A Bird in the Hand: the Goodness of a Father

My father and I were never very close. He was one of those classic World War II veterans who didn’t say much about his war experiences. What I knew about them I learned from a carved wooden box that he bought in the Philippines when his ship stopped there. The box contained photos from Hawaii, the Philippines and Shanghai; a Chinese wedding cup; a piece of white coral; and a few other mementos. The box now sits on my bookshelf.

When I was not quite four, he started his own business, and it would become his life for the next 32 years. From the time I was 4 until I was about 12, I could go days, sometimes weeks, and not see him. He was up and gone to the office before I was awake, and he’d arrive home hours after I’d gone to bed. When I was 8, he was supposed to take me to the French Quarter for a Saturday outing. When he said he had to work, my mother did something rare for her: she rebelled. I could hear the argument from my room. She prevailed; we went to the French Quarter. I still have the pastel drawing an artist did of me next to Jackson Square (dated 1960 by artist Lee Stallings).

Even later, when he was home on weekends, he was usually planted in his recliner in front of the television set, alternately sleeping and dozing, with an ear plug for the police radio. But you didn’t think about being deprived of something; it’s what the situation was and you lived with it. Yes, I noticed other fathers coming home at 5 from work, but other fathers didn’t have their own business.

Sometime that spring of the French Quarter argument/outing, I was playing outside in the front yard, next to this huge tree (an old swamp tree, which tells you where our suburb came from). And I found a nest of three baby birds that had fallen from a branch. I rushed inside to get help.

It was a Sunday, and one of the rare ones when my father was home and not at the office. I can still remember how he was dressed – white t-shirt, plaid Bermuda shorts, black ankle socks and white tennis shoes. I can even remember how he smelled – a combination of sweat, Old Spice aftershave and cigarettes. He followed me outside and I showed him the baby birds.

He dashed inside, and returned with a shoebox. He put the nest in it, and gently scooped up the baby birds (they were pink and feather-less, tiny little things). We took the box inside, and then he found an eyedropper. He made up some liquid concoction, and patiently fed the three babies. He fed them several times that night, and even through the night.

He left late for the office the next day and came home early. He nursed the little birds for several days, but eventually they all died. I think he was as disappointed as I was. I cried; he didn’t.

I thought for years afterward that he really cared for those little birds, even to the point of giving up his normal working hours. And he did. But it took me some years to realize that he did it more for me than for the birds; it was his way of showing me something he couldn’t say.


If you’d like to read related posts on goodness, check out the One Word Blog Carnival over at Bridget Chumbley’s place.

"Last Light," photograph by nAncy of Poems and Prayers. Used with permission.

Books from Childhood

My wife found me in the basement this morning. Instead of getting ready for church, I was looking through a shelf of old childhood books, trying to remember who wrote the Trixie Belden books. Yes, I could have gone to Amazon.com or Wikipedia, but with the computer off, it was quicker to go the memories-in-the-basement route. At least that's what I told myself (my wife knew better).

Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion is the very first book I can remember buying. I think I was 6 or 7 years old; the book was a little beyond my age group but I was one of those early readers. I bought it it for 59 cents at the local TG&Y dimestore, rode home on my bike and dove into the book.

The book had everything a kid could want. An old deserted mansion, a tomboy heroine with a rich best friend, a lost teenaged boy living on his own, a little brother who gets bitten by a copperhead, a mystery -- it didn't get much better than that. I read all of the Trixie Belden books published at the time, perhaps seven or eight books in all. (The series got reinvented a few years ago, and there are a lot more volumes than there were in the 1950s and early 1960s.)

From Trixie Belden, I graduated to the Hardy Boys. I liked Trixie Belden, but I loved the Hardy Boys stories. I read them all, starting with The Tower Treasure. These weren't the modern updates but reprints of the originals from the 1920s and 1930s, and included such incomprehensible words as "roadster." I had the complete set, and made the mistake of leaving them at my mother's house until it was too late -- she told me how fast they sold at a garage sale. But I picked up a few along the way at used book stores, and they're down in the basement, too, right near Trixie.

So are some books from the old Scholastic Book Service. A book club through school! And every month! Forget homework. I'd bring home the paper flyer with all the books being offered and pore over it. My choices were eclectic -- mysteries like The Mystery in Old Quebec; funny stories like Triple Trouble for Rupert; and occasionally even books that were obviously for girls, like Understood Betsy (a city girl is sent to live with relatives on a New England farm; I learned where maple syrup comes from).

One of these Scholastic books was called Ready-Made Family. It's the story of three children -- Hetty, Peter and Rosemary -- who are orphaned and adopted by a childless couple. Hetty needs braces and has all of the insecurities of a young girl; Peter's a born troublemaker (a lot of the tension of the book is about Hetty's fears that Peter will be sent back to the orphanage); and Rosemary, the sweet and pretty youngest of the three, is the one everyone falls in love with. I still remember feeling terrified when Peter breaks a window of the house next door, owned by a crotchety old man; I knew this kid was going to be back at the orphanage in no time. This is one book I didn't find in my basement (probably another garage sale), but wish I had. It rates as one of my childhood favorites. Obviously, since I remember the main characters and the plot.

Books can be powerful things.

Oh, that author's name. According to the title pages, the author of the first few Trixie Belden books was Julie Campbell, and then Kathryn Kenny.