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she· verb
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04.27.03 In 1998, at Hula's urgings, I made a ten minute tape of my father talking about his experiences in WWII and the Korean war. It's had a special place in a box tucked away in my closet where I keep the last pictures I took of my parents, a book of Irish folktales that contains our family name, his watch, a lock of his hair, his old Minolta, cards he's given me over the years and other trinkets that once meant something to the two of us, but now only mean something to the one of us. After I returned home from his funeral, I couldn't stand to have anything around that reminded me of him where I might unexpectedly run across it--because it forced me to confront his death over and over again. Each time I encountered something of his, or of ours, I would jam the offending item into the box and shove it way way back into the closet. After two or three weeks, when every trace of him was gone, I could at last begin pretending that all was well, that my father wasn't dead, and that it had only been a very long while since we last spoke. While not a conscious decision, it was a bad one of course, and one I'm paying for in recent months as thoughts of his non-existence pop up with an alarming frequency and with a punch in the stomach. It's been 10 months, but feels like one. I was a fool. On and off I've tried to listen to this tape we made. I collect it from the coffin in my closet, place it in the tape recorder where I used to read books to him, and tentatively press play. I usually get about one to ten seconds into it--to the part where he realizes he's being recorded and protests--when I have to stop. I sounds so fucking much like him that he's suddenly in the room with me and I can't take it. Hula once told me that the only cure for this is to listen to the tape and listen to it a hundred times, that only then will the intensity diminish and will I remain unmoved. The thing is, I'm not ready to be unmoved, in fact, I'm pretty damned sure that some very serious moving is the only thing that's going to get me past the goddamn stomach punches I've been receiving as of late. So on Easter Sunday, when Hula was out, I listened to the tape. All the way through. Proper words have not been invented for this next part and I am entirely unqualified to attempt the appropriate language, so please bear with me while I blunder forward. When I originally taped this conversation in 1998, I forgot to turn off the recorder. And then, I forgot that I forgot to turn off the recorder. What started out as a stilted, self conscious account of the events that lead him into service during WWII and Korea became a rambling hour-long conversation between me, Hula and my parents. Hula didn't know them very well at the time and asked a lot of questions--of course, my parents gladly responded with the stories I've heard my entire life and know by heart. Never. Never in a million years did I think I'd hear them tell these stories together again. He talked about growing up in Hartford. She talked about Vermont. He recounted the circus fire and his teenaged employment with the park district. She talked about Castleton and teaching in Wethersfield. He described my grand parents and the Great Depression. And they both told the story of how they met, got married and created me. The print shop, my uncle and aunt, the restaurant, the jar of change, the watch, the ring, Nepaug Street, Cedar Street. The subtle nuances of familial conversations are things I imagined I would never forget, but I did. The living room clock I grew up with, long since silenced, chimed the hours and half hours. My mother sometimes finished my father's sentences and my father sometimes cleared his throat--the only indication that my mother had completed a sentence incorrectly. He laughed breathily when he was embarrassed and laughed from deep within himself when he was amused. For one whole hour I had them both with me. Together. There is a second side that I haven't listened to. I'm saving it, but for what, I don't yet know.
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