Pieces of my Parents, Remnants of Me

The sticky sweet stench of horseshit and heracy permeates the landscape in my dreams.

It always starts with me walking in the early morning hours, the night hiding my sins in purple-black obscurity as I stagger down 13th Street from Hoyt east to Broadway. I reach the apex of the slight incline around Rockefeller when I see it: one tail-light of my dad's beat-up 1962 Mercury Comet aglow way off in the distance, the right turn blinker flashing for no good reason, stone cold dead at the curb near the Broadway 7-11. At first it appears empty, but as I inch closer I can make out a silhouette behind the wheel; really, just a disheveled clump of hair slumped over the steering column.

A siren in the distance grows louder, closer. Instinct has me accelerating from a stumble to a jog and then a sprint. The siren careens 'round the corner and just as I reach the passenger side of the vehicle, the officer rolls down the window of his cruiser and fires an automatic weapon at the Comet's windshield, the spray of glass knocking me to the ground. Johnny Law then aims squarely at the gas cap and grins: Bam! My dad's car is engulfed in flames now as I stare at the cop staring at me. He slowly removes a black leather glove and then his Ray Bans. Oddly familiar. And then I wake up, sheets damp, head pounding. This cycle repeats itself every few weeks and has for some time. There hasn't been any variance that I can recall, nor am I aware of this repetition during the dream itself, no anticipation or foretelling of events, it's as though each instance is the first time, every time.

Back in the waking world, I embarked on a journey into my ancestry this past week, both figuratively and literally. Jetting across the country to Seattle to partake in what has become an annual get together of my siblings this past Saturday. The sibling shindig has been going on for nearly a decade now, though it was my first. There are other opportunities to see them - holidays and such - but this is the one day that it's just us (no kids, grandkids, in-laws, etc.). And really, except for L., who I grew up with, and to some extent S., who lives near L. in Arizona, I'm just now getting to know this brood. It was enlightening, sharing stories and the drama of our respective lives, and it put me into a nostalgic frame of mind. Or maybe I was already there.

After the sibling thing, L. and I headed up north to Bellingham, WA to check out my father's early childhood hometown, peruse the landmark drug store our great uncle ran back in the day, and in general walk in the footsteps of dear ol' dad as a toddler, when he could still walk without weaving. It was enjoyable visiting an area that has grown and changed over the years - the Fairhaven section is a happening little hamlet of shops, coffee bars, and restaurants - and yet still pays homage to its history. Most places never seem to maintain that balance and are the poorer for it.

That's not why we came to Bellingham, really. The primary driver for this trip down memory lane was not simply to tip-toe through baby daddy's tulips but rather to locate and visit the grave of our paternal grandfather, who died less a year after our pop was born. We didn't pinpoint his final resting place at the Bayview Cemetery, despite diligently combing through the section their map claims was his. He died in 1925 and a lot of the tombstones from that period had decayed to the point of being unreadable, so we assumed one of those must have been granddad's. The following day, however, L. logged onto findagrave.com and discovered recent pictures of our grandpappy's slab in relatively fine shape, eminently legible. We were already an hour's drive back down south at this point, though, and weren't up for making a second pilgrimage just to see what we were already staring at online. Still, had it not been a Sunday the day before, we'd have stormed the cemetery office, demanding excavations and DNA tests! This was, after all, the man whose sir name we'd have proudly worn had my dad's stepfather not later adopted him, saddling us all with the putrid moniker weighing me down to this day ("putrid" is an appropriate adjective given our step grandfather's generally miserable, SOBesque demeanor).

Monday, I had a wonderful lunch with a childhood friend I'd recently rediscovered on Facebook. I hadn't seen him in over 36 years, so we had a lot to catch up on! These were my good memories of childhood, outdoors playing with the other kids. It turns out that we were both mostly oblivious to the acute dysfunction burning up the inside of the other's home, each fearful that it would boil over into the streets and expose our family's festering wounds to the neighborhood, unaware that we were in fact not so distressingly unique in that department. Domestic dysfunction might be as unique as a snowflake when viewed through a microscope; however, it's often sadly similar seen through everyday eyes. But outside, with the other children in the 'hood, I was free to be ... well, a kid. And so was he. We had some great times together and it was good to reflect on them.


After my lunch, L. and I visited the graves of our maternal grandparents. We had been there before as children, but still needed help to find the right "garden" in south Everett's Evergreen Cemetery. Luckily, it was Monday and the office was open. We eventually found grandma and grandpa, after some miscues and a personal escort to the location. (The escort got confused herself; the sections are not marked on the grounds, only on the associated map, and the map itself wasn't nearly detailed enough given the byzantine layout of the grounds.) This was the only grandma I knew (she died when I was eight). This grandpa died two years before I was born, but L. knew him briefly (she was five when he passed).

We drove through almost all of the streets of our hometown of Everett in between all this grave "digging." I had weaved a similar path a dozen or so years ago and have since made the journey virtually courtesy of Google but it's always revelatory making the in-person drive-by, interesting not so much because of the things that have changed but rather thanks to the things that haven't, and there are still quite a few falling into the latter category (probably the reason Everett hasn't been able to transform itself over the years, despite numerous concerted efforts toward that end).

Each time through Everett, I discover at least one thing I'd missed in previous treks. For instance, Washington elementary school is now a retirement home. The old brick building is still intact in the center of the compound, with newer structures surrounding it where the playground once stood. The iron monkey bars are long gone, though! As my sister remarked, we might one day come full circle and end up as child-like codgers, playing out our last days running around the grounds here just as we did in our youth. Ray's Drive-In on 14th and Broadway is still hanging in there as well. I recall eating out at Ray's on numerous occasions as a kid. In more adult matters, the Blue Moon - right across from Ray's - and the Doghouse Tavern still remain, though my dad never claimed either as favorites of his (taverns in Washington State can only serve beer and wine, you need to go to a "lounge" to get the hard stuff my dad used as fuel). Several members of his "posse" were known to frequent these dives on occasion, at least one of them - Darlene - enjoying the ambiance and denizens enough that she owned a Blue Moon "tavern" jacket.

So here I am now back in Philly, out of the cold dampness of the Pacific Northwest and into the sticky oven that is the Mid-Atlantic on this particular day in late May. The unofficial summer season kicks off tomorrow afternoon with the mass exodus "down the shore." And me? Well, I'm newly chock-full of my origins and now contemplating time's forward direction. I think I've finally hammered home to my psyche one unavoidable fact of nature: the future's the only past we can affect by our actions. In short, "Get over yourself and move on with life already." Amen.