this christmas
this would be
the
Christmas
that our children
gave us our past
in DVD without
our even asking.
we sat,
watching our
younger selves
at just the ages
the kids are now
maveling at
how young we looked
and how rested,
at a time when
we were not.
i had triangular hair
and
I thought myself
beautiful
though now
it's questionable.
at least i was thin.
it is also
the Christmas
that the soul of
our
family
didn't make it.
and that happens
when december
feels more like j
uly,
when weather
and flight schedules
rule
our plans.
our Christmas morning
was not
nearly as punny,
with him not here,
we just did not feel
complete.
it was the
Christmas
that i was reminded
that my father
once jumped rope
to please (maybe impress)
his grandchildren,
and it was a joy
to rewitness
his
conversations
with me
from so many
years ago.
it was a Christmas,
when my boy brought
his bride-to-be
home
and he gave me
the gift o
f time
with him,
which is so rare.
and it was the one
when my mother
told the story of
how she met
my father, and
of the dress she wore
on their first date,
and my daughter found
the dress
in her closet and
brought it
down for
show and tell.
it was also
the Christmas
when i was
so busy cooking
i forgot to
take a picture
of my kids.
so.
it is like
every Christmas:
some sadness.
some joy.
some Christmas.
yes.
and writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
86
i've been carrying around some cargo in my car the past few days, waiting for today, when i could clear the clutter, if you can call it that, which i really can't. what some might consider clutter are remnants of my father — sports coats, dress shirts and pants —that used to hang in his closet.
we've been waiting for the time when my mother was ready to give them up. these were not his favorite things, but dress clothes he may have outgrown, both in fit and usefulness, that now hung in the guest room closet, dry cleaned and ready for something. perhaps some other body to inhabit them.
so that's what we decided, after we'd stuffed ourselves twice over the turkey and whatnot: to gather these few things up and pass them on.
i actually didn't mind my bodiless passengers. every time i opened the door to the back seat, i'd sniff them to see if they bore any traces of him, but they did not. i tried to remember when i'd last seen him wear that tweed blazer, the navy sports coat, the striped button down, the several pairs of khaki colored slacks, but i couldn't recall. it was right to give them away.
today is his birthday, 86 he would be. so it seemed the perfect day to donate these discarded pieces of his life to someone else to use. after lunch with my coworkers, i headed over to
, which recently has created
, a place where men participating in their program, which is focused on financial literacy, can shop for interview and career clothes. (though women have similar clothing programs all over the country, men's programs are rare, it seems.)
(Daddy went on only one interview in his life that he talked about, and that was for the job he eventually held for more than 50 years — caretaker of the people of my home town. (when he applied for a loan to start his practice, the farmers who ran the bank asked for collateral, and he gave them his career, though they were used to dealing in land and tractors, neither of which he had.)
he never wore a suit to work, saving them for church, funerals and weddings. he did wear a tie, but those were not part of my parcel.
i parked my car, gathering as many of his things as i could and headed to StepUp's front door, my heart pounding. i'd made arrangements to meet the volunteer director, and when i asked for her, handing over the first of Daddy's coats to someone at the front desk, i felt the tears coming. i'll go back and get more, i said, escaping. what was that about?
by the time i reached my car, the tears came on full force and i could not stop them, thinking only: i need to call my sister, she will understand this.
i gathered the last things and turned, finding the volunteer coordinator, a tall woman i had met briefly at my church, her arms open to me and to the burden i carried.
'i didn't think this would be so hard,' i said.
'i did,' she countered, 'which is why i want to give you a hug.'
we walked back with Daddy's clothes, and i found myself talking, probably too much.
'he was a physician,' i told her. 'many of his patients were poor.'
'what better place, then,' she said, 'than to share his clothes here.'
somebody soon will dress in my father's old navy blazer and his striped button down, his khaki slacks and head off into their own job interview. what they will have, if not land or tractor as collateral, is history — one of helping and healing.
such is what they need.
i wish i had thought to put a small card in each pocket—
'this blazer belonged to
Graham Vance
Byrum, Sr., raised in Sunbury, NC, father, grandfather, husband and physician. loved Wake Forest and circus peanuts. adored his wife. treasured his children & grandchildren. was tight with a penny and loved a pun. what you wear was donated on his 86th birthday. go for that job, and wear it well.'
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
unbind him, and let him go
april finally got here. though on sunday, march seemed to tug hard at winter, come monday the sun came out and by tuesday, there was no foolin', none at all, because the birds woke up with cackling spirits, singing so loud about this new warmth that on our morning walk, we almost asked them to tone it down.
but we didn't.
everyone around me —neighbors, family, co-workers, birds, dogs, even strangers on the street looked up at the blue sky and said, well, thank heaven it's april. finally.
now we take our meals outside and drive home with the windows down, drinking in the warm air deep and quick because soon the pollen will kick in and we'll have to shut the windows again.
april. a good month for me historically. the month of birthdays: my mother's— a birthday shared by a dear, lifelong friend and a godchild — a day that always meant Mama'd get a new azalea for the yard from her children and a bouquet of yellow roses from my father. april meant meeting Lydia on the back road to ride our bikes to school in the bright morning. it meant spring cleaning, when i'd come home from school to find my hair brush and comb soaking in ammonia in the bathroom sink and all my winter clothes put away, my spring dresses hanging crisp and pressed in my closet.
April in college: i was tapped on my mother's birthday to edit the school literary magazine. (it was the best birthday present i gave her, ever.) my first child began life one april day. it's the month of my grandfather's birthday.
last year April took on a different meaning for me. a sadness that it's taken me just about a year to shake. but i can feel myself unbinding, if only a little bit.
my siblings and i have traded emails today. routine things when you're dealing with estates and mothers and whatnot. when i looked at the calendar, i could not help thinking of this same day last year, when our lives took a tumble (my mother a literal one, breaking her femur in Daddy's hospital room.) i wrote about it
i'm blessed to have the mother i do. in this year we have all marveled, because she is all about April. Just watching her deal — with my father's illness and death, her broken leg and weeks in a wheel chair. in the weeks after Daddy died, when i visited her, each day brought progress. she got up out of the wheelchair. walked with a walker, then a cane. caring for herself. climbing stairs. set up a new home, drove herself, engaged life again.
so we are celebrating with a party, not a birthday party (though it will be on her birthday), but a spring celebration. we've invited her friends from home to visit, to share a little lunch and see her new house. now when we talk on the phone, planning, her voice is bright, expectant, unbound.
i started a new Bible study this week. I am not one for sitting down quietly and talking out loud about God, but there you have it. there is a long-standing joke that Episcopalians don't actually read the Bible. but i have found when two or there of us gather we actually do know the Bible pretty well. our
Book of Common Prayer
is filled with it, as is our Hymnal.
my friends and i met in the early morning before work and spent a few minutes with Lazarus, which is the gospel for Sunday, and well, we found that apparently, there is a lot in our lives to resurrect.
by the end of the hour, we were all weepy — just like Jesus in the story — considering the hope offered in this ancient tale. we each had different reactions to it, but the Lazarus story reminded me of that holy day last April when we gathered around my father to say goodbye. only i don't think i did, fully. but it's time.
yes, april finally got here, and it seems to me now, the whole month is all about unbinding — everything from peonies to people, opening up, letting the light in after a winter that seemed to offer little.
in the past few days i have been thinking of little except my father. the tone of his voice, his grin, all the times i have wanted to call him up and ask him something medical. my family will gather on Easter Day to remember him on the anniversary of his death. we'll picnic at a place he loved to visit and maybe even have a few candied orange slices for dessert. it will be a good day, a bright day, and what better day than Easter, to end our year of grieving, to unbind him — and ourselves — and finally let him go?
susanbyrumrountree.com is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
a year
a year ago i sat at my desk doing i can't say what now. the phone rang: my sister. she had spent the past couple of weeks with my parents, and she was leaving town that morning to join her daughter and the new baby girl who had joined their family just two weeks before.
i picked up the phone, thinking that this would be the debrief: that conversation we all have with our siblings after one of us has spent more than a few days with the folks who gave life to us. as i punched the button on my phone i thought: wonder how it's gone? how will i pick up her slack?
then she said: well, here's the thing.
i would learn over the next few months that this was code. all was not right with our world. pay attention.
that day, the thing was this: my 84-year-old-father had woken with a fever, chills, and while we talked he was on his way to the tiny hospital where he had practiced medicine his whole career. and my sister was scared.
after our phone call, i left work, packed a bag and headed home. that afternoon, my sister, mother and i sat with Daddy, watching the nurses go in and out as he slept and started, in his yellow sweater and brown corduroy pants. he did take his shoes off, as i recall.
but his stay was to be temporary. we sent my sister on to her new granddaughter, confident that we would take Daddy home in a few hours, or at least the next day.
i remember i had a big interview for work the next day, and by late afternoon, i arranged to do that from my parents' kitchen table. Daddy didn't come home that night, and i woke early, driving through Hardees to bring coffee and biscuits to him.
i would end up throwing all that away.
the next day, which was long, ended with my father waving to me and my mother from the back of a giant medical transport that would take him to the medical center where he needed to be. i will not forget that moment, Daddy being wheeled into the lighted transport and lifted up, him waving to me as he had done a thousand times from the back porch of our house. a wave that said he would be back soon.
only he wasn't.
+++
we are in the healing stages now. the days when we don't think daily so much about my father's absence, as his presence in our lives. i think about that sweater and those pants, his hush puppies and the conversation i had with him that day, and though i am sad, i am not devastated. i think of the story in that day — the old crank bed, the fact that it fell with him in it, the nurse who said when i arrived that he would need a higher level of care — these are elements in a story — no longer bringing outrage to me, though they certainly did that day. there would be other moments in his months in the hospital, but now that he is no longer there, i think of other families, and what they face each day they drive into the parking lot of a hospital. i wonder if they get long-term parking permits, like we did.
healing: what a gift that is, to the grieving. that at some point we turn the page from how can this be? to what is. and we keep moving on.
so here is the thing: in this year, my mother has moved to a new house. my sister's grandbaby is a year old. the grandbaby born on my father's birthday (and named for him) is 14 months old. one nephew got married and another will in April. Two nephews have changed jobs. my son bought a house. my daughter moved up in her job. my brother and sister and i stayed the course. the dogs all hung in there.
and in small pieces, Daddy has been right there.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
Dreams with Daddy
My father sits in a small metal side chair, the kind you find in a hospital room, a blank wall at his back. He wears his Sunday suit, the silver tie he saves for weddings. He crosses his legs, looks at his fingers like I have seen him do a thousand times. Silent, we wait together, for I know not what. I want to lean into him, and I wonder what he is thinking.
Daddy’s fingers are thin and nimble, the skin taut, the kind of hands a doctor needs for his work. I notice he is not biting his fingernails or the skin around them, something he has done most of his life. A tiny thing, but significant, it seems.
We wait together like we used to during my mother’s many surgeries. Broken hips — too many times to count — a knee. Her back. In those times I knew he was worried, so I tried to draw him through it with my chatter — about children, neighbors, work, anything but politics.
This is the first time in many months Daddy has not been lying in a hospital bed, with me trying to keep the one-sided conversation going. I’m talking to him, effusive in my glee at finding him all dressed up and sitting in the chair.
But here’s the thing: It’s a dream. My father died in April.
Right after Daddy died, I was hopeful he would visit me. I climbed in bed each night, wondering when it might be. I had dreamed of others in my life who had died. Why should Daddy be any different?
I was sure he was coming. It would just be a matter of time.
And he did come, swiftly, standing in the front hall of my childhood home in his Sunday suit, next to the mirror, his hair grayer than I remember. I hugged him, feeling such joy at the warmth of him, telling him I knew he would come, and then he melted away.
But he came again, this time sitting in that chair, in the shadows, while the world goes on around him. And that’s where he has been in a half-dozen dreams since. When I see him there I’m overcome with joy. I feel the knot in my throat, thinking I might cry, just watching him sit, in a room that is neither cold nor hot, so thrilled I am, happier than I have felt for a very long time.
And then the alarm startles, the dream fades, and I am back to day, feeling the ache of a world without Daddy in it.
I am a dreamer. Both night and day. Those who know me well know I often don’t hear the conversation, don’t even know anyone is talking to me. Not solely because I have lost some of my hearing, which I have, but rather I am lost in what I am thinking.
Daddy knew that about me. Once, when I was about 9, he called me a liar because I had no idea where my sister was. I didn’t. Had she told me? In my memory, I see her form sliding past me in the family room as she says something. I was lost in a book, until his words stung. Was I that? A liar? Is that all he thought of me? I spent years trying to prove otherwise.
We've been looking at the scriptures of Advent during my writing class at church. We're trying to find where we fit in the story of the virgin birth in the manger with the shepherds and all that.
Since I was a child, I’ve used my dreams to figure out the world.
The ages-old Christmas story takes on a new slant when I read about Joseph, who learns in a dream what he should do with his not-yet-wife-but-oh-so-pregnant betrothed.
So how do I fit in this story? It feels presumptuous to think God is speaking to me in my dreams. Who am I to be that important? Yet Daddy's not the only person in my life who has died but who has come back in my dreams — my mother-in-law, my grandfather, a childhood friend who was not always so nice — and so, I wonder.
In early February, as Daddy lay fighting pneumonia in the hospital where he practiced medicine for 50 years, he told me he would not get better. “You’ll have to take care of your mother,” he said. I knew then would not survive this fight and that this was his directive to be followed. But how in the world would we manage?
In the months since his death, the days and decisions have been dizzying. A new home for my mother, a new town. Our home, an empty shell. And yet, there are days when I’ve almost forgotten he’s not still there, just on the other end of the phone when I call, sitting in his chair with the dog in his lap. Except the number we had my whole life doesn’t work anymore, and only my mother answers the new one.
I don’t want to live in a dream world. I want to be awake and alive. Occupy the now. But it feels like I am waiting for Daddy to say something, when he comes in my dreams. I suppose I am looking for specifics — Joseph certainly got them. Like what do to when Mama won’t take her medicine correctly. Or the intangible, like what heaven is all about. And has he found the dogs, like we asked him to when he was dying, and our grandparents?
I’m looking for comfort, too, that despite the fact that he is not with us anymore, all will be well.
The move was difficult. Watching my mother as her cherished things were boxed up and loaded into the truck proved heart-wrenching. The packers worked quickly, so we worked behind them, gathering up personal items from his desk, tossing some, keeping others. That first afternoon, we found something torn from a magazine in a small catch-all basket on his desk. It was a poem, no given author, that read in part:
You mustn’t tie yourself to me with tears. I gave you my love. You can only guess how much you gave me in happiness.... let your grief be comforted by trust . . . I won’t be far away, so if you need me, call and I will come. Though you can’t see or touch me, I’ll be near, and if you listen, you’ll hear my love around you, soft and clear.
We felt him there, at that moment and knew he had left the words for us to find, right when we needed them most.
So I will keep dreaming, in hopes the next time I need him, he'll show up again and this time be ready to talk.
+ + + + +
To read daily meditations during Advent from the writers of St. Michael's, visit
, and download These Holy Mysteries.
— Susan Byrum Rountree writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
reflex
daddy's doctor bag sat in the back floorboard of his Ford for as long as i remember. he'd take it out for house calls, or when one of us was sick, opening up the brown otoscope case, popping on one of the the bluish-green tips before pulling open my ear to peer in it to see if i had plugged a nickle in there somewhere that was clogging me up. then he'd pop off the tip, flick on the penlight and ask me to say 'ahh', me hoping i could open wide enough so he wouldn't have to use a tongue depressor.
it was like an appendage to him, that black bag that never quite stayed shut. when he worked in the office, he'd go from room to room, ink pens lining the top pocket of his white coat, stethoscope and prescription pad deep in the pocket at his hip.
on some days when Daddy was in the hospital over the winter, i would find myself in the cafeteria alone, waiting for him to to be bathed, to wake up, for the doctors to come by on rounds. on one of those days, i found myself trying to name everything that the black bag held, trying to hang on to this memory since i knew, honestly, that Daddy would never open that bag again and take anything out.
here is the list i made that day:
stethoscope
reflex hammer
prescription pad
blood pressure cuff
rubbing alcohol
Band-Aids
as i made my way down the short list, i could feel the cool metal of the stethoscope on my back as he listened to my heart when i was a girl. i saw myself sitting in the kitchen chair trying hard not to giggle — and to hold my knee still as stone as he tapped it with the reflex hammer.
i couldn't think of the name of that thing he used to look into my ears, but i could see it.
when i got back to his room, he was awake, and before long the speech therapist came in the room to place the speaking valve on his tracheostomy tube, to see how well he could tolerate it.
they had been doing this off and on, and on some days, usually when my brother or i was there, he was able to talk a little, his graveled voice not sounding much like his pre-hospital one.
daddy, i said that day, i was wondering: what all did you keep in your doctor's bag?
and in seconds he began the litany: stethoscope. reflex hammer. prescription pad. blood pressure cuff. thermometer. syringes. Penicillin usually. alcohol. ace bandages. tongue depressors. otoscope.
otoscope. that was what i couldn't remember. in all those weeks, though he seemed in and out of confusion at times, it took only a moment for him to rattle off the tools of his house call trade.
that day, my brother happened to swing by, and looking at him in his white coat i realized i'd never seen him with a doctor's bag of any kind. he was not Daddy's doctor, but even if he once or twice grabbed a stethoscope to listen to his chest, he took it from Daddy's bedside, not from one hanging around his neck.
to treat a patient these days, a doctor might grab sterilized gloves from one of the boxes on the wall, a syringe from a dispenser in the hall (well, usually the nurse does that), log into the room computer to print out a prescription. sometimes i wonder if all that is better than the laying on of hands my father required to do his daily work.
+ + +
the morning after Daddy died, i went to his car and climbed in the back seat to take in his smell. the rubbing alcohol was there, and i looked around the floor board for the bag, but it was not to be found. made sense, since Daddy hadn't practiced in a few years, that he would have taken it out. seems i recalled that for awhile, it sat on the old chair at the door of my room, where he now kept his office.
back in the house, i looked and it was not there.
a few days later, my sister and i stood in our attic, looking around. there, on the floor was an old doctor's bag, empty and worn from decades of travel, but it was not his most recent bag.
my mother has been looking for the bag for weeks. she has a purpose for it, but though she has been through every closet and looked in every drawer, she's been unable to find the one thing Daddy used every day of his career. it's troubling, like if she opened their closet one day to find his yellow sweater missing, or that someone had misplaced the letter opener that has always been on the desk of the secretary right where he left it the last time he opened a letter. these are the small things that mean much to each of us. especially is doctoring tools.
it was saturday afternoon, and we had gone through closets and sat on the phone to india for 58 minutes trying to get the computer to work, only to find out we couldn't. we had gone through papers and a scrap book i had never seen (that's another post), and my mother, who is back on her feet now, gave me a roll of quarters Daddy had been saving for me since 1968.
then she told me how she had looked for the bag but couldn't find it.
i knew of nothing else to do but begin the search. so we opened the closet in my room and began taking things out.
a portrait of my grandfather from the bank where he served on the board. a box filled with tax returns. old coat hangers, skirts, a robe. a box filled with photographs, still framed, that had come from my grandmother's house.
and from the clothes rack, a new vinyl satchel i had never seen.
i lifted it off the rack, pulled open the velcro and the tears pooled in my eyes. the brown case that holds his otoscope— scratched from his own fingers, so many years of opening — two stethoscopes, the reflex hammer, all well worn and placed there carefully by my father's own hands, hung up like carpenter's tools, a long life of repair finally complete.
those who know more about these things than i do tell me that grief is like this. you go for weeks thinking now i've gotten past the worst of it and have worn out the tears and can go on my daily life without thinking of it, and then one small thing presents itself and there you are, weeping quietly over some small memory from childhood that hits your reflexes like a soft hammer to the knee. no matter how hard you might try to fight it, your throat closes tightens and there you are. there. you. are.
to me, it is like the mercurial atlantic. how one day, the air is still and the sea slick as ice, waves barely breaking, tiny ribbons of foam lining the beach where water meets sand. a day later, swells rise and fall but waves don't break, foamy tides climb up the sand, rip tides form, pulling just below the surface. and then you wake the next day and the sea roils, waves crash into each other long before they ever reach the beach, and you barely remember the calm, ice-slick day, from all the roaring.
susanbyrumrountree.com is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
summer sentence
it is on the third day
that the words come back,
letters long absent
from your page,
but as you figure out how
not to spill the water
as you pour it into the
rented kitchen's coffeepot,
there they are,
stretching ahead of you
like line to a new boat,
and you grab hold
of that line
and hold on
because you know
what's coming
finally coming,
so you think twice
about the pink sunrise
you saw just a bit
ago
as you scramble the eggs
and scratch the grandog's nose
butter your toast
and serve up breakfast
for your kids who
are almost never
under the same roof
anymore,
and you think
some more
as you
butter yourself up
for a stretch out
in front of the ocean,
when you
will crack open
that new book
because you've already
read two
in the past days
as you listened
to the ocean
talk to you
for the first time
in many, many months,
you catch yourself thinking again
that you are
relieved
that the first book
is done because
you feared
so for the woman
and the boy
in that story,
and you found yourself
weeping at the end
of the second one
because you could
imagine how the man
and his wife, and
the girl
all felt
at the end of that one,
and yes,
you think still more
as you listen
to the churning
of that blue ocean
and watch
the pink-tutued baby
next door dabble
in the saltwater puddle
at her feet
and remember when
the daughter sitting
by you
with a book
in her hand
was just that size,
doing just that thing,
dabbling,
trying to
carry
a small bit of wave
in her tiny hands,
when you first brought
her to this beach...
so you take
a short walk
in and out
of other people's vision,
those
lining to beach
propped under
a kaleidoscope
of umbrellas
watching
the gulls,
the tattooed
girls,
lanky
boys
skimming
the surf
with their boards
and you wonder how they
can keep from
falling,
and you peer to see
what other folks are reading
on iPads and phones and
in actual books,
like the weathered woman
sitting where the seafoam
laps at her feet
who is in the final pages
of a good book about dogs,
so you walk on
and find yourself beneath
the pier,
and at once you recall
your
grandfather's
knotty
fingers
cutting blood worms
with an old knife
on the splintered pier bench
then plying
the bloody bits
onto a hook
for you
to cast
over the side,
and you think
how many times you
watched the water
and felt the tug
not knowing whether it
was fish
or foam
but you pulled it in
surprised
at
seaweed
or silver fish
biting,
and as you think
of those times
all those years ago
you remember
your father's thin
tanned fingers as he
stood on the pier
and slid his serrated
scaler on the surface
of the fish,
the fingers of his other hand
holding tightly to the
surprised
mouth and fins
of the spot
or bream
as scales flew
in every direction,
and you think of that summer
when he grew a beard
and you didn't like
that at all
or how that year,
the beach didn't
seem to soothe him
like it always did,
and on your way back
you look out over
the sea and the foam
and think of
how many times
you
walked this beach
with your dad
and how this
is your first
time, really,
without him
being here for
even a day or two,
when you are
and there you
are, making new
prints in the
moist sand
without him
by your side,
and as you make your way
back
you
wonder who
that girl was
so long ago who
that her daddy
loved so, so much,
then you spy your children
sitting there
by the sea,
your son's fresh beard
irritating you
just about as much
as your daddy's did,
and you
think how
many more stories
there will be
to tell of this place
even though
daddy can't
sink his
narrow
toes
in this
sand
anymore.
as writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
a toast to a happier time
a year ago today, my entire family gathered in the great room of a rented beach cottage to make a toast. to the day, 60 years before, when what would become our family took root. on this, my parents' 61st wedding anniversary, i say thanks to God that we had that time together, however fleeting. it's been a bittersweet week, remembering where i was when i took the pictures posted here. thinking of the quiet chats my father and i had each day, when he climbed the two flights of stairs to see what we were up to. strolling together down the rickety pier behind the cottages to see if any fish might be biting. sharing a meal and talking about his life. just watching him watch his grands and great-grands. marvels to me.
my parents' dance is over, sadly, but today i just want to be happy that they took that first dance together long ago.
Save the last dance
They met in the hallways of Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem in the fall of 1951. Not long after, the skinny young man in the white coat asked the wavy-haired Florida girl if she would like to go to a med school dance with him.
Two weeks later, he asked her a bigger question: Will you marry me? And on June 14 the next year, she did.
And the day after that? He graduated from Bowman Gray School of Medicine. All the family was coming anyway, so what better time to get married than the day before you become a doctor?
My mother often said Daddy didn't want to go to Louisville (the location of his internship) alone. So she went with him, and two weeks shy of their first wedding anniversary, my brother joined them in their little apartment with the Murphy bed in the wall.
In those early years, the young Byrums would not often be together. Mama moved with my brother to live with my grandparents, whom she had really only met a couple of times. Daddy joined the Navy, spending his days in the cramped infirmary of a destroyer, tending to the medical needs of other young men his age. He has a certificate from that time that says he crossed the Arctic Circle.
When he came home, they moved to Newport, Rhode Island, then back with my grandparents. Daddy left again, and while they were living apart, my sister was born, the story of her birth a favorite of my grandfather, who drove my in-labor by the hospital entrance because the February fog was so dense.
When my father left the Navy, they looked around for a place to settle down and found a spot just an hour from my grandparents. Within a year, they had a house and another baby — me — Daddy tending to the needs of patients who would come to him for the rest of his career —more than 50 years.
I wrote about them last year
Little has changed except they are moving a little slower, but I marvel at the fact that my parents continue to grow closer today as each day passes.
This week we have gathered — 23 of us (with two pending) — to celebrate the fact of them and their 60 years together, and that what seems to us to have been a hasty decision back in 1951 has turned into a pretty remarkable life.
Each day someone new has arrived to join our celebration. Grandchildren. Spouses. Great-grands. Earlier in the week, we even gathered in a nearby gazebo to toast the newest union-to-be, all of us weeping after my nephew proposed to his girlfriend. What a joyful moment for us all.
Mama has enjoyed sharing the story of how she met my dad with each new face. Daddy checks his watch and asks who is coming next. By this afternoon, we will all be in place, and we have a few special things planned for them to mark this day in our family history.
Last night, Daddy stood before supper and thanked us all for coming, and for being who we are. He said he was proud how we are living our lives, and though he and my mother could not take credit, they would like to.
Well.
"There was more I wanted to say but I have forgotten!" he said then, tempering the tears that had formed at the corners of all of our eyes with the subtle humor he is known for. I watched Mama sitting in the chair behind him, looking up at him, her blue eyes sparkling.
"Would you like to go to the dance?" he asked those years ago. My mother has never felt she was very good at dancing, but when my father took her in his arms that fateful night, somehow she stayed in step. For 60 years. Imagine.
Happy Anniversary B&Pop B. May the dance continue.
©susan byrum rountree, june 14, 2012.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
of dogs and dads
one morning in late january, just after daybreak, i strapped on my good boots under my nightgown, grabbed my coat and took the dog out. it was a brisk morning, and the dog's paws crunched on the icy driveway and yard behind my childhood home, and i figured i could, with a treat in my pocket, keep the dog from traipsing too far afield without his leash. it was the country, after all.
nose to the ground, he plotted his track across the same yard where my siblings and i had worn a circular path years before as we drove my daddy's ford around and through the wiregrass, trying to learn how to drive, the same stretch where my brother and his friends practiced the perfect dunk shot. the dog peed and pondered, trotted and thought, until i saw the hairs on his back stand on end.
the dog is part yellow lab, but it was the beagle in him that shouted at that moment, a long howl toward dogs in the acre next door. so here i was, in my fancy boots and gown crunching through the yard after him — past the old well where i used to sit when i contemplated running away from home — hoping these strange dogs would not bite me or him and would let us go our own way.
when i was a child, dogs roamed the whole town. no leashes. no dog fights that i can recall. we knew all the dogs (and the few cats) by name and personality, my favorite (other than our own dogs) being margie, the st. bernard who plodded all over our neighborhood with not one single enemy, dog nor man.
our dog Trouble was more than once found running through the halls of our elementary school, the doors of which were always open in warm weather. i remember looking up in the middle of my class, seeing a streak of copper running past the door. Trouble, looking for one of the three of us, at a time in our family when it was important for us to be together. i think he stole someone's lunch before most likely my brother caught him and called the woman who was looking out for us while my parents were away, to take him home. i picture addie now, in her blue VW bug, Trouble's red-tipped tail wagging through the window as they headed home.
the downside of all this freedom was the fact that we lost at least three dogs to the highway in front of our house.
but on this crisp morning some 40 years later, i'm chasing my suburban dog in my nightclothes through the crunchy grass into the yard of neighbors i don't know.
the three canines dance around each other, taking to trees and bushes to mark their spots. i of course am whisper screaming, come! cheese! (our emergency word!) now! (it is, after all, just shy of 7 a.m.) and not once does he turn his head.
after one last sigh onto a bush, he trots back into my parents' yard, past the remnants of my old sand pile where we buried the ashes of Bogey the beloved first dog i owned as an adult.
Bogey's favorite place besides at home with us was in my parents' back yard. rumor has it that he even fathered a puppy or two in his spry years when visiting. ever the country girl, i let him roam a little then, holed up as he was in our small city yard. my mother, in between dogs at the time, snagged the shaggy, collie-colored pup from her neighbor and love him quickly and completely. Shag sometimes came to visit his suspected father, though the two never quite acknowledged each other. Shag was an escape artist, wriggling out of our fence more than once when he visited, and not too many months went by before mama lost him to the highway, too.
then Bogey died, and the only place i could think of with any permanence was my childhood back yard. and so we went, the
Book of Common Prayer
in tow, to say goodbye to him. i thought at first my father might see a ceremony over the dog's ashes a bit ridiculous, and i was surprised when he joined us in the yard, weeping, even, over this good dog he had grown to love, too.
(as an aside, a few days after Bogey died, i sat down in the early morning hours and wrote a goodbye to him. i sat on that story for a few months, then with pounding heart sent it off to an editor at the N &O, a stranger to me but based on his columns i knew he liked dogs. 'who wants to read a story about a dead dog?' my husband growled. (this was 10 years before Marley and Me... even i didn't know if anybody would.
would become my first published story in a dozen years, and for weeks afterward, letters came to the mailbox at the street, the writers telling me how much my story, and their dogs) had meant to them. 10 years later, Marley made history. such is my luck.)
we are that way about dogs in my family. just love them something nutty and think everybody should. and between us we've had a lot of them: Chester. Lassie. Sir Walter Raleigh. Trouble. (Zorro & Remus, the lone cats.) Macon & Moe, Deacon and Mr. Biggles, Gypsy & Molly... well Molly not so much. Shag. Bogey & Socks. Now LRR & Bailey, Scrappy & Ruby. even my friend's dog, Sookie, i love her, too.
my sister-in-law reminded me the other day that while she and my brother were on their honeymoon, my sister and i found an Irish setter to give them for their wedding present. they pulled up in the driveway with a u-haul carrying all their wedding gifts from Delaware, and we placed a copper-colored puddle in their laps. it seemed like the most natural thing to give them a dog. no matter that my brother was in medical school and my sister-in-law was working... every respectable married couple needed a dog. and there was none more perfect than one who looked just like Trouble. they named her Macon. and what a good dog she was.
the next year my sister married, and she got a chihuahua named Moe (whom the cleaning lady always called Mo-ah!). Moe lived to be pretty old himself, lost an eye and had a hip replacement, the vet frantically calling my sister when she was visiting north carolina, saying the dog would die without the surgery. she had no choice but to keep that dog going. years later, she now has two.
my parents' latest dog Ruby — a regal king charles cavalier — stole my father's heart as soon as she arrived all the way from iowa, free for the taking. Ruby rarely left Daddy's lap in the past couple of years, and on the rare day when he could talk in the hospital, he always asked about her. in his absence, she sits by his pillow on the bed.
+++
bogey, socks & LRR... as seen by artist
LRR our third dog in 31+ years, inherited like so many from a college son who couldn't take care of him anymore. we still had dog #2, Socks — a gender-confused collie mix with chronic health issues — when LRR came to live with us, my mother's day gift of '08. his presence forced Socks to live to 14, hard-headed as she was she would NOT give up her spot as queen of the house. Puppy used to grab hold of her feathery tail as she walked into the kitchen, and she would drag him across the floor, which he thought was great fun. not so for the big dog.
now Little Ronald Reagan — i call him Pop Pop, because we called him Puppy for too long and his given name, just does not suit — rules the house. i adore him, despite the fact that he ate shoes and deck furniture and water hoses before i discovered doggie day care. though he should be, he is no fan of water, probably because he fell off the back of the sailboat one early spring day when the Skipper was at the helm and i was home, but he loves to sail.
and he escapes, much like on that winter morning at home a few months back, taking himself for a walk to his girlfriend's house down the street, usually when my husband is not quite watching.
the other day i visited the doctor and learned my blood pressure was high, when in late january, it had been normal. the slow climb likely began february 6 and continued to climb for those 75 hospital days and my mother's fall and then Daddy's homecoming. nothing else has been normal. why should my blood pressure be?
i came into the house that evening, and my husband had a directive:
'you need to sit down with the dog,' he
said
, and i knew immediately he was right. in all these weeks i have been running...to work, to hospitals, to grocery stores, to home, to my parents' home and back again, trying to take care of so much when pretty much everything within my grasp is out of my control, in all this time, i have had little time for my pup. worried he would have to spend too much time alone, i dropped him at day care on my way out toward whatever the day held, bringing him home, both of us bone tired, restlessly resting until we were at it again.
in this past month, i have been trying to replace what was our new normal with just normal, and some days it works. we have finally gotten back to our Friday walks, to days like today when he sits at my feet as i write.
on other days, it's harder. i'm sad. i'm worried. i have fleeting moments when i don't think about what's happened to our family in the past few months and feel guilty for it. i have had trouble concentrating on anything, especially writing. am trying hard to remember every single thing my father ever taught me, and too often my memory fails.
but he and my mother taught me to love a dog. and what a gift that has all been in my life.
susanbyrumrountree.com is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
a cure for dreams
lydia and i have been getting into mischief since we made onion soup from the wild onions in her front yard when we were five and promptly forgot about it. it was spring, and the sun beat down on the bucket of onions, water and sand until it was ripely rotten. the smell lasted for days.
we sent love letters (she did, i was just her accomplice) to the boys next door, bathing our mouths in her mother's lipstick, planting kisses all over the envelopes, then we ran through the bushes to put them in the box.
we did something else that same year that i can't confess, even now, because my mother reads this blog and would not approve.
we'd slip into the darkened Dixie Theatre with too much popcorn and drink in our hands and get the giggles. once we (she, really) spilled half her drink down someone's back in the row in front of us.
one day when we walked home from town, Miss Hooker, an elderly woman who took care of her mother, ran out of her house toward us and shouted: help me! mother is dead!
i will not say that we rushed into the house, but we did go in, rubbing the old woman's legs until she moaned and we knew that she was indeed NOT dead. i remember calling daddy that day, asking if we had done the right thing.
'as far as i can tell you did,' he said. years later, when miss hooker visited my daddy's office, she looked fondly into my eyes.
things like this always happened to lydia and me. i have used some of it for fodder in my fiction, and i will tell you that each episode makes for a good story.
as lydia and i grew older, we built huts out of wheat straw gathered from the field next to her house. we slipped on our rain boots and crept into the dark woods that by night were inhabited by millions of grackles and starlings swirling above our heads. by day we stomped through knee-high bird droppings, just because we wanted to see for ourselves what the whole bird story was all about. writing about it in fiction, i made it night, though it was pretty scary to go there by day.
when we were in junior high school, we got into decoupage and antiquing furniture in her playhouse, not knowing that we were ahead of our time. we sneaked scuppernong wine her grandfather made from the attic. we set up a beauty parlor on her side porch and i actually let her give me a perm, promising i wouldn't take the curlers out for 24 hours. hours!
on to high school and boys and once, when we stood talking in her back yard as a storm loomed miles away, we watched (and felt and heard) as a beam of lightning shot down and struck the chimney of her house, sending bricks flying toward us. years later when we were together and a thunderstorm approached, i don't know who headed for the car first. we have not liked to be together in storms since.
in college, lydia lived right across the hall from me our first year, down the hall the second, and she was like my sister. applauding me when i did well, putting me in my place when i disappointed her.
when daddy died, almost the first person i heard from was lydia. 'i'm coming,' she said, 'and i'm staying, even if i have to put up a straw hut in the back yard.' and i knew she would do just that.
at the visitation, she came through the back door, telling the folks in the kitchen that she had never used the front door and would not start at that moment. she worked through the room, visiting with people she had known her whole life, and when all the visitors left, she took over the kitchen, pulling out homemade sweet potato ham biscuits (made just that morning), passing them out to all the grands, saying something under her breath like: lydia is gonna take care of things.
the next day, after we buried daddy's ashes, lydia called my cell. 'let's take a ride,' she said, and i said of course, sure. she picked me up, and we drove around the old hood, trying to name who lived where, though neither of us has lived there for more than 35 years.
put two country girls together who have not been in the country for awhile, and they will surely take a ride, out, toward the fields, the open air. i knew where we were headed, a few miles out of town to the country club where our daddies had played golf for so many years. this trip was for lydia, i thought, to see a place her father had helped build.
as we drove into the club, i saw some men fishing on the edge of the pond and there it was in my head, the picture of the huge bass i'd caught with a cane pole, lydia next to me, so heavy that fish was that the two of us had to drag it across the ground up toward the woods. we had no net. we were maybe 13.
Lydia drove around the clubhouse, noted the wood fence post her father's business was known for years ago, still standing guard against the putting green. on we went, down the hill toward the tennis courts where she had tossed her first serve — this was still her trip, mind you... i never played tennis — toward the club house.
lydia plays golf, is married to a pro, so again we were doing this for her. her mother died just last year, her father a few years before, but they lived away from our town for years. and while the week for me had been catching up with folks i'd known much of my life, lydia didn't have that chance when her parents died. i was more than happy to share our grieving.
humm... she said. i'm thinking maybe i'd like an ice cold beer.
so we sauntered into the pro shop and she told me to put my money away. it was quiet, only a golfer or two on #9 next to the shop, another on #10 teeing off with his son. she asked the pro for two cold ones, and i asked his name. suddenly, i felt a tightness near my eyes and throat and said this: my father was dr. byrum.
'was?' he asked. 'i had no idea.' and then he told me that daddy always came into the shop, golf shoes in hand, and sat right in that chair there — and he pointed to it — to change his shoes. same thing every time. 'i knew he was sick,' he said. 'hadn't seen him in awhile.'
then we talked about how lydia's daddy used to bring her through a back gate on weekend afternoons when the course was under construction, how daddy use to bring me out, too, so we could watch it all being built. the pro showed us a aerial photo of the course being built, then talked about the hundreds of oaks felled during hurricane irene almost two years ago. then this:
'why don't you girls take a cart and go for a ride.'
back outside, lydia hopped right in the driver's side and i took my place beside her.
we wove down the path toward the front nine and drove down that first fairway. and then i realized it. yes, this was her trip, but it was mine, too, for when daddy was not in the office or hospital or home, he was here, walking up the #3 par 3, across the little bridge and over the small pond to the green. i had done that very thing with him myself as a girl.
daddy didn't have much time off, but if he couldn't get to Nags Head to look out over the ocean to clear his head, he was here, swinging the ball, knocking it in, walking. thinking.
we looked out over the course and sipped our beer and made a toast to our fathers, cutting across one fairway after another, until we were back in place, both of us healed, a bit, from our short time with our daddies again.
'lydia knows just the cure,' she said as we drove down the back roads toward home.
i don't see lydia often, and i miss her. miss the mischief, the giggles in the night over a spilled coca-cola or a secret wish shared only with each other.
years have put life and distance between us. but on this day, we were at it again, our lives whole for a few minutes, despite all we have lost.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
Friday with Daddy
daddy never went through the front door of our house.
always through the back, by the carport and into the utility room where he might scale a fish (much to my mother's chagrin) where the dog sat and scratched at the door during our supper, where he stitched up a rabbit my sister found injured in the yard. where one morning when he was in his 40s he collapsed into my mother, sobbing because his friend had died at home while reading the paper in his wing chair and daddy had to pronounce him dead.
the front door was reserved for prom dates and the rare trick-or-treater, for strangers stopping by.
but when daddy came home on last friday — april 19 — they brought him through the front door.
he came home the same way he left town way back in february, in a giant transport filled with fancy machines, a blue tulip-like flower emblazoned on the side.
we had made the decision to bring him home two days before, my family and his hospital team crowded around his bed. he'd been asking to go home for more than a month, to leave behind the machines and tubes and take his rest in his bed at home. pat, my father's pa, carefully listed off the options for a man who could no longer breathe completely on his own. a long-term care hospital. palliative care or Hospice.
when i heard the word 'home' i looked to my mother, praying she would choose that option. in a wheelchair herself, she would be going home herself the next day, to 24-hour caregivers my sister would meet later in the day. my brother leaned into mama, asking quietly: what do you want to do?
'home,' she said. 'let's take him home.'
a week ago now, the transport team pulled up in front of our house drew him out into the crisp spring air. and i was waiting.
'you're home daddy!' i shouted, and he looked around. home, his wish finally granted. i stood there— my family waiting just inside the front door — watching him look around at the sky. they wheeled him into our front hall where the Christmas tree stood in december,
down the hall he had walked so many times in the middle of the night in his pajamas toward the back door and a patient waiting. down the hall, toward the linen closet, that when i was five i was convinced held a witch. they wheeled him to his room, to a bed he had last slept in on february 5, the room he had shared with my mother for 50 years.
it felt like a long ride to me, down our hall. across the creaky floorboard that gave my brother's Christmas morning crawl away. past my childhood room. a mile it seemed, as they shifted the gurney to make room for this 6-foot-two man, squeezing him through the door into a room softened by carpet and soothing blue.
daddy brought with him a host of people. the Hospice doctor and two nurses. a respiratory therapist, Pat, who had been caring for him all these weeks. a priest who's liberal views challenged daddy's conservative ones, but in his years as their
minister, the two had become good friends.
the team to settled him, and my mother's caregivers helped her into place beside him. it was mid-afternoon.
by the time we gathered next to him, daddy wore his familiar pajamas, sat propped against his favorite pillow, talked to us. i took hold of his hand, and he said something i couldn't grasp... what, daddy?
he looked straight at me and said: your hands are COLD! he wanted chocolate milk, but we had only vanilla ice cream. i spooned it carefully into his mouth, he swallowed, not seeming to care that we could not grant his original wish.
the day before he came home, daddy talked to all of his grandchildren on the phone. somehow, after all these weeks of quiet, he had much to say. it was a miracle, really. i talked to him, too, as did my mother and sister, all of us overjoyed at hearing his voice again.
last thursday was her first day home as well, after her fall. we had fixed her crab cakes — the best meal she had ever eaten! — and watched as she pulled herself up on her bed, straighten out that broken leg, beginning the first steps toward her recovery.
+++
when we gathered everybody around in the room, daddy said: we didn't plan for all these people.' for daddy, it has always been about the plan. each day i visited him in the hospital, he would ask: plan. toward the end, when we had no idea, i'd shrug my shoulders — one of his exercises — and say, 'who knows? that's the plan.' which seemed to satisfy him.
this time we had one. we all joined the priest for last rites from the good ol'
Book of Common Prayer
. and then daddy thanked everyone for coming. thanked them, which is so what my father would do. later on, he FaceTimed with my daughter and my niece. strange, that, this 84-year-old dying man saying when asked by his granddaughters how he felt, he said:'pretty good.'
++++
i will tell you that it's something, when your siblings gather round your dying father.
my brother, a physician, is good with those who are critically ill. i have watched him with my father all these weeks. he leans in, speaks softly, but loud enough to jostle daddy awake when need be. this day was no different. i can't imagine how hard it is to be doctor, lawyer, indian chief, son, for he has been all these things since february, and again on this afternoon, our last friday with daddy.
my sister brought the dog in, picked her up and put her on the bed with daddy, knowing just how long he had waited to touch her head.
we spent the afternoon and evening gathered around my parents, telling stories and praying and singing.
After supper, i sat with him and read him the story of his life.
we kissed him goodnight, leaving he and my mother alone in the room.
she lay by his side the whole night, and ruby did for most of it.
and then, a call, footsteps in the hall, my sister running toward the room where i had tried to sleep a little.
it was over.
we surrounded his body, talking and crying, naming all the dogs he was now getting to see. our grandparents. his friends. so many who have made this journey before him.
and then we left the room, all of us, to wait for the next step.
in the wee hours, as we sat up and waited for the Hospice nurse and the funeral director to arrive in the pouring rain, we listened as mama told stories about him and their life together, their early years. Despite all the uncertainty and the trauma we've experienced these many weeks, what a treasure my father's last hours were to all of us.
dawn came, and we called all the children, made arrangements for them to join us in this new life without their Pop B. not one of us has wanted to go there, but at least we will travel together, his legacy to us that he was the magnet that drew us together, keeps drawing, even in his absence.
in the days since daddy died, we have heard a hundred stories from his patients and friends, many reflecting his wry humor, others his humble, caring nature.
'he was quiet, but he was
powerful,' the man, a patient, who has kept up our lawn when daddy no longer could told me yesterday. yes he was.
my father was a great man, so many have said to us in the past week. but aren't all our father's that?
"so with the sleight of his magician's hand, he will end the show,'
i wrote back in 1997.
and i don't know who will miss him more — his patients, or the doctor himself..." those very words caught in my throat as i read them to him one last time just a few hours before he died. words appropriate for retirement so many years ago, and, it turns out, for his last friday with us.
i can't imagine now how much i'll miss him. it still isn't real to me yet. but i am not alone, because i have a full family and a whole town gathered around me, and we are all holding each other up.
bye daddy. guess it was finally your time to hit the road. be careful. and have a safe and happy trip. sbr
ps: thank you to all who have called and visited, who have sent food, cards and facebook messages, who had loved my daddy at times it seems as much as i did. your generosity toward my family is overwhelming. maybe now daddy understands just how much he meant to all who knew him. susan
susanbyrumrountree.com is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
masters at it.
daddy loves golf. is not very good at it, but years ago, when a group of men formed a small country club a few miles outside of town, we no longer had him at home for Sunday dinner.
i don't know if he had every played before the club started up, but he played most weekends when he was off. i am not athletic, so i never took it up, but i remember playing once with him, taking about 30 strokes to get to the hole, then putting what felt like a long way to me to to the hole on the green, and sinking it.
but what i remember more was sunday afternoons when he was home, and i watched golf with him.
daddy went to wake forest when arnold palmer was there. they didn't know each other, but when i was growing up, Arnold felt like family. he was one of us, a demon deacon, about the same age as daddy, and whoever was playing in a tournament that week, well, we were pulling for arnold. it was just right.
daddy and i last watched the masters together with any vengeance in 1980. i remember sitting in our family room during those final moments as seve ballesteros sank the putt that would win it for him, and i actually said to daddy: i wonder where i will be during next year's masters?
that master's for us was one more benchmark that another year had ended — the long winter over and new life just about to begin.
that spring, i was hoping for some sort of new life myself. i was searching — just a year out of college — for i didn't know what. after graduation, i'd found a job at a small daily newspaper, but as a photographer, not as the writer i longed to be. so when the job grew stale i pulled together my pitiful resume, typing it out on my trusted olivetti, sending it out blindly to the n&o, the atlanta paper, charlotte, anywhere to get myself out of eastern north carolina. i'm sure if i could find it now i would be embarrassed.
that summer of '80, i called (yes, people actually called other people in those days) the placement office at the j-school at carolina, asking if they had anything — i might even scrub floors to get out! — i could apply for.
oh, yes, said the woman on the other end of the line. a classmate of mine was working in augusta as a feature writer, and her department was looking to add a writer.
augusta. my mind thought back to that sunday afternoon in april when i'd watched the tournament with daddy and it felt like fate. the azaleas! the green lawns! the clubhouse! what fun!
i whipped out the olivetti and banged a new resume out, pulling together the very best clips i could find. (aka those with as few typos as possible) put a stamp on it, dropped in in the mail and prayed.
some days later, i got a call from the editor. could i come for an interview?
three weeks later, there i was, a working writer on my first assignment. wouldn't you know the husband of the woman i was interviewing for my story had once been an assistant football coach in my home town?
(a side note, though this i not part of the story: i met a rakish reporter my first night there. a year later we married, celebrating at a reception in my parents' back yard.)
that next spring i found myself standing in the clubhouse at the master's, and there they were, all of daddy's friends: arnold palmer in his hot pink golf shirt, gary player, jack nicklaus. even sam snead. all of them close enough for me to touch. my job that day was to report the color of this storied golf tournament, and all i could think of was the story i would tell daddy when i got to see him next.
that afternoon at sunset, i sat with my editor on the front lawn at augusta national, gin and tonic in hand soaking in the sunset on one very pinch-able day.
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when the hospital speech therapist first put the speaking valve on daddy's trach she asked him what he like to do now that he was retired.
'read. play golf.' he said.
'what kind of golfer are you?' she asked.
'not a very good one,' he said.
on saturday, daddy and i watched the masters together again for the first time in a very long time. as the old guard — player, palmer, nicklaus — teed off to open the tournament and new names took their places on the greens, i asked him if he remembered that day in 1980 when we watched balesteros don the green jacket. he shook his head, and so i reminded him, then shared my story of the 1981 clubhouse crowd once again.
'i think tom watson won that year,' i said and his eyes told me he didn't believe i could remember it right after all those years, so google answered the question for us.
on sunday, when adam scott sank his putt in the pouring rain to win this year's event, i was back at home, imagining daddy's eyes glued to that sudden death putt. it was among the most memorable tournaments in master's history, the pundits all said the next day, and it was indeed. but for very different reasons to me.
daddy's old clubs are collecting dust in the storage house that holds all of his tools and the blue wagon he used to tote the grandkids around in with the riding mower. though he has not played golf in a good long while and he has a newer set, these are the ones i remember.
tomorrow daddy comes home, a place he hasn't seen for 67 days.
i think about his homecoming, and in my mind, i can hear the crack of the wood against the ball, see it soar through the air toward a perfect line drive. hear the whir of the golf cart as he heads up the fairway to take that next shot toward the green.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
richochet, II
there is an apartment building in chelsea in NYC with a glass front (well, there are thousands), but a few years ago, the new york times magazine featured it in a photograph, which i can't find now. but in each backlit apartment in that small world, simultaneous living played out before the viewer's eyes. dancers practicing their steps. mothers feeding supper to anxious toddlers. a cellist leaning into her instrument. a lone woman watching tv. floor after floor, side-by-side, people lived out their lives unbeknownst to voyeurs, or to those who shared their walls.
i have been thinking about this for weeks, now, how on any given day at the same time of day, my children are doing one thing and i am doing another, far away from them, the walls between us never melting away. how when my son makes a phone call to a client in raleigh, my daughter walks the dog to doggie daycare on the upper west side in manhattan on her way to work, as my husband checks the drudge report for the morning headlines and i wipe up the kitchen before heading out to work.
parallel lives, it feels like. for this family who used to share the same space, once upon a time. now when we do, it's for usually for a few hours — on a church pew, around the kitchen table, opening presents on Christmas morning. a few hours. not nearly enough.
i will confess that until recently, i have not thought too much about the parallel life i had been living with my parents. every few nights i'd call home and find out about their days, and though i worried sometimes about them driving to and from the doctors office, or not having enough to do, i didn't picture them living life out in a lighted box next to my own lighted box.
in the past two months since daddy has been hospitalized, we have developed a new routine for our lives, all of us in our little lighted boxes. my brother works, my mother drives back and forth, my sister calls, comes home when she can. we have shared the lighted box at times, all of us converging in whatever glass-fronted room holds my father at that moment.
those back-lit boxes came back to me the other night, as i thought back to my wednesday, a week ago. how at lunch time, my husband came to my office to share a hot lunch of beef stew and green beans with me, while my mother sat in my father's hospital room talking to him, watching him breathe in and out. how my brother, at the same time, walked the corridors of the hospital to see patients as sick as my dad. how my sister, back in iowa was going through her day.
at 2 p.m., if you could hold up the glass box and look at our parallel lives, here is what you'd see: my brother talking on the phone with my mother. me sitting at my desk, sending emails, making lists for the rest of my day and another of what was in my father's doctor's bag years ago. my sister likely texting her daughter, who was on her third day back at work after the baby. we all stood in our separate boxes, miles apart.
the moment i learned mama had fallen, i felt the walls fade away and suddenly we all stood in the same room again. this family who once-upon-a-time sat at the kitchen table and shared fondu on saturday nights. who themselves shared the church pew on Sundays, who warmed the seats as my brother played basketball in the old high school gym, who once rode all the way to newport, rhode island in a tiny ford torino, just to see where my parents had once lived.
sharing the box these past weeks with my birth family has been something powerful, even in the middle of this very hard thing. in the box together, we make jokes, we pray, we look at old pictures, we cry. we laugh at the absurdity of what we face together, what my parents face.
this week, we have sort of retreated to our boxes again. my mother lies in a hospital room down long hallways and up elevators from my father. i'm back at work, as is my brother, and my sister moves between our parents, having her turn at trying to keep up with both of them, though neither is moving very far.
my sister-in-law told me the other day that i had to finish richochet, because it didn't end as most of my stories do. i have thought about that, too. but how to end a story that just doesn't have one yet? i wish i could invent something, but anything i dream up means i am just fooling myself.
and so i will just keep going in my own little lighted box, watching as the walls fade away every now and then when my family gathers. and i'll keep writing the un-endable story, until the words finally push me through.
susanbyrumrountree.com is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
days with daddy
my fridays with daddy have turned into mondays and other days. it is a roller coaster, and though i wish i could find a more literary term to describe it, that seems apt. how you begin the long slow crawl to what you think is the top, then all things ricochet, up down sideways and backward. then up, down again.
i remember the first roller coaster i ever rode, in myrtle beach back when i was a senior in high school. that trip, like this one with daddy, was all about uncertainty, and it did not end as i would have wanted. i was supposed to love riding the roller coaster, but i didn't. i was scared but i didn't want anyone to know it, so i got back on again.
that's what you do, isn't it? you get back on and see if the next ride will be different. at least that's how it is for me right now. i'm willing to ride again. because i keep thinking one of these days soon it's going to be a joy ride with daddy, and not the scary one we have been on.
years ago, my father and i took a joy ride. it was Ash Wednesday, and when i was little, daddy took wednesday afternoons off. my brother and sister were in school but i was 4, so the two of us set out in a cold rain to ride an hour or so to visit my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. as we drove north, the rain turned to ice, and before long, snow covered the road and the telephone poles leaned toward one another, held up only by the power lines.
i could hardly be a reliable narrator recalling a memory when i was 4, but when i think of that day, i see the wipers swishing hard as the whole world turned white, daddy leaning into the dash, his hands gripping the steering wheel. we didn't turn back. daddy kept that car on the road and somehow we reached my grandparent's house. when we arrived, the lights were out, and we found them huddled around a pot belly stove in an upstairs bedroom, trying to stay warm.
it would turn out to be a legendary storm, the Ash Wednesday Storm, a northeaster that battered the outer banks and caused damaged that took years to repair.
now daddy and i are in the middle of a different kind of storm, but in many ways it's the same: he's driving on icy roads, i'm holding on to the seat for fear of slipping.
on the first day of this week, i sit by his side, watching him breathe in and out, look at his blood pressure (good) and try to cool off from beneath the hot yellow gown and purple gloves i have to wear to guard against infection. he is hard to wake, though when i left him a few days before, he stayed awake for much of the day.
so the only certainty is that there is none.
except maybe in the cafeteria. my father has been housed in the hospital now for 47 days. and he has many, many days left. so sometimes when they say it's time to do this or that to him, i end up in the cafeteria, alone, watching, trying to eat something.
the man next to me speaks into his phone, which he lays on the table as he eats a very large salad. his words could be my own: sleeping mostly, i don't think he knows i'm here. concern. sleeping. update. all words i have used myself in the past day. finally he ends his conversation with 'drink plenty of fluids and get some rest.'
i imagine he is talking to his child, updating him or her on the grandfather's life now in ICU, or somewhere on the floors above where we sit. i say a prayer for them, quietly, because i know what he and his family are going through.
looking around, i recognize: the young woman wearing a beautiful Muslim scarf. she is on daddy's lift team, comes around every few hours to shift him in his bed and who now calls him Pop B, just like she is a grandchild. the hospitalist is there, the one when daddy first arrived those many days ago. he saunters up to the cash register, just as he did that first day to daddy's room... sauntered, hands in his pockets, posture that made me feel he didn't care very much about his patient. one thing my daddy doesn't do, never did, is saunter.
everyone else caring for daddy is engaged and concerned, wanting not to pass the time but to make this critically ill man better. and so i tell the nurses and the therapists and the doctors about where he practiced and how long, try to paint a picture of this man who to them is an very sick and aging man. a man can't speak for himself right now.
i know nothing of medicine, but the longer i stay here with him, the more i just want to somehow to story him well, if that makes sense. telling his story, somehow, has to make him better. right?
friday comes, and it is once again my turn to sit. when i arrive, they've shifted daddy's bed into a sort of chair, and he has the paper in his lap. he wears his glasses for the first time in these 47 days, looks so much like himself that i'm startled. i've brought him a soft ball to squeeze because right now he can't use his hands or arms very well, and squeezing the ball will help him grip the wheel again, navigate this icy road. i drop the ball into his hand and say 'squeeze' and he looks at me and does just that.
behind me, players in the ncaa tournament travel back and forth across the floor, tossing another ball, and every now and then daddy looks up. his team is not in the running, but mine is, and i pretend for a moment to be daddy's coach. we work with the balls, he nodding his head, squeezing and dropping, moving his arms just enough to show me he can. i hold my phone in front of him, showing him a picture of his newest great-grandchild and ask him to hand her the ball. he moves it over and places it in front of the picture, smiling at her, his lips forming the thin line i have known my whole life.
'remember the story of the little engine that could?' i ask him, and he nods. 'that book is as old as you are, daddy.' he was two when it was published. might have read it as boy.
ok, daddy, i think you can, i say, urging him to try one more task — to touch his finger to his nose. i'm allowed to lift his elbow but he has to do the rest. we try but he can't quite make it, so take a time out. a few minutes later we try again, and i say: i think i can i think i can... until his narrow finger meets that nose.
so much of his recovery now depends on this kind of work. this knowing that he has inside him what he needs to keep from slipping back down the icy road. what he needs to get well.
by the end of the day he can put the ball in my hand and pick it back up.
have to hit the road, daddy, i say, exhausted myself from being his coach. i'll be back on monday, ready to let him steer once again, while i sit holding onto the seat.
susanbyrumrountree.com is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
Save the last dance
Two weeks later, he asked her a bigger question: Will you marry me? And on June 14 the next year, she did. My mother often said Daddy didn't want to go to Louisville (the location of his internship) alone. So she went with him, and two weeks shy of their first wedding anniversary, my brother joined them in their little apartment with the Murphy bed in the wall.This week we have gathered — 23 of us —to celebrate the fact of them and their 60 years together, and that what seems to us to have been a hasty decision back in 1951 has turned into a pretty remarkable life.
Happy Anniversary B&Pop B. May the dance continue.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
three is good company
other fathers i knew ran farms, invented things. my father fixed things, but without tools holstered around his waist.
i loved the smell of his bag when i was a child, the sound it made when he opened it, like something important was in there. i used to pull his stethoscope out and put it into my ears to see what his world sounded like. i loved to hit my knee with his reflex hammer, to look at his prescription pad, his name printed out in neat letters, even watching as he wrote that name in letters i could not recognize at all.
"I will, under all circumstances, use my knowledge in the service of humanity," they said."These promises I make freely, and upon my honor."
upon my honor.
i watched my brother, wondering if he thought, as i did, that he might not have made it to this day if not for doctors who had saved his life in january. (he is 100 percent fine today and looks 10 years younger than when i last saw him in the hospital.) i looked at my father, his 6'2" frame stooping a bit, marveling at how much his life has mattered to the people he served. knew my nephew — whom i could not see in the mass of black and green and gold — had just joined what i think of as my dream team.
on my honor.
pick a little talk a little
i'm child #3, so my alone time with him was limited when i was little. i remember a walk in the woods one day (with my brother and sister), i think because my brother was working on a merit badge. and a day when he pitched the softball to me so i would not embarrass myself during recess. (it didn't work.)
but one of the many things Daddy shared with me in those times when he was home was a love for banjo music. i remember watching arthur smith and hee haw, porter wagoner and other shows, watching Daddy tap his size 13 foot against the ottoman as we clapped along.
Daddy had a banjo, too, and every now and then he and i would sneak away into the living room while my siblings were bent over homework, and i would sit beside him on the dressed up sofa and he would play for me. i'd watch as his own nimble fingers plucked the stiff wire strings until Bill Bailey filled up the whole room. joy again, to have Daddy all to myself, for him to be singing just to me.
my kindergarten class had a play when i was five. it had something to do with Valentine's Day, and i played the role of "a girl." in the picture (which I will find somewhere and post i hope), i stand next do a boy wearing a cowboy hat and a sly grin as big as the waxing moon. i don't remember a thing about the play except that i had to stand next to the boy, and that he sang the theme song to the Beverly Hillbillies because he told our teacher, Lottie Smith Welch, that Earl Scruggs was his cousin.
this morning when i learned that the sweet man who used to visit with us often and play his five-fingered magic had died, i remembered that boy, and my Daddy playing for me, and how much banjo music meant to me once upon a time.
wouldn't you know that the brother of that boy is a facebook acquaintance? so the news hound in me couldn't resist asking if the story was true.
not true, exactly, he wrote to me. but his uncle played in a band with the legendary banjo picker Earl when they performed live for the radio. and wouldn't you know? he and his brother, along about the time of our kindergarten play, sometimes sat on the stage with Earl and Lester when they performed. so to a five-year-old, of course that means you're kin.
i've thought a lot about my banjo memories today and have even played a little Foggy Mountain Breakdown as i worked. i wish Daddy would play for me again, but the banjo is long gone i think.
if we could all coax our gifts out and into the world like the unassuming Earl, and even Daddy from time to time, what a wonderful world it would be.
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steve martin wrote this wonderful story about Earl for the New Yorker in january.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
good flying weather, part II
throughout every stage, they have been an example for many, including my daughter, who wrote about them last year here.
vance and bj are not storytellers, as i said when i wrote about them in 2002 — never outwardly shared their secret to a happy marriage with us. "they've simply lived it, hoping we would learn by watching."
i guess we did learn a thing or two. my brother and his wife have been married 33 years, my sister and her husband 32, and my husband and i will mark our own three decades together this year.
their favorite days are spent when all or some of the FAM can be together — like this past saturday, when they got to meet our newest member. my own grandparents met every single one of their great-grands, so since i don't have a grand yet, i'm expecting them to stick around for a good long while.
My Daddy Doesn't Have FB
If only he knew. I grew up knowing that Daddy was one of those men in town who (whom? I never really know) everybody loved. The town "doc" for at first, 42 years, then again for another few. He finally retired for good last December at the age of 81. He spent his last few years as a physician holding his stethoscope to the chests of some of his oldest patients, who now spent their days in the nursing home. He had treated some of them for the entire life of his practice, and then after he retired in 1997, he was there to comfort their families when they died. So many folks missed him, he agreed to go back.
Though Daddy used to play some golf, his knees are bothering him a bit these days, so much of his time is spent in his favorite chair, napping and reading, watching Fox News, and holding Ruby, the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel my sister brought he and my mother all the way from Iowa a couple of years ago. (I will admit that this was the best present anyone has ever given them.) She is the best dog, cuddling close to him, happy just to sit, and he is happy to hold her.
Today is his birthday, and in celebration of all that he is to me, to my family and to the town that raised me, I'm going to try to post a story I wrote about him when he retired the first time. (It is a jpg, so it might take some adjustment to read, i.e: can your read sideways?) If you can't read it, email me.)
Daddy has a long distrust of journalists, despite raising one, so that fact required that before I wrote a word I had to submit my questions in advance, and for two days early in 1997, I sat with him, and with my mother, and talked to them about his years as one of three doctors in my tiny town. (In his last 10 years, he was the only one. ) What he didn't know was that I had been pulling stories out of him for some time. The result, I believe is my best work. Some of you may remember it. It ran in the N&O on Father's Day, and Daddy was so afraid of the backlash that he went all the way to Alaska to avoid being home when the phone rang. And he practically never goes anywhere. He would tell you that I fabricate. Of that, I'm sure. But perception has always meant the truth to me, so there you go.
At the time the story ran, people from all over the state sent him letters (back when people actually wrote letters, in long-hand.) Every day he received letters from friends and strangers, thanking him for his service, for being that breed of small town doc who cared for so many. "Why are they writing me?" he would ask when I visited. I knew, but he never seemed to figure that one out. One day, though, the letters stopped, and I think he was a little disappointed.
Some people wrote me, too.
One of his friends, Harry Carpenter, who died not long after the story ran, wrote this:
"Perhaps his family and friends can help him understand what a great man we see him to be, and perhaps we can show him how very much we appreciate his stewardship in taking care of ordinary sick folks. A few of these folks undoubtedly also appreciate the measure of the man, a great many more probably take him for granted, and a disoriented minority may have actually taken advantage of his good nature."
My brother is a doctor, and my nephew is learning to be one. On the day Kip graduates from med school in May 2012, he will be the third Graham Vance Byrum to have graduated from Wake Forest University, and from what used to be Bowman Gray School of Medicine. He has some very large shoes to fill, and I don't mean the size 13s Daddy wears (I think Kip wears the same or larger.) My husband, a pr flack, is already planning his pitch. And my sister and I will make sure our Daddy is there to watch his oldest grandson receive his stole. But my brother will tell you that neither he nor Kip will ever be the kind of "Doc" Daddy was. They just don't make them like that anymore.
Daddy doesn't have FB, but I posted happy birthday to him this morning, and so far a couple of dozen people have sent him good wishes. Carol, one of his former nurses who is about my age, says he does still come by the hospital to visit, and that they miss him. I think he misses all of them — his patients and office workers, his nurses, his medicine — as much as they do him.
Happy Birthday, Daddy.
sbr
