by Steve Doocy
I drove the ninety miles to my parents’ house and unloaded my surprise with no fanfare. I’d quietly clued in my blabbermouth sisters, and my payback was set.
“Dad, come here!” I hollered toward the garage, and when he arrived in the living room our entire family had gathered in a semicircle around something bulky under a blanket. “I gotcha something.”
I’d seen that semigoofy grin of his many times in the past when we’d make similar presentations. We didn’t have much disposable income, and he insisted we not spend any money on him, so we’d wrap up and give him something that he already owned. That’s right, we invented regifting.
Another recycled something was surely what he thought it was until he tugged off the blanket to reveal the most expensive Craftsman radial arm saw I could afford. It would take me three years to pay it off, but it was worth every single minimum payment due.
“Oh, Stephen…,” was all he said before his eyes got glassy, then wet, and as he pulled the saw across the deck toward him, a single tear rolled right off his face onto a sticker warning to pick up severed fingers when you were done woodworking. That was a milestone; it was only the second time I’d ever seen him cry. “Thanks,” was all he could choke out.
Scanning the room, I saw that my mother and four sisters all had tears in their eyes too.
Twenty years earlier, we were driving through Grand Island, Nebraska, on the hottest day of the year, and the engine fan chose that day and time to unbolt itself from the motor and spin directly into the radiator, resulting in a yellow-green gusher of steam and anti-freeze that literally hit the fan.
“You’re looking at three hundred,” Mr. Goodwrench flat out told my father, who’d struggled to come up with the money to cover breakfast that morning at a greasy spoon near Omaha.
“Well, I have to get these kids home, so you better fix it,” my dad said with a sigh, and the guy in the coveralls turned to repair our radiator. My father walked outside the radiator shop and stood under a big oak, probably to figure out how he’d pay for this, because he didn’t have that kind of money. That was at a time when people didn’t have any credit cards; he had only a wad of cash that after a week visiting his family was down to mostly fives and a few tens.
My mom fished a couple of nickels out of her purse and told my sisters to buy some sodas. They were giddy at the prospect of spending hours in an unfamiliar place with thirty thousand dirty things to stick in their mouths. They repeatedly asked my mom to use the filthiest washroom I’d ever seen, which in my second-grade imagination was littered with the carcasses of the health department inspectors who’d keeled over when exposed to a biologically infectious urinal cake.
My dad looked so lonely under that tree, I walked out to see if he wanted a sip of my Dr Pepper. I said something about how hot it was as I walked up behind him, but he didn’t turn toward me, which was weird. So I took another step and stood in front of him, where I noticed to my horror that he had a couple of big tears hanging on his chin. When he turned toward me, I snapped my head away, ashamed that I’d barged into his private moment. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.” I wasn’t worried, because my dad always took care of everything, but now seeing that the strongest man in the world could cry like everybody else, I didn’t feel so good.
“Let me have a sip of that,” was the last thing I heard before he drank my Dr Pepper dry. The car was fixed later that day, and we drove home. Forty years later my father told me what happened that day; he explained to the mechanic that he didn’t have the money, but he promised he’d send him a check when he got home, which he did because a promise was a promise.
December 25, 1997, I was with my wife and kids at our home in New Jersey when the phone rang at 4 A.M. It was my sister. My mom had died. On Christmas. I jumped out of bed and packed a bag, and Kathy booked me a flight. Because Christmas was always supposed to be the happiest day on the calendar, the one day our kids looked forward to all year, my wife and I sat in the dark waiting to wake them up, and then videotaped them running down the stairs to see what Santa had left. I was on the airplane flying back to Kansas before Kathy explained what had happened. Never in their lives had my children known a person who had died. When my wife and kids flew out for the funeral, my littlest one’s, Sally’s, only funeral experience was from watching Princess Diana’s on television.
“Why isn’t anybody throwing flowers?” Sally asked as the hearse solemnly pulled away from the church. They threw flowers for Diana, why not Grandma?
My mom’s funeral was the first time my children ever saw me cry. As I started writing this story, I remembered the times I’d seen my father cry, and thought about how composed I’d always been around my own children, trying to maintain a sphinxish manner when dealing with sad matters. Driving to the grocery store with Sally who was now a high school freshman, I asked her how she’d feel if she ever saw me crying again.
“Whaddaya mean if?” she said.
“Really? When?” I was suddenly defensive, knowing nobody had ever given me a radial arm saw.
“At the movies.”
She’d hit paydirt. Sitting in the dark, it was easy to get caught up in a story. Those Hollywood screenwriters knew exactly how to push my buttons. So I asked what movies, expecting her to say Schindler’s List or Steel Magnolias.
“The first time?” She paused for a moment, and I could see she was rewinding something in her head, probably remembering how I was overcome by the raw emotion of Dying Young or Titanic.
Her answer was accurate and devastating. “It was A Bug’s Life.”
In my own defense, A Bug’s Life is a heartbreaking movie when the little ant needs help to keep his ant farm from being wiped out. Then Sally added a coda. “Actually, Daddy, you cry at all the movies.”
“Like…?”
“Like Finding Nemo, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast.” I was surprised she had a Roger Ebert–like list at the ready of her dad’s favorite tearjerkers. Who wouldn’t cry at those Disney classics that feature an orange striped fish trying to find his dad, a mermaid who combs her hair with a fork, and a beautiful ingenue who talks to candelabras?
It was now official—I was a softy. Later that night at dinner, I asked my entire family if, aside from at the movies, they had ever seen me cry, because nobody had ever said a word.
“Every Sunday,” Mary, the high school senior, announced, which made me wonder, Sunday? The only thing we did every Sunday was church, and while there were a couple of hymns that got me every time, we didn’t sing “Amazing Grace” every week.
Seeing I was struggling, Mary solved the mystery: “Sunday nights, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”
Until that moment, I had thought any sentimentality I’d done was in private. But apparently if there’s even a whiff of something emotional, my entire family sneaks a glance my way to see if the show has officially risen to the red-eye level, like a Hallmark ad.
Real men do cry. In the movie Ocean’s Thirteen, two of the con men, played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt, get weepy as they watch an episode of Oprah when she builds a house for a family who has nothing, exactly like my favorite show. Finally, I had something in common with Clooney and Pitt, aside from us all being international sex symbols.
I’ve evolved to the point where I think it’s okay to show humility and humanity. Feelings are the only things that separate us from the animals. Surprisingly, my own kids are not weepers. I could go through a half box of Kleenex watching an Old Yeller marathon, and my children’s only reaction would be, “That dog didn’t really die, did it? It’s just a movie, right?” Once assured that the dog, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, was just playing dead, they’d adjourn to the kitchen to toast the dog’s continued good health with snacks. I could remind them that the movie was made fifty years ago and the dog has been dead since the 1960s, but I would never rain on their parade.
Meanwhile, my wife, Kathy, is much more evolved than I.
When I asked Sally what made Mommy cry, it took her most of a day to remember the first time she saw my wife shed a tear.
“The Country Bears movie.”
Thank goodness, somebody stable was on hand to wear the pant-suit at our house.
23
Landmarks
The Innings and Outings of Life
Some boys become men when they join the marines or on their honeymoon night. Always trying to take the road less traveled, I became a man at a Chinese restaurant.
Kansas is a state where salad bars uniquely feature chocolate cake and a simmering kettle of gravy, so anything off our regular caveman red meat diet was always appreciated, and that’s why Mars Chinese on the west side of Salina was one of my family’s favorite places. The Mars family knew Kansans were hopelessly addicted to starches, and that’s why they always had one additional table item that I’ve never seen in any Chinatown: a quarter loaf of Wonder bread.
“I’ll pick that up when you’re ready,” the waitress with chopsticks in her hair said, dropping off the bill.
And with that my father launched into an oft-told story about a guy he met on an army troopship who was assigned to kitchen duty and, during rough seas, threw up into the scrambled eggs. As my sisters grimaced, I realized something was wrong—my father, who was always in a hurry to leave, hadn’t budged. Usually when the waitress brought the bill he’d say, “Here you go,” and pay her in cash on the spot before she had time to walk away.
“So this guy took the egg beater, mixed ’em up, and then cooked it!” At which point his tale got a gagging look from my sister Lisa.
Why wasn’t my dad picking up the bill? Let’s go and get out of here. He knew it was there—I’d seen him eyeball it when the waitress dropped it off. Yet he just sat there yakking away. Did he want another cookie; was this one of the early stages of dementia? Then I got an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach as it dawned on me: he wanted me to pay.
That meal was at my suggestion to celebrate my new job in Wichita, where I was pulling in a substantial eighteen grand a year, which my father thought was a lot for a single kid with no student loans. Why not? I thought as I slid the brown fake leather folder that was parked in front of my father over to my side and opened it to assess the financial damage.
“What are you doing, Stephen?” my mom asked.
“I’m paying.”
“No you’re not. Jim, pick that up.”
“If he wants to,” my dad said, as if it were a teachable moment. “He’s got a job. He can handle it.”
Initially I was a little offended that my father wanted me to take care of the bill, but as he argued with my mom, I oddly wanted to pick it up. It was a sign that I wasn’t just a kid anymore; I was an official taxpaying, paycheck-cashing breadwinner, and that day the bread was Wonder.
The bill was twenty-nine dollars. I used a credit card, and five ones for the tip. My father was beaming: My son can afford to throw around five dollars. My mother, however, was less altruistic. “That’s too much,” and she took two bills off the pile and stuffed them into my shirt pocket as we left the restaurant the day I became a man.
That was when life was simple, but then things sped up. I got married, had kids, big jobs, and bigger problems. Where did the time go? It seemed like just yesterday I was a wild and crazy college kid who’d get up for breakfast during 60 Minutes. I blinked, and now I was wearing the daddy pants, as a father of three, with a wife who’d occasionally remind me of her love by telling me it was time to trim my nose hairs, “Unless you want me to braid them.”
While I may feel like an antique, my children keep me young and on my toes, especially with my reputation as the Mr. Answer Man of the family. Rather than actually find answers in their textbooks, they just bark out questions, and I bounce back accurate answers.
“Hey, Dad, the country of Siam is now known as…what?”
Once, I was able to confidently spit out the answers with the speed and precision of Alex Trebek hopped up on an Italian espresso speedball, but as my kids entered middle school, things were getting mixed up in my head.
“Daddy, Siam…”
My reputation as the family’s walking, talking human encyclopedia teetering, I remembered that Siam is the setting for The King and I and that Siam is the root of “Siamese,” but that’s not a country, it’s a cat. I closed my eyes and took an educated guess based upon the fact that they sound alike. “Siam is now Ceylon,” I confidently hedged.
“Very funny, Daddy! It’s Thailand.”
Geographic trivia was hard because the world kept changing. I was still an expert at the basics until my son, Peter, asked me for help with high school physics, and as he verbally announced his equation, all I could see was numbers with arrows at the end pointing to other numbers. Stupefied, I did the only thing a father could do: I hired a physics tutor.
As my children’s homework got harder, the trips to Dad slowed to a trickle, and instead the kids asked one another. What happened? I wondered, thinking back to the time when I could rattle off all fifty state capitals, and even name the U.S. president who invented the folding chair.
The mental acuity was bound to fade, but I would always be the biggest and the strongest member of the family because my girls weren’t WNBA material and their brother was only five eight his junior year. At his age I was already six one, so he was destined to always stand in the shadow of his father, where he belonged. Inexplicably, the next year my boy grew an astonishing eight inches. It was at that time that I seriously questioned whether the makers of chicken fingers had replaced Crisco with human growth hormone.
To camouflage the fact that I was no longer the tallest, I refused to be photographed next to him unless seated, and at church, our only weekly joint appearance, I would motion for him to walk to the altar first, followed by his vastly shorter sisters and mother, before I’d bring up the rear. The girls created a visual buffer during that walk for Communion, which heightwise was like a police lineup, with genuflecting.
His son is half a head taller. Next thing you know, Steve’ll be bald, the monsignor surely thought every time he placed bread in the hands of the height-challenged dad.
While my own father was baldish, the substantial hair loss thing would never happen—and if it did I’d get plugs, a hair-replacement system, or as a last resort one of those Eva Gabor wigs that my mother’s friend Nancy wore, and which she said were easier to shampoo than real hair because she washed them in the dishwasher. Just to be safe, later tonight I’ll look on the KitchenAid site for the correct setting for wavy blond.
A tough year for the family alpha male. I could no longer help my son with his homework, he was half a head taller, and all I had left on my side was sheer strength. I could still beat him in a footrace from the street to the garage, and when we’d lift our big ladder to clean out the gutters, he could not keep it steady; I was clearly the Schwarzenegger member of the family. To remind him of that known fact, I challenged him to a duel.
We were watching March Madness; my alma mater, Kansas, had just gotten whupped by my son’s Villanova team. I protested and said that the game was a fluke. Then, stacking the deck in my favor, I told him that the best way to determine the better team was for us to wrestle. I’d been a respectable high school wrestler, and I scored two points on a tricky takedown, his spindly frame making a dull thud on the hardwood floor as his mother commanded, “Peter, don’t hurt your father.”
She was a real laugh riot, because I was in the process of proving that I was still the family’s top dog. At eighteen years old he could drive a car, go to college, kiss girls when necessary, but he could not possibly overpower his father, who, at age fifty, was 175 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal.
I smiled as I dominated him and asked him if he’d had enough. “No,” he spat, and he continued to thrash beneath me until one of his much longer arms hooked me and I was suddenly wedged between the couch and our Pottery Barn console table, which looked better in the c
atalog without a middle-aged man’s head pitifully crushed up against its rich mahogany veneer. I had one other immediate observation as I lay there: I CAN’T BREATHE!
A weird sleeper hold was now in danger of cutting off the air supply to my brain. Wiggling around and throwing my legs every which way except toward our brand-new fifty-inch plasma screen, I was in trouble. Resorting to the only thing a man desperate to hold on to his youth would do, I inched into position to give him an illegal kidney punch that would immediately make him let me go. One little wallop and I’d be back on my feet, like Ali standing over Sonny Liston. Then the father voice kicked in. You can’t hurt your own son, you dope, which was true, because someday I would need him to pay our monthly room and board at a fancy assisted-living home where every Tuesday a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader would teach water aerobics.
“You win,” I wheezed out in defeat. He peeled himself off me and then gave me a little look, worried he’d broken an important father part. It was a landmark moment as the title of strongest guy in the house was ripped out of the grip of the old man and now belonged to the boy. To his credit, Peter did not rub it in; he simply returned to the television to watch other very tall young men run up and down the court as I wondered how many of them could beat up their fathers. Life had just slapped me in the face with the subtlety of a sock filled with horse manure.
My daughter Mary, an all-around fabulous girl, followed in her brother’s scholarly footsteps. A student leader and serious student (the New Jersey Academic Decathlon gold medal winner in Civil War art and silver medalist in economics), she was half a light-year ahead of anything I could help her with homeworkwise. That meant I was down to one family member whom I could still beat. Sally. She was eleven.
