from other townsfolk, who laughed uproariously to see our daily parade. We also got calls from the neighbors asking us to shut up Homer when he was howling (quacking) at the moon.

So that is the story of Homer the duck. I wish there were a happy ending, but I can’t lie to you. Homer met a tragic end. Every Saturday night in the summer, there was a rodeo held just half a mile down the road from our house. One Saturday night Homer was out chasing cars when destiny caught up with him and he went on to Duck Heaven. There was some discussion that perhaps Homer was actually a female duck crossing the street to nest rather than just chasing cars, but there was no evidence to support such an idea. All I knew was that my sweet little duck was gone.

Rest in peace, Homer.

note: the duck in the photo above is not Homer, but just some random stranger

I remember snow — one snow that was very vivid. Every snow was vivid because we had so few. It began to fall after sunset, or later, around my bedtime. I couldn’t go outside yet, but I pined for a good snow and feared it would all be gone before morning. So I went to bed feeling anxious and I awoke in the middle of the night still anxious. I didn’t want to wake my sister, so I crept across the room on all fours and looked out of the window. I could see the whiteness of the snow in the darkness. It was perfect and pure, as yet untrampled. To me it was the most beautiful sight on earth. I wanted to make everyone wake up and enjoy it with me. I wanted to go outside and lie down in its cold perfect smoothness. The snow was like a gift from God just for me. Then I saw one of our dogs, a black spot on the snow, and he looked up at me and in that moment I felt that he had a soul, that he saw the snow as I did, that the snow was a gift to him, too.

I remember playing outside. I remember exploring in the woods. The two dogs and I ran around like we were in the book Where the Red Fern Grows. I miss exploring. I would take with me whatever seemed essential in life to me at that time–which usually included a book, some paper, and a pen. Or sometimes I would go with nothing. We would walk until we couldn’t see the house anymore and I would pretend to be someone or somewhere else. I remember giant oak trees and chunky bark you could tear off and find moist insides and bugs and more. I remember pecan trees and he feeling of walking on fallen rotting bumpy pecans. I remember pretending to be an Indian and trying to walk so quietly that no one would hear me coming. I remember finding stumps or big logs and using them as tables or chairs or pulpits or stages. I remember digging in the mud to build forts or hid treasures so well that I forgot how to find them again. I remember picking weed-flowers and wearing them in my hair. I remember bug bites and poison ivy and bloody knees and scratched elbows, but those things never stopped me from climbing trees.

I remember sitting at the edge of a creek and dipping my feet in. I remember trying to fish with a homemade pole and some string. I remember how clear the water was and how it bubbled and sang. It was cold, too. I remember whistling for my dogs and they would come running up wet and soggy with tongues hanging out and tails wagging and would lick my face until I had to push them away to stand up again. I remember boulders and little ravines and climbing through them and pretending I was in the mountains. I remember finding a grove of trees that filtered the sunlight through so that it was that perfect, beautiful, soft green shade that looked like heaven. I remember praying and singing and feeling God there….