My father was a WWII veteran of the Philippines. He was a man of few words and most of those words were not of the repeatable variety. From my vantage point, he was pretty tough on the boys but never, ever laid a hand on me (that was Mom's job). He had a hair-trigger temper, smoked Camel unfiltered, drank beer with some regularity (although I can't ever remember him drunk or even tipsy) and in his later years, seemed like an angry man. He had high blood pressure but rarely, if ever, saw a doctor, and I think he had his first heart attack before age 50. Around Thanksgiving of 1975, he had his second heart attack, this one much bigger than the first, and he had been in the hospital for about ten days when the phone call came.
I had had a dream the night before, a dream of falling and falling with no landing. It was pretty scary, and I remember waking up with a feeling of dread that Saturday morning. I answered the phone when it rang; it was a voice I didn't recognize, a voice that needed to speak to my mother. I handed over the phone and went and sat on top of the dryer in the kitchen...and heard my mother's reaction to the news that my father had suffered a second heart attack. A fatal heart attack. December 6th, 1975 was the day my world changed forever.
The rituals and routines surrounding death and decisions made are a part of the adult world, to which I was not privy and of which I wanted no part anyway. I didn't cry very much as it all seemed so unreal, and when I felt like crying, I sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in my head so as to distract myself. We all sat during the wake, shell-shocked and each in our own worlds. The funeral the next morning was more of the same, but my entire class attended and I thought "I wonder if they're all glad it's not their father who died?" There was a long, black limousine that took us to the funeral, and from the funeral to the cemetery; I recall waving out the window to my classmates as we drove by them. Nobody waved back.
My aunts and uncles surrounded my mother and the rest of us; I don't think we ever had so many casseroles in the house before or since. But there comes the day when the mantle of life has to be taken up again, and my mother did so quickly and efficiently. As shockingly sudden as my father's death had been, so too was the new order established in the household. I discovered that my mother's attention was not necessarily focused in my direction and I was ready, willing and able to take full advantage of that fact.
The first time I skipped school, I hid out behind my Aunt Kay's garage, amidst the garbage cans, watching the driveway so I could tell when my mother had left for work and then hightailed it back into the house for a bowl of Capt'n Crunch with Crunchberries and a day of watching cartoons, drawing and reading to my heart's content. As my mother didn't drive - she had never learned, it was always Dad who drove her everywhere - I knew I was safe until she arrived home at 5:15.
I alternated days on and days off school; this was back before absences of one day needed to be phoned in or accounted for in any way. I was skipping one or two days a week, never in a row. My school work didn't suffer; I was generally bored in school and didn't find it at all challenging or engaging but I had a knowledge base from constant reading that served me well. This went on for about six weeks - until the phone call.
My mother loved her bowling leagues; for as long as I can remember, she would be picked up on a Tuesday or Wednesday night and bowl, sans Dad. This was her own special thing, and she enjoyed it immensely, proudly displaying her "200" patch and "High Score" pins. She bowled at Nutmeg Lanes, Westport Lanes, Tunxis Bowl - wherever her league took her. She had resumed her league play by early January, Wednesday nights from 7 until 9:30 or so. She never missed a bowling night if she could help it.
So I had the house to myself that Wednesday night when the phone rang at 7:30.
"Hello, Mary. This is Sister Mary Robert. I wanted to discuss your absences with your mother."
My heart sank like the proverbial stone. Caught! Terror! Panic!
"I'm sorry Sister. She's not home right now. She's bowling."
"Well, please let her know I called."
"Yes, Sister."
For days and weeks, I was filled with apprehension every time the phone rang. I would scramble to answer it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But Sister had put the fear of God back into my little guilt-ridden soul; I didn't have a single additional absence for the remainder of the school year.
Looking back, I am still unsure if this had been a plan to scare me straight devised between these two very strong, very savvy women, or if indeed I just got lucky. I never asked my mother nor Sister; it will forever remain a mystery.
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