Conversations With Twilight

Posted by Penny Wilkes in HandPrints Stories & Videos | 0 comments

© Penny Wilkes

“Close your eyes; tight. Imagine the story I’m reading. Can you taste it? What are the smells?” my father would ask. Of course, I’d peek at the illustrations that jumped off the page before he could turn it. I’d catch that laugh that moved inward from a corner dimple near his lips. A smile danced in his eyes as I squinted through my closed lids.

Other nights, as he started to nod off, it became a power of wills. “One more story. Please?” He’d sigh and carry me around the room, singing and rocking. I knew his repertoire. Once he started singing, “Goodnight Ladies,” it was over, no matter how I protested. I struggled to stay awake until those first notes.

My father was fifty-five at my birth, and that always seemed to trouble my mother. She would remind me, “He’s older than other fathers. Don’t wear him out.” I’d crumple those words, having no idea what they meant. For protection, I created my own mantras at night after he left our storytelling session. Then my eyes could close for sleep.

We never talked of death. Though he wrote a will, he never bought a cemetery plot. I’m certain he could make no sense of his own mortality. Somehow, he might be the one to defy it. I recall him looking out the window of his study, telling someone on the phone, “I can’t die until my life’s work is done.” That became another mantra for me. If anyone could beat it, he would. He bought toothpaste and shaving crème in huge quantities, which somehow assured me he knew what he was doing.

“They’re just sleeping,” he said about dead animals on the highway.

“Then why do they smell so bad?” I’d ask, holding my nose.

He never read the Bible to me or spoke of going to heaven or hell, though he attended church regularly. Even if I played the deadest possum I could muster, hiding under the covers, he roused me to go to Sunday school. A Divine Power existed for him, so he did pray and thank God; but not as his judge or savior. He felt that we become our own judge and jury for behavior, and that keeps us honorable.

We buried the dead birds we found. After rescuing one from the cat’s feathered whiskers, my father would say, “That’s nature’s way.” We’d hold a silent vigil after rolling them in tissues, using a shoebox casket, and put feathers on top to mark the graves.

My father loved how life grew and changed. In our fish pond, polliwogs sprouted legs, and I’d scoop them from the emerald muck for my bathroom “laboratory.” After a few days, we’d return them to the pond, then search behind a tool shed where their older relatives hopped, fully-grown. They’d slither though my hands, eyes rotating. Such glorious croaking sounds they made!

It felt good to please my father, though it didn’t take much effort. His eyes shone with pride whether I discovered a new link in nature or brought home a tennis trophy.

But the first time one truly falls from grace, the gravity pulls hard. Though the heart heals, tendrils of regret tug. My father was an efficiency expert, and I learned how to accomplish a variety of tasks at once. Before I could leave for school, he would come to my bedroom and do a visual once-over. If clothes had accumulated on the floor or on the tops of anything, he’d remind me to put them away before I went to school. But he only looked at the surface of things. With a closet and drawers to stuff things into, I had it made. My whirlwind tour of the room after he left included throwing, stuffing or hiding any culprits.

With my active biology lab in the bathroom, guppies, white mice, turtles, plants and a variety of experiments always progressed. I had a habitat outfitted for breeding my white mouse. I felt especially proud of breeding a black mouse in the third generation of white mice, even though I didn’t quite understand why. I knew of Mendel’s experiments, but the math never appealed. We watched the birthing process, and how the mother mouse efficiently severed her connection to them. Simply watching the pink bodies develop and grow fur enthralled.

One morning, in caring for a large litter of two-week-old white mice, I ran behind in my room-arranging. The first time my father came in to check, the odor of mice permeated the bathroom. As I began to clear out the sawdust, the critters raced out. I chased them into corners, losing time with their droppings that squashed under my shoes. Then my brain sparked a brilliant plan: a large glass jar held cotton swabs. I could put the mice in there, to contain them during my cleaning.

“Let’s go,” I heard my father’s voice down the hall.

Scooping the cotton balls out of the jar, I put all six mice in and covered it, then proceeded to clean with ease. By the time I returned to the jar, the bodies were limp. I lifted the first one, touching the body; so heavy and solid. I could feel its tiny bones and muscles. I turned it over and over in my hand, trying to warm it into life. Then I worked on the next one. I spread them out, pushed on their breasts, and opened their mouths, trying to rub air into each.

The black fellow suddenly opened its pink mouth wide, in a gasp. I held it in my cupped hands, tears wetting its fur. Suddenly it jumped and scampered to a corner of the counter.

I felt my father standing behind me.

“We’re late,” he said, peering into my triage efforts. “What’s going on here?” His words rang in my head’s hollow well.

“I was being efficient.” How I wanted to create a story; to hide the mice in drawers. But tears and shaking thundered through me.

Like a person I hadn’t known or heard before, he grew larger and gruffer, and towered like a giant over me. The world swiveled and I fell off. His words roared dissonant sounds.

Disgrace consumed me. I had injured life; had lost his respect. “You didn’t think,” his words slashed. “You just didn’t think. That’s what your brain is for. How could you do this?” His face raged scarlet.

“I’m trying to help them now.” Could he not see my attempts to save them?

“They needed to breathe. You didn’t think.” Finally he stopped repeating himself and cupped my shoulders in a vice-like squeeze. Looking beyond the window, I averted his eyes.

“We have to bury them.” Then he turned and left; the door frame empty.

I had nowhere to hide. The room spun in swirls. Bubbles filled my body, leaving the taste of metal in my mouth. By now my nose ached with the smell of mouse. Would I have felt less of my father’s rage and disrespect if I’d lied? My heartbeat became strong enough for all the mice, yet only the black one had survived. How many other stories could I have crafted? Why couldn’t he see how hard I was trying to save them? The whys climbed and smashed against one another, just as I suspect the mice had in their struggle for air.

My father came back, but did not approach me. He lifted each mouse and put them all into a shoebox, closing the lid.

“You’ll be tardy for school today:” his next words.

We’d never before buried animals in hard ground. My legs shuffling beneath me, I followed at his side. Wood smoke from the garden incinerator choked my throat. Each crunch of gravel under my feet crashed in my ears. I looked up for the birds, feeling remorse, as waves pounding in my stomach.

We had not brought the proper tools so we used rocks to dig in the tight earth. My crying surged on, something I had rarely shared with my father. Once again I tried to explain, “I just had this idea. I thought it would keep them until I could clean their cage.” I wanted to touch my father; to have him enfold me in the cradle of his arms and sing “Juanita.”

Silence heaped between us. I watched his rounded form, longing to extend my arm; to grab him; to have him explain the Universe. I wanted to ask just one more question, so then it could be all right. All I could do was dig; nails tearing, fingers ringed with dirt. Finally we lowered the box, covering it with brittle soil. In the oppressive silence, my arm just wasn’t long enough to reach him.

The following morning the sun rose, along with my father’s smile. Our understanding, and his forgiveness, grew in silence. Though we never spoke of the mice again, that experience made me careful to slow down when making choices.

For another twenty years I continued to learn about choices from my father, until the afternoon when I could no longer reach him through the hospital curtains. Through my tears, I appreciated his legacy to me: reverence for life accompanies me each day of my life’s journey.

Pond Photo in Header by Lauren Tucker
Storybook Photo By PrincessAshley
Fish Pond Photo By S Baker
Two Birds Photo By Vinay Shivakumar