(way) More on Monday (edited)

Caution: probable megapost ahead, with links to previous posts.

I was as nervous as I was excited to see them again, for a combination of reasons. But first, why these relatives that I saw only a half dozen times in my youth mean so much to me.

Well, that will take sharing some more details related to this post. Yes, I was finally going to be reunited with the people that I was with when my dad died. That trip would have been quite memorable for other reasons had it not ended so catastrophically. The idea was to go by train. I don't know how Amtrak pricing compared with flying in those days - it can be significantly more expensive today - but the cost wasn't the main issue. Mom wanted us to experience the country by rail. Dad couldn't go, as he didn't have enough vacation left: he had a Sunday package of Orioles' season tickets, and he never felt good enough to get to work on Monday morning after a game. By then I had come to understand why that always took so much out of him, why my mom objected to my going along with him very often, and why I was forbidden to tell her about the stop that he made just down the street - what was in that odd shaped bottle wrapped in brown paper from which he drank on the way to and throughout the rare games I was allowed to attend with him. (That was by no means the worst thing that I was never to share with her, but it was the most frequent.) Anyway, for this trip it was just the three of us, Mom, my sister and me, with none of dad's alcohol-fueled complications..

The rail station was a different experience, but not that different in nature from an airport. We had dinner in the dining car, and I seem to recall going back later for a snack before it was time for us to sleep in our semi-reclining coach seats. Along the way I developed a crush on one of our fellow passengers who, like most kids my own age, was way less naive than I was. She tried to convince me to let her paint my fingernails with clear polish - lots of guys do that, she assured, and no one will be able to tell because it's clear - and the only reason she didn't succeed was that I was too tied by the apron strings to not check with my mom first - so I guess that wasn't entirely a bad thing. I think we had only one overnight on the train between Baltimore and . . . I can't remember . . . Topeka?  I'm pretty sure it wasn't Kansas City. From there we transferred to a bus - this was the second night of travel, I think - to ride to Dodge City (another "I think") where my dad's brother and/or sister-in-law was picking us up.

There are other details I remember from this trip. It seems to me that this was the year we went to the Seward County fair, which I thought was way fun. We had fairs in MD, but I don't think I'd ever been to one. In the ensuing years I'd go with my high school girlfriend (now my bride of 32 years) to the Glen Burnie carnival, but hadn't been as of yet. Anyway, I remember on that trip and the next playing baseball with my cousins and their friends in the field behind my aunt and uncle's double-wide. When there weren't enough friends around for a game, my cousins and I had plenty of games of catch and rundown - though for the life of me I can't remember the different name they had for the latter. I've finally figured out why I've been remembering them as closer to my age than they really were: they were at least my equal in sports ability, even though Bill and Mark were two and three years younger than me. I can't remember which of the years it was that I helped with the mowing at my grandparents' house, taking a little bit of flack from my cousins and then my uncle for not "following the pattern."

I'll spare the reader (and myself) the details of my clearest memories from before The Call. They happened at night, in youthful ignorance and curiosity. I may not have understood the nature of what we were doing, but I knew it was forbidden. We weren't trying to be naughty, yet I knew we were. And I'm remorseful about it now, but will probably never get a chance to tell them so, because it isn't the sort of thing you raise without it being clear that the other person hasn't already moved past it on their own. I talked about it in therapy, but am not completely without difficult feelings about it. This was the biggest reason for my nervousness about visiting this week.

The power behind those lingering feelings is undeniable. We were in the latter days of the trip, preparing to retrace our steps back home, when The Call came one evening. Some time later, our mom called my sister and I together (I thought I was remembering, though now it is occurring to me that maybe she told me but not Karen?) to tell us most gravely that dad had become very suddenly and seriously ill. It wasn't at all clear that he was going to survive. We were going to have to fly home the next day and pray for the best.

Pray I did. I remember my cousins praying the rosary with me, under the impossibly starry rural Kansas sky. As we offered our repetitive, ritual prayers, I silently begged God to answer my prayer for my father in spite of the bad thing I'd been doing. I was afraid that if he died it would be my fault, because I'd learned that God doesn't answer the prayers of a sinner. We were up, praying and afraid, for most of the night, though I suppose I must have slept for at least several hours.

The seriousness of his condition was underscored when Grandma and Grandpa made the trip back to Maryland with us, too; I can't remember for certain who else came along. We drove to Wichita to catch our plane, but the rest of that part of my life is a distant blur, starting with the flights home; I think I slept through most of both (?; I'm sure it was at least two, even in the "pre-hub" days of air travel) of them. Once we were home in our own living room, Mom told us that Dad had already been dead when she'd gotten The Call before we'd left Kansas, and that she'd wanted to wait until we were back in familiar surroundings to break the worst part of the news to us. She explained that he'd died of a sudden, unexpected cerebral hemorrhage, saving the rest of the truth for some day much later, when I was older and she'd had a chance to deal with it. (That would be after she revealed that my dad wasn't my biological father, I think.) One of my uncles - I'm thinking it was my Kansas uncle, but I just don't remember for certain - dropped the "man of the house, now" line on me, but it didn't seem like the unreasonable burden that it might have been had I been younger. I remember the funeral home behind our school, run by the family of a grade school classmate. I'm pretty sure I had been in it before, but it's way different when it's your own dad and you're there for the duration rather than just to pay your respects and leave. There were a few of his friends from work with whom we'd visited over the years - always at their homes rather than ours - who came for the viewing or funeral. Our pastor led a service at the funeral home and prayers at the gravesite; he was a bit of a rebel, honoring my mom's request that he preside despite my dad's professed atheism and undeniably non-Catholic status. My clearest recollection is the tender moment back in the limo at the graveyard when, remembering my uncle's admonition from our arrival home, I asked my tearful mother if she was okay. She seemed legitimately bolstered and comforted by my asking. Grandma and Grandpa stayed for another day or so, I think. In just a few weeks I started high school, from which there are all sorts of memories that are part of my whole story but are well beyond the scope of this post, even though emotionally some of them might be considered part of a continuous weaving.

The following year we had our big road trip, which included a side trip with our Kansas aunt, uncle, and cousins to the Ozarks (though I suppose it's possible this side trip was the previous year). It was the only time in my life I've ever enjoyed fishing, though I think that maybe I enjoy it more in the memory than I did in the moment. I remember very clearly, though, how patient my uncle was with me, very different from how my dad had been.

So the family members with whom I was reunited on Monday, for the first time since I was fifteen years old, are very dear to me. I was surprised when we got there with the chance to also see the ones who'd almost let my paternity cat out of the bag 38 years ago. My secretive, overprotective mother was so mad at them that day she could have spit fire, as she told me the day she finally revealed my paternity, but then, "Spitfire" did become her nickname. Now, it was nice to visit under these circumstances when there was no longer any need for there to be such secrets between us, and I found myself caught off-guard by how nostalgic I felt toward them despite having only met them on the one previous occasion so long ago. It was wonderful to hear their stories of my dad, who over sixty years ago lived for at least one summer in that small town. I had a short moment of panic near the start of their visit when his aunt looked me in the eye to interrogate as to whether I remembered breaking her ribs, until my aunt reminded her that that had not been me but my dad. It was great to hear stories from before he'd become enslaved to the bottle, when he was once just an enthusiastic kid, too, struggling to find his place in this world, which apparently ever eluded him. The years seemed to contract as I shared with my aunt and cousin how much my late uncle had meant to me, too, and some of what I had learned from his example. His generous spirit lives on in his son who, when showing me his memorabilia room, would not allow me to leave without two baseballs autographed by famous Orioles from the '66 championship team. "They'll mean way more to you than they will to me," my cousin insisted, perhaps not understanding that the biggest reason for that is because of who gave them to me and the renewed relationship with him that they represent.