Dad in the beige easy chair, a precursor to the blue chenille chair. Los Angeles, California. It was December, near the end of my first semester in college. At the hospital I found him in a lively conversation with his business partner. I lingered in the doorway of his room and watched them talk. I imagined his heart was a car engine and the arteries were new hoses. He sure has a lot of energy for someone who had emergency triple-bypass surgery less than forty-eight hours ago , I thought.
A closer look and I could see that this act was taking a lot out of him. His body looked small in the industrial bed; under the sheet, his legs splayed out like a puppet with cut strings. He rolled his head to the side to face me in the doorway. I took a few steps toward him. The card I had made for him crinkled between my fingers. The news must have sent me to a younger version of myself, who more openly yearned for a connection with him. I had written some generic message inside, like: Get well soon, Dad.
I love you. Love, your daughter. To have written a more specific message would have required a different sort of relationship. We were family and made from the same stuff—in that sense, we were close. But by any objective measure, we barely knew each other. He had always been a distant figure, never letting himself be known, at least not by me. He had been a heavy smoker for most of his life.
From the time I could remember he was regularly wracked by intense coughing that invoked the specter of future illness. So, the call from my mom was one I had always expected. Still, it was a lot to take in. He had almost died, but here he was—alive, given a second chance.
Could it be a second chance for us, too? Maybe it was an opening to have the kind of relationship with my father that I had seen my friends and people on TV have. I sat and placed my hand on his. His skin felt dry and cold. Seconds later, his hand flew up from under mine, flapping upward like a panicked pigeon. He grabbed the remote from the tray next to him and pointed it toward the TV mounted in an upper corner.
