Grand Prize in Literature, National League of American PEN Women, 2011 Maryland State Biennial
Second place, essay category, Brainerd (MN) Writers Alliance Annual Contest, 2009
Third place, Starving Writer Quarterly Contest 2009, Milwaukie, OR

        At my father’s memorial service, Mom sat on my right and my husband, Bob, was on my left. Or maybe my two-year-old daughter, Lee, was wiggling on my left. I don’t recall. But I definitely remember Mom on the right. My brother, Jeff, sat on her other side.  

        Our family’s many friends filled the modern wooded church, a place never attended by my dad but close to their home. Many friends had driven or flown quite a distance to be with us. Most people in the church were closer to my mom than they’d been to my father, a man who kept to himself for the most part. But they loved my dad, too, especially his college classmates and those who sang with him in the chorale. Articulate, intelligent and well-read, Dad rose to the pleasures of social occasions, laughing and talking with everyone. He enjoyed himself immensely at dinner parties or at the theatre or symphony. He and Mom gathered with friends at tailgate picnics before college football games, at art galleries and openings, and, after we had left home, traveled with one or two couples on weekend getaways.

        But most likely he wouldn’t have done any of that without my mom making the arrangements. Nor would he have called or written any of the people in the room if not for her. Women often serve as the managers and initiators of social activities in marriages but Mom and Dad’s case seemed more extreme than most. I can’t recall him ever picking up the telephone to make plans even with his own family or with people he knew before he met Mom. He had no separate friendships. Although Mom thoroughly enjoyed doing all the social planning, more than once she expressed to me her incredulity about his unwillingness to keep in touch on his own. “What would happen if I didn’t make the plans?” she’d say. “Would he become a hermit?” As far as I was concerned, he practically was. 

        When my brother and I still lived at home, he wasn’t at all forthcoming, reading the San Francisco Chronicle for hours on the weekend, lying on his back on the couch. After an hour or so on the couch, he might run a couple of errands in the car, alone. He did adore spending time in the garden and did some really hard work there – pruning fruit trees on a ladder, weeding meticulously, watering and doing major plantings. On weekends, in the summer, we’d all go to the swim club together where he’d say hi to friends but mostly lay in the sun to read or sleep, or swam during “adult swim.” He didn’t play Marco Polo or water tag with us that I can remember.   

        As a family, we took many long car trips either to visit his parents in Sacramento and, after they retired, in Carmel, or to take various vacations up and down the coast of California, Oregon and Washington. Dad was the driver. Never speaking, his eyes fixated on the road ahead unless Jeff and I roughhoused too much and then he yelled, while still looking at the road and not turning around, “Stop fighting or I’ll slap you into the middle of next week!” The yelling was particularly startling because he’d been silent for so long. His silence created a tension in the car’s atmosphere that contrasted with the lightness and joviality when Mom drove us around during the week to piano lessons or doctors’ appointments, or dragged us along when she had to shop for groceries because we were too young to be left home. On those occasions, all three of us would talk, joke, laugh, argue and just be ourselves. With Dad’s silent presence, we were more reserved, except when we were acting up which we did, no doubt, to get his attention.  I wanted to see if he was still alive. 

        Mom was Dad’s sole confidante and they talked for what seemed like hours over cocktails every night before dinner, Dad sat on the couch looking out across the San Francisco Bay toward the City and Mom faced him, in an armchair. We were discouraged from entering the living room and interrupting them. It was clear Dad wanted Mom’s company alone. I remember feeling abandoned every evening around 6 p.m. when he came home and Mom was no longer available to us. It felt like the day ended when he walked in the door. As we grew older, we ate dinner with them, rather than before he got home, but still they had their cocktail hour alone before our meal. 

        I could completely understand Dad’s attachment to Mom. She was an amazing listener and a great audience, offering intelligent insights and laughing at humorous remarks even when they weren’t all that funny. But we were a family. Why couldn’t we all be together in the living room, talking and laughing? I resented my father. 

        Sometimes, to be mischievous, Jeff and I gathered on our knees or stomachs in the hall, right at the edge of the beige wall-to-wall carpet that defined the living room, making lots of noise so that Mom and Dad knew we were there. Occasionally, Dad spoke to us from across the border or even allowed us to join them for a while, but more often he’d shoo us away. 

        For the memorial service, we’d struggled with the decision about who should officiate. A self-proclaimed atheist, my father didn’t have a regular minister or church so to preside over the service, we’d invited the man who was my minister and friend during my hard-drinking, rebellious teen years. Unfortunately, my former minister didn’t know Dad very well and called him “Newton” rather than “Newt” which was jarring. 

        But the music was beautiful and familiar, particularly the pieces sung by the Winifred Baker Chorale, of which Dad had been a 30-year member. I felt carried back to a childhood of listening to Dad sing in concerts, many held in churches because so much chorale music is religious. When I was just a little older than my daughter, Lee, I would lie down in the pew halfway through an evening concert, and sleep, surrounded by the music. As I grew older, I could stay awake through the entire concerts and loved being carried away by the music. It was uplifting and inspiring. When I was in my teens, I protested having to attend Dad’s concerts. I wanted to be out with my friends or listening to my own preferred music. I was a devotee of the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and, a local favorite, Sons of Champlin, and didn’t want to sit through a program of classical music. 

        But now that I wouldn’t hear Dad sing again, I felt overwhelmingly sad and nostalgic. I was grateful for the gift he’d given me of my appreciation for chorale music, a music I returned to in my twenties. 

        We all looked forward to hearing the remarks by a few family friends.  

        One of Dad’s college friends, Sam, spoke first, talking about their days working together on the college newspaper and later, in San Francisco, as colleagues in journalism and public relations. Both men left journalism somewhat reluctantly for practical reasons; public relations paid better and allowed them to provide more comfortably for their families. 

         “Newt’s greatest pleasure was his family,” Sam said. “He doted on Nancy and the children, talking about their latest interests and accomplishments.” 

        I shifted in my seat. Love for us? Talked about our accomplishments? This was breaking news to me. Had he mentioned that to Sam and not us? What had I missed? When? I had no recollection of him praising me for any accomplishments and I knew for a fact he’d rarely attended any of my swim meets. I didn’t doubt the veracity of Sam’s comments but this was a side to Dad I’d never known. Doted on Mom? I glanced at Mom. Her eyes were red but she’d stopped crying. She looked up at Sam with a slight questioning frown on her face.  

        Walt, a second college friend, one who lived out of the Bay Area and was usually quite witty, spoke about his and Dad’s first years out of college and the fun they’d had together living in a rented bachelor house in Belvedere with a third friend, all three working in San Francisco. The three handsome young men had fought and survived World War II, returned from overseas to finish college, and were starting their careers. I could envision Dad as I’d seen him in photos with his head of dark, curly hair, wearing khakis, argyle vests and loafers. There was a lightness to Walt’s tone despite the somber occasion and, periodically, some welcome humor. We all laughed gratefully at the funny parts and it felt like some air had been let into the room. Not having seen Dad with his children over the years, Walt didn’t mention Dad’s relationship with us which, to me, made his remarks more authentic. He spoke about Dad meeting Mom and how wonderful she is. Walt said Dad loved her vivaciousness and warmth, her intelligence and sharp perceptions. This I could envision.

        But I started shifting in my seat again with the eulogy by Martha Sharp, Mom and Dad’s neighbors after I’d left home for college. She described Mom and Dad’s devotion to their friends and neighbors, including Martha and her husband, William. Mom and Dad always remembered their birthdays and anniversaries, and brought home mementoes from their travels for their daughter. When my parents’ lemon tree was full of fruit, bowls of lemons appeared on the Sharp’s front porch.  

        Martha spoke of the sadness of the occasion. She quoted Hilaire Belloc about the value of a friend. “You are everywhere admired, everywhere respected, and, by those who have the honour of your acquaintance, loved…” 

        As Martha spoke, I knew the words were heartfelt and true for her, and for almost everyone in the room. Socially, Dad was exquisitely urbane, educated, humorous, intelligent, handsome and thoroughly appreciated by his friends. However, he had been emotionally closed to those of us who were closest to him. 

        Martha then spoke of Dad’s gentleness, saying he was a gentle man as well as a gentleman. “Newt Wise did not have a mean bone in his body. Although he was able to analyze with intelligence and make incisive comments, he was never, ever judgmental.” 

        I looked at Mom. She moved her left hand over to cover my right hand. I was afraid to meet her eyes for fear of laughing out loud and was sure she shared my reaction. Martha continued about Dad being a good friend and about his interest in so many things – music, art, gardening, travel, business, writing, reading – all true, but also only part of the story. 

“Newt respected others. He listened to them,” she said. “He asked after them. Even teenagers. I especially appreciated his respect for teenagers.” 

        I was dumbfounded. Dad must have had a personality transplant after I went away to college, I thought, with sarcasm, remembering the bitter and vicious arguments I’d had with Dad during high school, many in protest of his judgments of me. I uncrossed my legs, rubbed the back of my neck with my left hand and looked down at my lap. Mom’s left hand still rested gently on my right. She leaned ever so slightly closer to me and in a quiet whisper for my ears only said the exact words I was thinking.         

        “Is she talking about the same man we knew?” 

         Oh, how I loved her.      

Published in The Broad River Review, volume 44, Spring 2012