Author: melanie

The part of my brain that’s responsible for logical thinking and reasoning knows that Facebook Gary is right. That damn cardinal was attacking its reflection in my window because this type of bird, by its nature, is aggressive. (Watch them tease your outdoor cats sometime. It makes for cheap theater.)

That’s how Eagle Scout Dad would have explained it. And that’s what my brainy sister, Nicole, would have said, too. And those two would know. Dad really was an Eagle Scout, and Nicole probably really did read an encyclopedia of avian behavior when she was six or seven years old. That’s the type of kid she was.

But the part of my brain that process emotions, as illogical as they sometimes are, says, “Nope. That’s Dad or God or someone letting us know that Dad’s all good.”

Pleas with Dad

Dad had been almost comatose for about 24 hours. We knew he didn’t have much time. When he was “awake,” he’d say things like, “Where’s Mom?” He’d look around the room for his mother, who died in 2009. Or he’d be untangling the fishing line he thought he was entangled in.

I knew for sure he wasn’t coming back. Whether it was oxygen deprivation to his brain, morphine, cancer that likely had spread from his lungs to his brain, we don’t know. But he hadn’t been Dad for several days.

Then one day Nicole texts me and says, “Dad’s awake and talking. He wants you to call him.”

“Are you there?” he asks me on the phone. “Am I supposed to be hearing music?” he asks.

“No, Dad. No music. Just me. I’m here.”

“I’m very sick, Melanie.”

“I know, Dad.”

“Tell me what you need to tell me.”

“I love you so much, Dad.”

“No. Tell me what you need to tell me.”

“It’s OK for you to go, Dad.”

“I understand.”

Before we hung up, I made him promise me to show me some sort of sign that he was OK when he got to where he was going. I didn’t ask for anything specific. Just a sign. He promised me he would.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Nicole and my stepmom, Sherrie, had asked him to do the same thing for them. Show them a sign when he got to where he was going.  They asked him for something specific, though. A cardinal.

Do NOT interrupt me

I’ve become increasingly cantankerous about my work lately. I don’t like being interrupted. Charging for my work by the hour means I have to make every hour count. I don’t have time for kids throwing tennis balls against our house, nor for Spanky Mae’s barking when kids throw tennis balls against our house.

This is what started happening yesterday about noon. Every 15 minutes or so, this kid, my neighbor kid, would start bouncing his tennis ball against my house, and Spanky Mae would go nuts barking.

Only it was noon. Neighbor Kid was still in school. Plus, Neighbor Kid has never bounced a tennis ball off my house, so why would he have started now? And why would he do it against my front door?

I finally got curious enough to actually stop what I was doing. When I walked to my door, I saw a shadow in the window. I’m female, so this freaked me out. I figured there was a mouse or squirrel at my doorstep, so I made a noise to make it scurry away. It did.

I opened the door, and there wasn’t a soul outside. No Neighbor Kid. No tennis balls.

This became my afternoon routine. For hours. Every 15 or 20 minutes, the bouncing-ball noise would hit against my door. The bouncing would last for five or six minutes and then stop.

Later in the afternoon, around four, I finally saw it, a cardinal, pecking at the picture window next to my front door. And it stayed there, even though I’m pretty sure it could see that I was standing there.

It was beautiful. Such a saturated, deep red. So I shot a video of him and posted it on Facebook, Vine and Twitter. Covered all my bases.

I tried to be funny about it. “This cardinal really, really wants inside the Medina Estates,” I said on Facebook.

Nicole responds, “You know that Mom and I asked Dad to send a cardinal as a sign, right? This video gave me chills.”

Nicole — at least in my perception of her — isn’t the type of person to believe in signs.

Either way = Awesomesauce

Both sides of my brain are equally pleased with this whole cardinal thing.

The logical side sees the bird and thinks, “How cool is that? You get to see this gorgeous red bird flying around on your porch.” (I also think to myself, “The bird is obviously attracted to MY porch because of the phenomenal blue color of my door.”)

So, I get a glimpse of beautiful bird and that is that.

Or the emotional, spiritual side says, “DAD! Thank you for saying hi. I know that even though you’re not on this earth, your love for your girls is as strong as ever and is eternal.”

Don’t misread this. I don’t think Dad is reincarnated into this idiot bird. I’m saying that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that some force of nature — call it God, call it Dad’s spirit — sent this cardinal to attack itself all friggin’ day long in MY window so that I would get off my rear end and pay attention to it and then tell everyone about it.

If I had kept it to myself, Nicole may not have ever told me that she and Sherrie asked Dad to send a cardinal.

Either way you dice it, it’s beautiful. Maybe it’s just a beautiful bird. But maybe it’s Hi, Dad!

This guy. My Dad. Sandi’s Dad. Nicole’s Dad.

Here’s what Sandi says about our Dad:

“I am not sure how I got so lucky as to call this man dad but by the grace of God I did. I remember you going and lining the soccer fields when I was on the Firefly’s. I remember going to your office and you making my science fair project for me (I mean helping me make it). I remember you designing the PTA contact books for elementary school. I remember going to Grandmother and Grandad’s house for Easter and making super cool plaid Easter eggs. I remember going to the gift shop in Seymor and learning how to make bows for the presents that we would help gift wrap. I remember playing Clue and other board games with you. I remember the amazing stocking’s we had at Christmas time. I remember you taking Melanie to the car when she would cry in restaurants so we could finish eating. I remember when you got pulled over for speeding and we pinched Melanie to make her cry so you wouldn’t get a ticket (good move!) I remember you playing guitar and my favorite song Blues for Sale. I remember when you cut your knee while tilling in the front yard on April fools day. I remember you driving me to Vegas when I moved. I remember you making me eat lima beans and drinking lots of grape juice…that one didn’t end well. I remember all of your albums and the first Atari game we played. Most of all I remember what an amazing person you are. Love you more than you know!”

And Dad’s response? This:
“I have the most wonderful daughters ever. Thanks Sandi.

Couple of things of note: The Chutes & Ladders game piece in my hair is interesting. As indicated by my shark skin boots and yoked shirt, this shot was taken during my Urban Cowboy period. And to all you writers, that two pounds of silver junk on my wrist is a watch with a built in, analog stopwatch. State ‘o the Art.technology for writing those 30 and 60 TV and radio spots.”

But wait. There’s more from Sandi:
“I should also note that Melanie had been crying and decided to stop when the officer came up to the car. The pinch was totally justified!”

This, my friends, is true love. A father’s true love for his girls.

These are my three most memorable moments. Thanks, WordPress, for the prompt.

Mario

I’m sitting in the back seat of a golf cart, facing the opposite way the driver is taking me. I’m by myself, giddy, giddy, giddy. Everything is white. My strapless dress. The padded seats of the golf cart. My flip-flops with the “Just Married” imprint on the sole, the straps covered in dried hot glue that failed to hold the string of fake pearls I’d tried to attach for the occasion. The tulle wrapped around the armrests of the golf cart. It is late afternoon, and it is humid and windy. I’m getting married and I couldn’t care less that the wind is blowing my hair all over the place, whipping across my face, dragging through my lipstick and possibly smearing it on my cheeks.

Oh Shit, though. I forgot my bouquet. I tell the driver. Hurry, hurry, hurry oh my gosh please hurry back to the casita so I can grab it. I get the bouquet. The driver and I head back to the spot of beach where I’ll say my vows to my best friend, in front of people we don’t know.

We approach the Health Bar, the one where the bar tender makes smoothies and healthy stuff instead of cocktails, and the driver stops. I hop off the back of the golf cart and see Mario in the distance, near the water — his longish hair blowing in all directions, too.

I’m giddy. I see him in his off-white linen suit, just a tiny bit too baggy. I’m as giddy as the first day I saw him, when he came to pick me up from the Human Resources office at my first job out of college to take me back to the cubicle where I’d be working. There is such a thing as love at first sight.

I hold my bouquet too high. We don’t have a wedding planner to tell me things like how to hold my bouquet. All we did was choose from a checklist to note that we wanted the large bouquet (not the small one), a photographer and a videographer. I didn’t even choose the flowers, which turned out stunningly bright with saturated reds and oranges in perfect contrast to the white sand and dark turquoise waters of the Mexican Rivieria.

I’m clutching the bouquet to my chest. I’m straining my neck to look over the top of the bouquet, like a 15-year-old peering up over the steering wheel on her first time in the driver’s seat. I’m giddy. Enya is playing. The resort’s wedding coordinator chose Enya. We hate Enya, but today, Mario and I love it because it’s so stupid that they’d choose this Enya song for our wedding. The red carpet cuts across the sand, stretching from the Health Bar behind me to the ocean in front of me. I walk down the carpet, parts of its edges hidden under sand, to where he’s standing under a canopy of gauzy white tulle draped over skinny wooden beams that had been set up just for our wedding in front of the non-denominational Christian preacher, the judge, and a couple of resort workers Mario and I had met while we were there.

I lower my bouquet just a little. I’m standing next to the man who makes me laugh, the one who brings the things about myself that I actually like to the surface, who pushes me, who takes care of me and loves me.

The wind blows. The waves crash behind us. I breathe in the misty salty air and struggle to hold my eyes open in the sun. We listen to the preacher. We say our vows. We smush our lips together and kiss.

Miles

Everyone has gone home. A nurse comes in and asks if she’d like me to bring in Miles from the nursery. “Yes,” I tell her, and a little while later, she wheels his isolette into my room. He’s swaddled tightly in those stiff hospital nursery blankets with the pastel ducks. I look at him through the clear walls of his isolette. We can’t figure out who he looks like. Allie came out the spitting image of her Daddy. But Miles is Mr. Magoo, a miniature old man swaddled like a burrito in giant, clear lid-less Tupperware container. His eyes are shut.

It’s the hour of sitcoms. I sit up and lean to my left, my abdomen screeching, twisting, pinched and bruised from the C-section, and lift my burrito out of his container. I lean back in my bed with him. I settle him in so that his head rests on the space of shoulder just above my armpit. We watch “Community” together, just him and me. The episode where Joel McHale plays pool in his striped boxer-briefs.

We drift in and out of sleep. Just him and me.

A Fragile Bird

No matter how I reposition myself, I cannot get comfortable in this chair. But at least she stopped talking and is finally, finally asleep. There’s no telling how long she’d been awake until now.

I can’t recall if I’ve ever watched her sleep before. She looks anxious, tight, pinched, even in her sleep, like she’s about to wake up. I want to pet her hair, dyed dark brown to cover the grays. She’s all gray now and has been for many years, really. But I don’t. It’s not my role. It’s almost midnight. I want her to stay asleep long enough for a judge’s signature to be couriered on this Sunday night to the hospital. His signature on these legal documents is the only thing that will allow the doctor to keep her from leaving the hospital. The documents arrive, the judge’s actual signature on them—a faxed copy wouldn’t suffice. I am relieved. I wait with her to be moved from the ER exam room to a real room on the fifth floor of the Jackson building.

She didn’t believe the diagnosis she’d received just weeks prior. Maybe she believed it, but she said that she didn’t know she had to take lithium and an antipsychotic or else she’d relapse, which is exactly what was happening. Which is what prompted a close friend and I to take her to the ER.

In the hours that preceded this, she was talking to people who weren’t there. Mainly to Kathleen Kennedy. “Kathleen, get this.” “Kathleen, get that,” she’d say, pushing her chin in the air and lifting her index finger while she snapped out orders to Steven Spielberg’s assistant. In the presence of her 7-year-old Goddaughter, she had talked about sexual arousal in not-so-vague terms. She never stopped talking. Her voice was hoarse. I was exhausted for her. She hadn’t slept in days. As our friend and I drove down I-635 toward the ER, she realized where we were headed, rolled down the window in the backseat of my Jeep and stuck her head out like a dog—eyes closed, trying to breathe in. She knew she’d be on the psychiatric floor and would not have access to fresh air for at least a few days.

Around midnight, after sitting in the ER for about six hours, we are taken to the fifth floor of the Jackson building. She wakes up long enough to scrawl her signature on some admitting paperwork. She asks me, “Are you sure it’s OK for me to sign these? I trust you, Melanie.” I assure her it’s safe, silently repeating to myself, “Oh God, please let her sign them, please let her sign them.”

She signs them. I tell her I’ll be back tomorrow. She lays down and sleeps some more.