Karen Sandler

Tag: dad

  • In My Father’s Footsteps

    There was a book I read when I was maybe 7 or 8 in which the boy character is taking a walk with his father. The boy tries to match his father’s stride, to place his feet right alongside his dad’s. I have a very clear image of taking a walk with my own dad after I read the book and trying to keep pace like the boy did. Of course my shorter legs couldn’t quite keep up.

    As an adult, I turned into a hyper-speed walker. I can’t seem to help myself–I go on a walk with someone and without even meaning to, I’m blasting along at mach-10, leaving most other people in the dust. I think I got it from my late dad, because when he was younger and still robust, we’d take walks together and neither one of us had trouble keeping up with the other. My two sons walk like I do. None of us seem to know how to meander.

    This came to mind the other night as my husband and I were leaving the “dance barn” where we do international folk dance on Friday nights. The “dance barn” is an outbuilding on the 20+ acres of property owned by some friends of ours. The space we dance in is a converted goat barn (no joke), hence the name “dance barn.” And although it’s not exactly out in the middle of nowhere (the freeway is only a couple of miles away), when we turn out the lights, it’s pitch black outside.

    So there I was Friday night with the flashlight, leading my husband through the darkness. Except my legs didn’t know how to keep pace with him. They just kept striding along at my usual mach-10, not only leaving him in the dust, but in the dark as well. I had to keep reminding myself to sl-o-o-o-w down so he could see where he was walking.

    I felt kind of bad about that. But it was a nice memory of my dad, and those long ago walks we used to take.

  • Temptation: 1, Me: 0

    Generally speaking, I should not stop for yard sales. If I do, there’s a .999 probability that I will spend money. Usually it will be some small knickknack that only costs a couple dollars. But sometimes (like today), it requires pulling out my mad money to lay down some semi-serious cash.

    I could blame it on my husband. I certainly blamed him that time I was admiring a kitten at an adoption clinic and begged him to let me take her home. We already had three cats, and I counted on him to tell me, in a reasonable tone of voice, “No, Karen, we already have enough cats.” He did not. Instead, he said, “Sure, let’s adopt her.”

    Cosette turned out to be a wonderful cat who spent most of her waking hours snuggled up to me. Sadly, a heart condition cut short her life at a young age.

    In any case, you can see that my husband is supposed to be the safety brake to my acquisitive nature. So when we stopped at a yard sale to check out a dining room set (we actually do need a dining room set), I counted on him to temper my temptations. But I’d already seen the school desk/chair when we were scanning the offerings from our car. Close up, I liked it even more. It turned out the price was kind of reasonable and when I made an offer, the counter was exactly what I’d expected and was willing to pay.

    So, I said, “I want this.” Hubby’s response…crickets. Other than opining that he had no idea where in the house we would put it (I said I’d jam it into my office if I had to), he just let me go on my merry way.

    I did pay for it with my aforementioned “mad money,” cash I receive from book sales that I happened to have tucked away. So the purchase didn’t impact our household finances at all. But hubby didn’t exactly live up to his side of the bargain by saving me from myself.

    But why did I want it, from the moment I spotted it at the yard sale? Because (A) I love old furniture. I love that it’s made from solid wood, that it’s well put together. It’s something I inherited from my dad, I guess. He loved to work with his hands and was an amazing woodworker. (B) I’ve always thought purpose-built furniture is particularly cool. The fact that this is a combo desk-chair is so neat. (C) I love its connection with the past. As I was carrying it into the house, it occurred to me that my mom likely sat at a desk just like it when she was in school in the 30s and 40s.

    There’s a divot carved out of the desktop and I can imagine a restless boy like my father carefully drilling out that hole with his pen knife to while away the slow moving hours in the classroom. There’s a big X scrawled across the desk top too, maybe made by some frustrated student who just had enough of the times tables when a beautiful spring day awaited him or her just outside the schoolhouse windows.

    What am I going to do with this desk-chair? No idea. For now, I piled a few of my granddaughter’s books in the storage area under the seat. She’s a toddler and a little too small to use the chair, but I bet she’ll be intrigued by it next time she comes over.

    And maybe I’ll just sit in the chair myself, write out a few times tables and think about the students who once used it. Girls like my mom, who won a contest in high school with the slogan “Don’t be square, the cafeteria’s not the place to brush your hair.” And boys like my dad, who would sit in old stuffy classrooms dreaming about how he would have much rather be running in an open field with a kite, or riding his bike to the ocean.

  • Life on Hold

    My niece, Angie, sleeps alongside my dad.

    I hate waiting. I don’t like standing in line, or waiting for a publisher to respond to a query or proposal, or for an exciting event that’s coming up. About the only time I enjoy waiting is on a lake shore when I have a fishing pole in my hands.

    I’m in that life-on-hold position right now with my dad. Although we know he’s in his last days, he’s in a holding pattern at the care home he’s been living in the last year-and-a-half. Since he’s returned from the hospital, we’ve had some joyful times with family gathered around him, many tears, some moments of Alzheimer’s-addled awareness from him, many hours of sitting at his bedside while he sleeps.

    For as long as I can remember, my dad always seemed to find it hard to be on time. It was a family joke. My grandmother used to say, “Sam, you’d be late for your own funeral.” Later, when my grandmother died, amidst our grief, we laughed when my dad was late for her funeral. It was almost an homage to her that he was the last to rush into the chapel.

    So maybe he’s just living up to the family joke. Or maybe with all of us gathered around him, he doesn’t want to miss a thing. He loved us all so much and showed it in so many ways, he’s maybe finding it hard to say goodbye. I know we are.

    We all know it’s coming. But as of now it’s just a waiting game. So we’ll just keep laughing when we can, crying when we must, and holding onto a lifetime of precious memories.