15408 Miles and Counting… PART 1

The first road trip was during Spring Break '96. We sat side-by-side in a pair of bucket seats, black cloth upholstery that was really more of an ashy gray in direct sunlight. A white '91 Thunderbird took us from Champlin, Minnesota down the I35 through Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, up and down Pike's Peak. We were exhausted by the time we drove through the painted desert in Utah and finally parked the car in front of a single-story bungalow in the shadow of a mesa in Snowflake, Arizona.

My dad never really said much. As long as I can remember. He'd crack an off-color joke when the right one struck him. He'd mutter a few words about Minnesota winters or the child support he signed over to my mom once a month. We'd spend every other weekend and Wednesday evenings in silence. We filled our mouths with cheeseburgers and soda instead of conversation. Movies and television kept our ears from atrophy.

When it was time to go home, I'd crawl off the center hump of his work van, across the passenger seat that I reluctantly gave up to my sister, and collect a whiskery peck from a mouth that hadn't formed a honest-to-god word all weekend.

That was my Dad's thing. The thing my friends would later mock cautiously with my tacet acceptance. The thing my Mother would lament every so often to us between guilty apologies for the life she'd never wanted for us, but handed us all the same. The thing my sister would scream about from behind her closet door when she'd just had enough of everything. His thing was silence. Or mumblings that no one could quite decode until it was too late to respond. His thing was distance. An emotional embargo.

He got by on the few words he used, though. If you paid attention, you'd know exactly what he was thinking. What he was feeling, he could express in a deep sigh with more clarity than most people could muster with a megaphone and a soapbox.

When he arched his back against the driver's seat and pushed his arms out straight against the steering wheel, that meant, "Son, today was a long day. I climbed the same ladder 35 times up and 35 times down. Every step was agony. I'm really happy to see you kids, but Christ, I could use a beer and a good long nap."

When we got to the two-bedroom trailer with warped paneling that made the place just a shade lighter than a dark room, he'd fold himself in to a sitting position on the couch and twirl a patch of dark hair between his fingers. When he did that, it meant, "When you're my age, boy, you'll understand. God forbid."

He slept on the living room couch, relinquishing the master bedroom and its water-bed to my sister, while I slept in a small second bedroom that, now that I think about it, might have been a large storage area that he managed to squeeze a twin bed in to.
I look at him now and I wonder if sleeping on that couch didn't shave more than a few years off the old man's clock. I've spent more than my share of nights on a couch of my own and I sometimes wonder the same about myself, but we'll get to that a little later on.

When I say he was quiet, silent even, it's an exaggeration, but not by much. Like I said, he'd mumble and mutter under his breath. He'd sigh and groan like he was just another loose board beneath the old couch he slept on. But he'd laugh too and it was a good laugh. Not from the belly or even from the chest. I wouldn't call it mirthless, but it did have a certain ethereal quality to it. Like there was no air to it. No breath. It was all in the head and a smile that you'd have to be quick to get a good look at. It was in the eyes and the cheeks.

The way our faces are built in this family, there's a lot there. A lot of mountains and valleys and shadows. Big, flat noses and plump bottom lips. Broad foreheads and round chins. I can't say for sure, but that socks-on-the-ears thing, I gotta believe that one of my ancestors was responsible for that the first time.

Our eyes seem out of place though. Someone called them upside-down smiles once. "You mean, frowns?" I asked. When we smile, those upside-down frowns almost disappear altogether. We squint up so tight; the world goes dark every time we hear a really good joke. If you were me and you were watching that part in Tommy Boy where the deer wakes up in the back seat and tears the car apart, you’d laugh and your eyes would squint up tight, but then you wouldn’t see it anymore, so you’d stop laughing and your eyes would open, then you’d see it again, you’d laugh, and the world would go dark. So, if you were me, every time you saw that part, it’d be like a strobe light. You’d be watching every 6th frame. If you were me and you saw a really funny movie in the theater and you laughed the whole way though, you could ask for your money back.

But that was my dad’s laugh. It was crow’s feet that stretched from closed eyes all the way back to big, flat ears. It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-em row of wheat-colored teeth behind a clown’s nose and rubber-tire lips. It was silent, but if you paid attention, if you watched him the way I did, you could see him laugh and that was all the validation a kid could ask for.

To be continued…