Back in Action: Return of the Road Warrior

I was walking back to the office from the banquet kitchen this morning when I felt the buzz of my Blackberry and saw “Dad Cell” flash across the Caller ID. Knowing I’d just spoken with him last night I have to say my initial reaction was carefully concealed panic. Some people say late night phone calls are the truest indicator of bad news on its way but in my experience with my parents, it’s the daytime calls that you need to worry about. They know my schedule. A daytime call is an oddity, and the last one, three days before Christmas, had been the one to let me know my dad had suffered a stroke.

“Hi there,” I said, forcing a smile into my voice I really didn’t feel.

“How did you know it was me?” Dad hasn’t quite gotten his head around modern technology. I remember the first email he sent me, in the mid-nineties when he and Mom finally installed the Internet in their home: “It’s Dad Stop. Write me if you get this Stop.” Apparently the Internet service hadn’t explained to him that broadband was slightly more in tune with the times than a telegram. His first emails were cryptic consistently because he couldn’t understand how he could send an email that would take ten minutes to read and not be charged for a ten- minute long distance call.

“You have a special ring,” I lied. “How are you?”

“I’ve just had some great news from the physical therapist,” he said, “and I knew you’d want to hear it.”

As soon as he said that, anxiety started melting. I knew he’d been working very hard with the physical therapist who came to the house three times a week, and I knew Mom had been on him like a boot camp drill sergeant to insure he kept up with the exercises on his own. The combined effort had paid off. As of today, the physical therapist cleared him to drive. He’d regained enough use of his right hand and was getting some mobility back in his right foot. While there had been talk of him getting a brace for his foot he was now, as he explained it, ‘on hold’ with that idea, although if progress continued it wouldn’t be any kind of permanent brace, just something to help him as he continued to progress. “So I don’t have to drag my foot along behind me,” he said and I couldn’t help but wince at the imagery that conjured. Hard to match with the dad I’d done so much with throughout my life, from all the sailing trips and all the boats, and the hikes through the redwoods to Stinson Beach and the climbs up Mt. Diablo. I remembered when we used to jog through Berkeley in the early weekday morning hours in the late seventies when he was in his ‘running phase’ as Mom called it, and it just didn’t fit.

“That,” I said, “is fantastic! I am so glad!”

He was glad, too. His voice had a lift to it I hadn’t heard since before the stroke. “Oh this is swell,” he said then. “I’m back in action. No handicap at all! But I’m not signing up to drive on the highway or anything,” he said, pausing. “Not right now. But if I want to drive down to the store, or down the road to my friend’s house, I can do it! And Mom doesn’t have to drive me anymore. She’s been having to pack me around everywhere…” Which was, I understood as he let the conversation trail off, what had most bothered him.

There’s never been a question, really, of who the alpha dog was in that household. If I had a dime for every road trip they’d taken together in over thirty-six years, and a nickel for every mile they’d traveled in a vehicle, I certainly wouldn’t be working right now. The ability to get up and go had always been important to him, and had been one of the reasons he’d found some enjoyment in the last hectic years of his auditing career when the oil company had him one month in Hawaii, one month in Alaska, the next month in Nigeria, and after that in Canada, Kansas City, or the wrong end of Texas. I remembered all the plaques on the wall of the den recognizing the miles he’d traveled for his job, year after year being acknowledged “Road Warrior of the Year” and although he’d grumble about the airports, the hotel food, and the loneliness of it, you knew he was also proud of it. To hear the relief in his voice that he could do something as simple as drive down the road for a quart of ice-cream again was touching. He sounded as giddy as a clumsy school kid who’d just been picked first for the softball team.

Now I have to be honest and admit my first reaction following that call was to be relieved and incredibly happy for him. It was only after I got back to my office and really considered the ramifications that I wondered if being able to drive meant being able to drive anything, or if he’d be somewhat selective. My parents have too many vehicles for just two people. They have a new Subaru wagon, a new Diesel truck, a vintage convertible, an antique corvette, an antique Packard, and another car from somewhere in the forties of which I have a picture at home but off the top of my head I’m not sure what the make of it is. Suddenly, like any over-concerned daughter I wanted to call him back and admonish him not to attempt to drive anything other than the Subaru wagon, the smallest option of all their vehicles and surely one of the few with actual air bags. I wanted him to perhaps not do this driving until spring, when the snow had gone. I wanted to especially remind him not to drive anywhere just to be driving, but to drive if he had somewhere to be or something to do, as there was no sense rushing right into this whole thing and taking on too much at once. I wondered if that physical therapist really knew her stuff, or if she was rushing his recovery. Finally, as I opened a file on my desk and attempted to yank my brain back into the Now and out of the worry mode, I wanted to insure he was securely wrapped in bubble wrap before he got behind the wheel of anything, just in case the air bag wasn’t as good as the manufacturer’s warranty claimed it was and heaven forbid he needed it.

It was at that moment that I had what Oprah calls an ‘Aha’ moment, because what I thought about then were all the times Dad had sent me or any of his kids off somewhere, and how he’d make sure we had a few bucks in our pocket (“You always need some walking around money,” as he put it) and he knew exactly where we’d be and when we’d be home. I remembered all those times I’d be babysitting down the street and the doorbell would ring. There on the porch of whatever house I was earning $1 an hour in watching some toddler would be my dad, holding a Mealamac plate wrapped in Reynold’s Wrap. “Meals on wheels,” he’d announce, and there would be the dinner I would have had at home if I’d been home. I realized in that moment why he did all of that, and how he, like me now, wanted to do everything he could to ensure nothing happened to one of his kids.

And yet life does what it does, and I’m sure at every turn he had to realize you really have no control, and I think I realize that now, too. I think he realized it for the first time in 1969, when I fell off the deck and cracked my head. And again in 1975 when my sister was hit by a car when we were on a bike ride. And again in the early nineties, when my brother was mugged and turned up in a Berkeley hospital as a John Doe with permanent hearing loss in his right ear. I think he realized that sometimes you have to let go. You have to realize you’re only human, and life is going to do what it’s going to do regardless of anything you do.

So having realized that, I’m not going to tell him what he can and can’t drive, and I’m not going to remind him that snow is slippery to drive on, and I’m also not going to advise bubble wrap as a sensible secondary safety initiative in a vehicle. I realize I’m only human. I realize I’m not in charge of this.

I also realize this is my dad I’m talking about. So I may just wait a bit and then call Mom and ask if there’s any way she can temporarily ‘lose track of’ keys to any vehicle other than the Subaru wagon until the Road Warrior gets a little stronger.