Hungry Kid, Snoring Dad

My father was born in Smithtown, Long Island, in 1947 into a family of four. His mother was a teacher and his father worked at Republic Aviation as a inspector of parts. Spending most of his childhood with his grandfather who managed the Wineanch Gun Club, my father grew closer with him than he did with his own parents. His grandfather would bring him to work. There the two hunted for rabbits, pheasants, duck, and geese and shared hunting stories while they sat in the cab of his forest green Ford pick-up. After they hunted, they would go get a soda at a local general store; it was their tradition. Because my father had trouble making friends, he spent most of his young life with his grandfather. Shortly after my father's thirteenth birthday, his grandfather passed away leaving him without a role model or a friend. 

I was a hungry kid and my dad snored. My rumbling stomach kept me up past my bedtime and I could hear his snores from the living room next to me. Around 9:30 my hunger would get the best of me, prompting me to wake him with a small shake on the arm. His eyelids heaved themselves up towards his brow bone as my tiny fingers poked at his meaty arms. Carrying me to the kitchen, but a few steps away, he asked, “What are we having?”

“Yogurt!” It was always yogurt or bananas, the two foods that only he and I ate. The light from the fridge drifted into the room, shining on my small frame sitting on the counter, as he scooped plain yogurt into a small white bowl and drizzled honey on top of it. One spoonful for me, one for him. The honey hardened slightly upon the cold, smooth yogurt. As the yogurt mulled in my mouth, the cream and its flavor dissipated yet the honey rested on my tongue, competing with the tart yogurt. He scraped the sides of the bowl, which made a sharp yet familiar noise in the quiet house. 

“You know, you’d get along great with your great-grandfather. He would always get up in the middle of the night to eat,” he said as he put the bowl in the sink.

With his calloused hands he picked me up off the counter where I sat. On the blue sofa, he lay down. I climbed into the small space left on the couch and grabbed a green blanket to pull over my shoulders. He’d tell me stories about hunting with his grandfather and the traditions they shared before I drifted off to sleep.

Sun seeped through my eyelids after shining onto my face. Most mornings I’d wake up like this, seeing as the living room had no curtains. When I was up, he would be awake too. I would be hungry so I’d have dippy eggs with toast and a glass of milk. This was all before I attended school, before I had academic responsibilities. Weekdays we’d wake up, eat, my mom would dress me while he showered, then he would have to go to work. Fortunately, he wasn’t far. Directly below my room rested the headquarters of The Dow Corporation. At various times throughout the day I would pound down the steep steps through the hallway, my feet slapping against the cold concrete, before I opened the office door. When I first stepped into the door, all could see was my uncle Dave. He had a warm disposition, with green eyes that hid softly behind brown glasses. His hair was gray and so was his moustache. His cheeks were full, sagging like his chin whose folds blend seamlessly into his neck. 

Well worn green and yellow carpet covered the floors and contrasted with the bright white walls. The desks were green linoleum that feigned a marbled texture. Each desk had two bulky old computers. The ding from an IM coming in on my father's computer pulled me out of my daze and prompted me to go farther into the room. Around the corner was Neil, a man larger than Dave, who sat deep into his black chair, testing its strength with each bounce, slouch, and stretch. To his left was my father. White hair was parted to the right, gently quaffed; he wore old blue jeans and a button-up flannel shirt. He pulled me up on his lap as he made phone calls and clicked on the computer. Occasionally I would talk on the phone with an old client. They asked how old I was or what sports I played. I would say, “I’m four and I love baseball!”

“What’s your favorite team?”

“The Yankees.”

“Have you been to a game?”

“Nope, but Dad said maybe for my birthday.”

“Or the next time I’m around.” 

Handing the phone back to him, I’d slide off his lap and wait for him to finish his phone call. When he was done he’d say, “Okay, Willa, it’s time for me to work,” then kiss me on the head before I ran upstairs. 

On Saturdays I’d wake up on the couch to the beeping of his watch. He pulled out my blue Yankees jersey with the lucky number 8 and my white baseball pants. I like the Yankees but he hated them. He wasn’t really a fan of organized sports at all, but I was, so he took me to games and Little League practices and sat with me while we watched games on TV. 

We hopped into his silver Toyota pickup truck. The sun was just beginning to paint the sky and we traveled down the bumpy dirt road. Right turn, left turn, right turn, stoplight, right turn and then we pulled into a small parking lot. We got out of the car and picked up two bacon and egg sandwiches from B and L deli and a bottle of grape juice. Peeling back the foil that surrounded the white bun, I bit into my breakfast. The warm egg, soft bun, and crispy bacon all melded together to create that familiar taste of an early morning. 

Next stop, Sam's Club where we would buy all our home necessities. We strolled through the aisles, hunting for all the items on our list: paper towels, toilet paper, ketchup, mustard, tissues, and half and half. My dad would hand me the 24 pack of paper towels and another of toilet paper, which I would clumsily push onto our flat cart. He rearranged them and sat me on top of my throne where I would ride around for the rest of our trip. At the checkout line, I would always get a Yoohoo (something my mother would never let me have). It was our tradition. I shook the heavy glass bottle before handing it to my dad to open. I heard the seal of the bottle pop open and then watched him take a large slug of the chocolatey milk before he handed it to me. The cold, sweet liquid flowed swirled in my mouth. 

In 2005 my mom moved my sister and me upstate so we could go to a new alternative school insead of public school. My dad stayed in our home, which was about an hour away. At first he would come up every Wednesday and visit, then we all would come home on weekends. After a month or two he stopped coming on Wednesdays, and some weekends we wouldn’t go home. In a sense, I had lost my mentor and my best friend. At school I struggled with numbers; I would shake when I was called on to answer a question and dreaded saying my times tables aloud. After  I failed my times-tables test for the fifth time, my teacher asked me, “If you went to public school, why are you so bad at math? I would expect you to be better.” 

Friends didn’t come easily, girls teased me for being tall and for having short hair, so I played alone. By the stream at recess, girls in my grade would often seek me out to torment and ridicule me. After school I would call my dad and cry on the phone. When I would cry he would cry. After we both collected ourselves he would offer comfort by telling me about his childhood.  In 1959 his grandfather died of a heart attack around the time my father entered his first year of middle school. Much like me, he had lost his mentor and best friend. In school he received D’s and C’s on his report cards with comments saying he was “slow.” When asked to read aloud he stuttered as his voice shook under the pressure of his small second grade classroom; two minutes had gone by and he had failed to complete the small page or text. Children laughed while the teacher hushed them. After silencing their giggles, she said to him from across the room, “Rodney, why are you so slow? Has your mother taught you nothing?”

While the academic and emotional torment I received failed to subside, just simply knowing he knew how I felt always made me feel much better.

In 2009 my mom, sister, and I moved back home. Dad slept in the basement in the spare bedroom where I would kiss him before bed every night. In the morning he’d be up at 5:50 to have breakfast ready for us by 6:20 so we could be out the door by 6:40, and then get to the train station by 6:50 so we could make it to school by 8:00. 

“Good morning!”

“Morning.”

Usually we sat quietly during the car ride. The sound of the air blowing through the vents kept us from having to listen to unbearable silence on the ten-minute drive. Occasionally the rumble of the car would be broken by casual small talk about how school or sports was going. Some mornings would be polar to this tranquil calm, the car filled with sobs after leaving my mother's house due to some ridiculous argument incited by the conflict between my parents.

We did this for a year and a half until he bought a house by the train and moved out. In 2011 the office moved from the basement and so did he. We would see him five times a week when he would come pick us up and take us to the train. Other than that, our contact was limited, we rarely talked and I didn’t see him for more than just ten minutes in the morning or when he came to de-escalate an argument between my mother, sister, and me. As our relationship became more distant school became harder, I failed math test upon math test. I discovered that I have dysgraphia, a form of dyslexia that affects numbers rather than words.

My discontent extended far beyond the classroom. In the beginning of middle school, I struggled to make friends. While being alone was easy and at times enjoyable, watching my classmates have parties and fun without me did nothing more than cause my social insecurities to compound exponentially. Though we rarely talked, I would often think about the stories he used to tell me when things would start to get bad. 

He was also dyslexic, but when he was growing up no one knew what it was. Because of this slight learning disability, people thought he was “retarded.” The words of his second grade teacher tugged on his confidence for the years to come, with every question on a test and word on a page he was reminded of just how “slow” he was. His mother and father loved him, but his poor grades and lack of academic exceptionality left him in lower standing than his older brother. As he was the “retarded” kid, few people wanted to be friends and after his grandfather died he had no one.  At least I still had him. 

Throughout all of these years, I would get horrible migraines or “sick headaches.” When I was young I would often stay home from school and scream and cry horribly. As I lay in bed every slight noise resounded in my ears and sent sharp pangs of pressure through my brain. The pain caused me to vomit uncontrollably, and I could not walk or eat for the duration of my sickness. No one in my family was a proponent of western medicine so I never took any medication or went to the doctor. When I first started to get these migraines I was very young and I told my dad, “I think I’m going to die.   He would chuckle and then tell me how he used to get “sick headaches” too and that I’d be just fine. 

When he still worked from home, my screams often carried from my room into his office,which prompted him to come upstairs and comfort me. He sat and massaged my temples while my mother laid a cool towel over my eyes to keep out the light. Whenever I would get a headache in middle school, he would drive an hour to get me and comfort me on the car ride home. There were times in these years when my headaches became frequent and my mother stopped believing me. Often she thought my reactions to this illness were exaggerated and therefore she would become impatient and frustrated with my constant crying and neediness. My father, however, had eternal patience for the pain that I was in. 

March of 2013, after two and half years, the divorce was over and the agreement was made that I would live with him every other weekend and one day a week. The process was horrible and deeply affected him. He lost a lot, including custody of my sister and me. A few days after their divorce was finalized, I had a friend over after our soccer game. High school was better despite the fact that I still struggle with making friends. We came to the house to shower before going to our team sleepover. Inside, I made brief introductions.  While she went upstairs to shower,  I caught up with my dad.

Sitting in the office downstairs, I could hear the shower running. He was sitting at his desk facing away from me. He asked how school was as our usual small talk progressed. For a while we sat quietly as we often did until he turned and faced me, tears streaming down his face. When he cried I cried. After signing the divorce agreement, his company lost two of their largest clients and therefore he barely had enough money for himself, let alone child support payments. Now the person who had done so much to support me was crumbling before me. Unlike him, I had no stories to offer. All I could do was cry with him. The water upstairs shut off. I felt as if I could have kept crying for hours, yet we dried our tears and collected ourselves before my friend came down.