Category: Blog

I’ve never heard my dad complain, I said to a friend recently.

No, that’s not quite true.

When I was young, he complained when Tom and I watched Gilligan’s Island.

“Drivel,” he’d say. “The boob tube.” Fair (prescient, actually). And there were his complaints about politics, the price of gas, traffic—the ordinary irritations of living in the world.

But what was true—what insisted on being said—was this: I’ve never heard my dad complain about anything on his own behalf.

Never—not once, not even in passing—about his own inconvenience. Not about the unfairness of others. Not about the challenges of starting and running a business, or the discomfort of the (very) rare injury or illness. No pain – physical, financial, emotional – formed into an expression of why me, or can you believe or even, this is hard. If he spoke about such things they were merely a statement of fact. 

Oh—but there was once.

I remember my mom— I was a teenager at the time—telling me that Dad was sad. He’d been working a lot and wasn’t around much. He told her he felt like a stranger in his own house.

I felt punched in the gut.

Dad, sad?

I think about those early mornings before the light came up, when he would perch on the side of my bed, wanting to talk, and I would groan and roll over, wrapped tight in my teenage short-sightedness.

He wanted to change it. And he did. He can do almost anything.

And maybe that’s why I never heard him complain. He never stood still long enough.

Mom, Dad, and I—along with anyone I can manage to bring along—spend a great deal of time in the Grand Forest. Grand Forest West, to be specific. I have no idea what happens over in Grand Forest East, but we’re having none of it.

Grand Forest West is our happy place. It’s close to where Mom and Dad live and is, as advertised, grand. Giant evergreens. Eye-level ferns. Wildflowers. The works.

We practice strength and balance as we move along the well-groomed trails—hills, rocks, tree roots. It’s where Mom prunes the forest (lightly, unofficially) or gathers greenery for a makeshift bouquet. It’s where Dad stops to marvel—at the trees, their height, their almost-up-to-the-sky straightness. It’s where we make up stories about the ones that bend, choosing, for reasons of their own, to grow off in another direction.

And lately, it’s where I’ve been trying to get Dad to use walking poles.

I point out that his strapping grandson, Collin, swears by them. I casually mention that the last time we talked to his cousin Sherman—same age, 92—he said, “I’m doing great. Except that when I stand in one place, I fall over, so I use a cane.”

I take one pole to model. Dad takes the other—for a while. Not before offering it to Mom, of course. Never missing an opportunity to share what he has.

So I give mine to Mom instead (Dad is, after all, the intended target), and before long he’s twirling his pole like a baton, or using it to inspect a mushroom on a tree trunk.

Meanwhile, Mom—decidedly not the intended target—is out ahead, calling back over her shoulder:

She likes the walking pole. Matter of fact. It’s helpful. It makes her feel more stable.

…win?

Every flower, leaf, mossy twig, and weed she passes has a chance at being featured in a floral arrangement crafted in Mom’s hands as she walks. She does this without thinking, like breathing. And just as every stem might be chosen, every vessel within arm’s reach—a jar, a cup, a (hair dryer) diffuser—has a shot at becoming a home for it.

The hospital in Big Bear felt closed. Like we’d snuck into a large department store after hours—lights dimmed, hallways mostly quiet. The hospital was on strike, but Camron was ready for life, and we were ready for Camron.

So there we were—me, Mom, Dad—holding Tom’s firstborn, the first one we met at the very beginning. Sherry came into our lives with four kids already mid-story, and I don’t think we understood yet that they were ours to love.

We must have looked trustworthy that night. Or at least well-intentioned. Because there we were, holding a shiny, brand-new human in a darkened corner of a hallway. Left to stare. And wonder.

Knowing him now, I think we could have dropped Camron on the linoleum floor, and he would have walked it off—but he had a whole larger-than-life, lionhearted, adrenaline-fueled adventure ahead of him, so it’s best we didn’t.

Camron wasn’t just a beautiful new baby. He was a prism—when the light hit him just right, all rainbowy, we saw what our family could be. What our family now was. We fell in love that day. The three of us. With all of them.

What is it about posing game elders in hip hop poses?
I don’t know.
It shouldn’t work. They shouldn’t be this good at it.
It definitely shouldn’t be their idea of fun.
And yet—

There is no touch like my mom’s. You may think your mom’s touch is the best—I don’t mean to be unkind, but you’re wrong. If you have ever had the pleasure of holding my mom’s hand, or having her stroke your back, or your hair, or your face, you know.

Growing up, I’d whip off my socks and put my feet in my mom’s lap and, without a word, she’d begin lightly brushing her fingers from my toes to my heel, to my delight. “I have no idea how you tolerate this,” she’d say. “I hate having my feet touched.”

The other night, Mom was restless and exhausted at the same time. Finally, she sat down on the bed at my promise of a foot massage—which felt odd to even offer her. “Tom,” she said after a few minutes, “have you ever had your feet massaged? It’s amazing! Honey, you’re so good at this. I may want this every day.”

Mom has always—correction, almost always—loved Tom (Jr., that is)’s particular brand of irreverence. His humor. The way he seems to know, instinctively, exactly how far he can go and then… goes just a little bit farther. He holds the key to her heart and her laugh. He’s relentless, and she loves it.

When she’s had enough, she reaches out and takes a swipe at him—not connecting with anything, mostly because she’s already doubled over laughing. It’s part reflex, part performance, part pure delight. And he just keeps going.

When he’s here, everything feels a little more complete. Our little nuclear family is united. Lighter, too. We feel it—we all do—that sense of being full up on something good.

And then he goes back to Alaska. And things don’t exactly dim, but they quiet. Just a notch. Maybe two. So we watch. We watch the videos. We scroll through the pictures. Again and again. Reliving the moments as they unfold in small rectangles of light. And I watch them—my mom, my dad—as they watch. The way their eyes soften. The way a smile finds its way to their mouths, like it remembers the path. Even the memory brings the joy, one step removed.

Ten years and ten days.
That’s how long my dad beat my mom to Earth.
She took her time.
And that’s how they’ve moved through life.
Dad greets each day just as it wakes up. Usually around 5 a.m.
Mom sleeps until the day is fully formed.
He spent those early hours reading, journaling, exercising, making coffee.
She woke to coffee.
And then—two cups’ worth of time—they sat in robes, curled into the couch, planning the day.