Take Care

Summers are always the same for me. I am typically home alone, working on a project, frequenting nearby shops or hanging out with friends, while my parents and twin sister cycle in and out of the house for classes and work. In the city, there is never enough time to catch your breath. You pause and are left running to catch up. I guess that’s why we never realized how my dad truly felt. 

My father is a quiet man. He often never expresses his emotions, happy or sad. Subtle cues and changes in his behavior would lead us to figure out how to go about talking to him. My whole life, my dad felt more like a silent, constant presence. He never tried to bond with me or do much for me in general. But that was just how my family was, and I was used to it. Until, one day, I felt I had enough. 

It was an extremely hot day in the summer and I lay with my head hanging off the side of my bed, staring at the ceiling. We had the fan on, yet my top stuck, soaked in sweat, to my body. My parents were in the living room, each on their phones, as was my twin in the other bed next to mine with her headphones on. For some reason, that was the day I decided I wanted things to change. I wrote a letter to each of them in the order of ease, my mother, my twin sister, and finally, my father. I slipped the letters beside them at night and waited for them to read. 

To my mother, I wrote about my endless admiration for her character; to my twin, some advice on connecting to our older parents; and, to my dad, I asked for the chance to get to know him. He was getting older and growing more and more silent, and so I had never really learned much about him. The most I knew were snippets from my conversations with mom about why he is so quiet. So, I asked him, pleaded with him, as college and a life away from home were not so far away, to talk to me.

And, shortly after, he did. 

“If anything happens to me, take care of mom.” He uttered these words last summer when we were stopped at a red light, and the light had reflected his eyes, welled with tears. I had never seen my father cry before; it seemed as though he had lost the ability to do so. It was also the first time I had seen age in my dad. At the time, he was almost 74, and wrinkles from depression had begun to ravage his face like unwanted friends. His eyes had pockets in them, holding large amounts of water without letting a single one betray his illusion of fortitude. But I heard in his voice that something was utterly, incomprehensibly, extremely wrong.

I felt it in my heart that something was going to happen, and, when he dropped me home after my offer of going with him to park, I took the elevator to our floor and ran through the door –mindful of my twin sister in the living room – to confront my mom with something urgent. She was standing in the kitchen, in the same nightgown she had worn for years, its colors fading, and with loose strands of hair around her face. 

She stopped what she was doing and walked toward me as I burst into tears. What could he possibly have meant? Was he planning something? She assured me that nothing would happen under her watch, that she would make sure he was okay. But this day would prove to have been a  foreshadowing.

A few weeks after that conversation, I awoke to beautiful blue skies. It was perfect weather for the first day of senior year. It was neither the unbearable heat of August nor on the verge of winter like the latter days of October. I put on my favorite outfit and a spritz of my favorite green apple perfume. I felt great, but something felt off. 

I went through the day excited, a great start to all of my classes, and then a feeling hit me at around 5 o’clock during my play practice, so I hurried to the bathroom to calm my racing heart. Once refreshed, I returned to practice, wondering what that had all been about. 

Then, a text. I was sitting in the common room with some dormmates, waiting for our 8 o’clock meeting when I got a text from my twin sister: “I have to tell you something. All I am going to say is that it has to do with dad.” I gasped and ran to my room. Her next text popped up: “We are taking dad to the hospital.”

I flashed back to  his talk with me in the car and felt a sharp pain in my chest. 

I remember throwing myself onto my bed, not having changed clothes at all and not having moved an inch about an hour later when others came to check on me. I lay in my pitch black room, waiting for a sign, contemplating how this could’ve happened, and wondering how my dad knew this was going to happen and had waited until I had left before going to the hospital. I lay in bed thinking about the school’s home visit policy, how for the first two weeks I would be trapped on campus without a way to see his face and to make sure that he was okay. 

And then, a call. Actually two. The first was that night, when my twin laid out all the details surrounding this hospital visit. The second I made on my own to my mother. I knew she wouldn’t want me to know, would much rather prefer I continued with school uninterrupted. But how could I? So I, the next day, pressed a few buttons to reach her phone. Surprisingly, she let go of whatever information she had. Apparently it happened in the afternoon when he was with an old friend and her husband. Apparently he forgot the name of a woman who had worked for him. Apparently, he kept repeating the same phrases, slurring his words and then silence. My dad, embarrassed and confused, had taken his keys from his reluctant companions and started off on the highway toward home all on his own. His friends called my mom and hopped in their own car, watching from a distance to make sure he was safe. 

My father had stopped taking his medicine for his high blood pressure. 

My father is a stubborn man and always wants to handle things alone. Like how he had returned home that day pretending nothing was wrong, until finally my mother and my twin pushed him back into the car to go into the emergency room. Like how he would have just suffered in silence for hours, maybe days, and come to a terrible end if it wasn’t for that call to my mom. 

Eventually, he was discharged and I got to hear his voice again. He sounded so, so tired, and I felt the sudden urge to leave school and run away, run back to him, no matter how long it took, and hold him. To make sure that he was still here.

I finally got home two weeks later and faced my father. He looked so much older, and it was just then that I truly realized how far apart in stages of life we are. I had never gotten to know my father when he was young, and that had always scarred me. I had never seen him at his peak, never got to travel around with him, never got to see the world on a ride on his shoulders. It broke me. 

A few weeks later, when my father called me to his room, our conversation went a bit like this:

“Gifty, can you help me find my first passport? My Ghana passport.” The very first passport he had ever owned. I scoured our documents and, finally, I found it. I opened it up and felt my heart drop. 

“Oh my God. Dad, that doesn’t even look like you,” I said, while shoving the photo in front of my mother and my twin sister. It showed a young man, supposedly the twenty-something year old version of my father, his entire life ahead of him and a beautiful dream to have something of his own. I did not recognize him. In fact, it was the earliest photo of my father I had ever seen, because he had never taken a photo prior to his coming to America. I noted how his features looked, unmarked by time and years of depression. How his face shape reflected who he was at the time. A young man, smiling brightly, not knowing what was to come. 

At that moment I realized: I had never known my father. 

Nevertheless, I decided I wanted to. After that fateful day, my father began to open up. He also stayed home more often, and slept a whole lot more. I began to transform into his caretaker. I would cook his food, do the laundry and clean. But we also began to sit together and just talk a bit more. Soon after, he told me about his journey to America in order to accomplish a dream that never came to fruition. His dream to be his own boss and make something of himself. It had died along with his spirit. 

I listened and was almost beside myself. My relationship with my dad forced me to come to terms with how short our time on earth is, and just how precious it is to have such a small, delicate, loving family. 

Now, I sit with my parents and talk and talk and talk while I am home, and miss them until the next weekend when I see them again. I find myself more emotional, more open, more willing to communicate. I noticed a change in my dad too. He began to say “I love you” more often and to kiss my forehead. He started to talk more about how he feels. I have learned so much about him. Soon, it will be time for me to leave our small home, and to leave my parents behind, and I believe that, now, I can tell the world who my father is. And when I do, it won't just be a guess.