You might think I’m going to write about what happened in the United States of America yesterday, how the day was nothing more than an orgy of grievance, bold-faced lies, xenophobia, Nazi salutes, score-settling, and false bravado. But I’m not.
Because January 20th is a very significant day for me. Two years ago, on January 20th, I was reclined all the way back in my recliner, my eyes were closed, and I was listening to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” My phone rang. I ignored it. My phone rang again. I ignored it again. Then I got a text. So I paused the album and looked at my phone. The text was from my brother-in-law. “CALL YOUR SISTER NOW” it said in all caps.
Our father had died. He was 93. It wasn’t unexpected, but it was still shocking. I might have said, in days gone by, that he and I had a contentious, even a “strained” relationship; on the surface that is true. We didn’t throw a ball around in the back yard; he did buy me a baseball glove and took me to Dodger games to pique my interest in playing “catch,” but I was too busy arranging my mother’s kitchen cupboards. However, in the intervening years since he died I have learned the lengths to which he went that would ensure I would be okay when he was gone, given I was 56 at the time, disabled with an incurable disease, and unable to work to support myself. Efforts and preparations he kept to himself. And it reminded me of that time we went hiking in the Verdugo Mountains behind Glendale.
My father, an avid hiker, used to bribe me and my sister, not avid hikers, with trips to Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors on Central Avenue for an ice cream cone if we’d join him on one of his hikes to the top of the Verdugos, setting out from Glendale founder Leslie Brand’s mansion, Miradero, on our way to the summit. It was on one such hike that I fell behind him by about fifty feet.
It was a thick, heavy summer day in Southern California. The sun felt like it was slapping us down into the dirt, while bugs buzzed around us going about their business, blissfully unaware of how annoying they were being. The Verdugos are brown that time of year; they almost seem out of place, rising up from the tree-lined, shady streets of Glendale below. I was throwing a hissy fit (technically called a “temper tantrum”) about it being hot and dusty and banging on and on about how dumb it was to walk up a mountain just to look at a view. He’d had enough of my whining, so he told me to just stay put and he would see me on his way down the mountain, and then he took off up the trail. Well, it only took less than a minute for me to realize hot and dusty with my dad was better than alone in the middle of nowhere without him, so before he’d gotten too far ahead I took off in his direction.
About ten minutes up the trail, I spotted what I thought was a toy rubber snake by the side of the footpath. It was stretched out so you could see its entire length, which was about three feet. Being a boy of probably age 10 or 11, I thought, ‘oh, how cool,’ and reached down to pick it up and put it in my pocket. My hand was less than an inch from its head when suddenly I was scooped up by my father in mid stride; he never stopped running, dragging me behind him by the collar of my shirt, till we got to a small clearing with a log in it. He set me up on the log, then we both looked back in the direction from which we’d just come. The snake had coiled itself into a more recognizable posture (do snakes have postures? I dunno, but I just spent the last five minutes racking my brain for the right word, and I decided on “posture,” so let’s go with that!) and had begun making the unmistakable rattling noise with its tail (one could argue the entire body of the snake behind its head is a tail) that made it clear my dad had just saved me from a certain bite (and who knows what else) from a poisonous rattlesnake sunning itself by the side of the trail.
I thought I was matching his pace, keeping my eye on him ahead in the distance, while all the while he’d been matching mine and never took his eye off me. And over the last two years I have come to see how that metaphor, the metaphor of the hike, describes our entire relationship. And by that I mean my entire life. I am sad now when I think of all the times I wrote him off as old-fashioned, unemotional, or just plain irrelevant to the educated, sophisticated, urbane adult I had become. Like that line from “The Last Song” by Elton John:
I can’t believe you love me
Elton John, “The Last Song,” 1992
I never thought you’d come
I guess I misjudged love between a father and his son
We buried my father on February 25, 2023. It was an absolutely miserable, bleak, grey, wet, cold day; buckets of rain came pouring down. For the first time since 1989, there was a “blizzard warning” for Los Angeles county, and for the first time in my lifetime there was snow on the Verdugo Mountains. As we stood in the pouring rain waiting for the workers to lower my father’s casket into the muddy, water-logged ground, my cousin George remarked, “Uncle Bob would hate to be missing this storm,” to which I replied, “Hate to be missing it? He probably sent it!” Dad would have been upset at being the center of attention with so much fuss being made over him. He hated the spotlight; he didn’t need it to be himself, content to work quietly but with great dignity behind the scenes.
I left my mom and dad behind in the house on Cleveland Road at 18 to begin my life’s journey as a young adult. I left them behind in the house on Cleveland Road again at 41 after recuperating there following brain surgery to move to the desert. And I left the now empty house on Cleveland Road at 7:00 pm Saturday, February 25, 2023, one last time. As my friend drove me off, I looked back and I could see the outline of the Verdugos in the night sky. I thought of good times, and bad ones, with my mom, and my dad, and my sister, and our dog Taffy, on Cleveland Road, all under the watchful eye of the Verdugos. As we drove past the houses I remembered every person that had lived in every house that I delivered the newspaper to on my bike when I was a boy. In my mind, every porch light was on and their spirits stood in front of their doors waving goodbye to me and imploring me never to forget Cleveland Road: there was Glady the widow, Al and Faye Kroesch and their little weiner dog Willie, Dr. Pinkham, Russ Coggan who went to jail for embezzlement, and me who grew up here and went on hikes (under duress) with my dad in the Verdugos.
February 3, 1929 – January 20, 2023
I launched this website in February of 2024 and dedicated it to my mom on the three-year anniversary of her passing, and I want to re-dedicate it now to include my dad in the dedication.
(click here for the co-dedication to my mother)
My life is an improbable one, but I have one because my mom and dad gave it to me. And I don’t mean in the obvious way, the way most children come about. My mom used to say to me as an adopted boy, “you are very special because we chose you.”
My dad was not given to such sentimental flourishes. He just kept me – and still keeps me – from being bitten by snakes.