Traveling

My father returned from three weeks in Norway, carting his most precious loot in his carry-on: a chocolate cake from my cousin's wife and 217 photos on the digital camera. I picked him up at Newark--a 90-minute drive from here--and fretted the entire time I was driving that I'd be late. Not that it would kill him to wait 20 minutes for me, but Dad notices when things aren't perfect, and he neither forgets perceived slights nor stays tuned in long enough to hear explanations. And though I got there with time to kill, and stood with a big, welcome-home grin outside of the customs door, he spent the walk from that door to the car poking at me. Wasn't I wearing the same clothes when I'd dropped him off? Had I worn the same clothes for three weeks? (Funny, Dad.) Why hadn't I brought Mom with me? (Because she was minding the kids. (Actually, she didn't want to come. No need to say it.)) Why hadn't I gotten a cart for his luggage? (Because the luggage area is on another level.) The car was parked too far away. I'd parked in the wrong lot. (I hadn't.) How much longer do we have to walk? ("Do you want to wait here and I'll go get the car?" I asked, and he barked, because though walking's hard for him, admitting it is harder.) I finally stopped walking and said, "Stop it. You haven't said a nice thing to me since you walked out that door." He laughed--there goes Inger again being too sensitive, see--but he stopped.

It's his sarcasm that kills me; the man is a master at keeping his distance. I can't remember an authentic emotional moment between us, not in 42 years. Well, once: when he was in the hospital and needed my help. He hasn't belittled that. He wouldn't; it was too painful.

My father loves my mother. More than his kids. His kids, I think--the five of them he participated in creating--are dear to him in inverse proportion to the degree to which they hinder his access to her. I see it clearly as an adult: see clearly how desperately he needs his connection to her, and how jealous he is of her daily calls from my youngest sister. (I see, too, how his need wears on her. Wears her threadbare.)

As a child, all I knew was that he would look away when I would walk into the kitchen--that his mouth would twist into something like a sneer of distaste. "He doesn't like me," I'd whisper to my mother sometimes. "Of course he likes you," she'd laugh back. But I knew he didn't. Maybe I wasn't thin enough--he told me constantly that I was too fat--or maybe I was too brainy; he admitted to me once that he thought I was educating myself beyond my ability to communicate with the family. In time I learned not to look at him when I'd walk into the room--not to give him the chance to turn away. Nor the chance to light up. But he never did light up--not until he was lying in that hospital bed and I'd walk into the room. And even then, his first words were, "Where's Mom? When is she coming?" "Soon. She's coming soon." (She didn't want to come.)

He asks me for help with his computer and the camera. He wants to show me the 217 photos--one by one, slowly, so he can relive the moment. I listen; they're nice photos. There's one of him with his three surviving brothers. (Three out of ten. Countdown.) There's one of a leaky wooden rowboat that he rowed out to the middle of a lake every other day, casting nets for fish with his brother. "I was so happy in that boat," he said, and I was so startled I turned and looked at him, but said nothing because I knew he'd clam up. "I put my hand on my brother's shoulder so I wouldn't fall getting into it," he told me. "I sat on the green bench, and he sat on the yellow one."

He asked me to make that photo his desktop wallpaper. He just sits and stares at it. "That was a great little boat."