A Little Moment with Dad
by: Jon Crane

Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 2, No. 12 (June 19, 1999)

I didn't know my father too well in this life. He married my mother when he was 41. By the time I knew him, he was an aging man, grayed and lonely. Teenage sons were beyond his kin and patience.

He was also a remote and unapproachable man. I used to think that this was of his own choosing, or else that he just didn't love me very much. Tenderness and affection were not in his nature, or so I believed. About the only time I heard from him was when I'd done something wrong in his eyes. At those moments, emotions were never held back.

There were, however, moments of incredible tenderness that confused me then and still haunt me today. When I was about 10, my dad took me fishing on the Gulf coast. I remember being terrified to be alone in the presence of this immense, complex and unpredictable man. If I did something to set him off, there would be no place to run for cover or safety.

Shortly after we arrived at our destination, we went to the grocery to lay in a store of food for the weekend. He asked me what I wanted. I told him it didn't matter. He bought a can of Vienna sausages and showed it to me with a look that said he'd touched a deep cord of desire, figuring every boy likes Vienna sausages.

I didn't, but I never told him so. Maybe I should have been angry that he didn't even know what food I liked, but I was touched and amazed that he seemed to be trying to please me.

Later that evening, I was in the bathroom not feeling too well. It wasn't the Vienna sausages; all these years later I don't remember what it was. After I'd been in there for a few minutes, there was a soft knock on the door as it opened about a third of the way.

My father stood there embarrassed, but with a look I'd never seen on his face: tenderness, concern and, as I have come to believe over the years, love. He was worried that I was getting sick and wouldn't have much fun on our fishing weekend. He spoke in a voice I'd never heard before either. The tenderness that I saw in his face, I heard in his voice.

I remember nothing else about that weekend. I couldn't tell you if we caught a fish, or if we even went fishing. It was November and the weather wasn't always too cooperative. All I remember was the look on my father's face as he stood in the bathroom door and the sound of his voice as he halting inquired after my well-being.

I rarely saw that look again. I rarely heard that voice again. Even in his dotage, he only softened a little. Only once - about a year before he died - did we embrace and say to each other, "I love you."

My dad passed away just before Christmas in 1985 at the age of 83. It occurred to me, even before his death, that he did love me. He just never knew how to show it. Neither did I, the truth be told.

In the end I suppose it's what you remember. Had my father and I not had that one moment on a rainy, cold night in Fulton, Texas -- that one exchange of tenderness and love -- what I would remember today? Sometimes, a little moment is enough. Sometimes, it has to be.

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