daddy sang
"swing low sweet chariot" in a voice like tectonic plates shifting, when he was still called daddy and i was still mindless enough with newborn wonder to kiss on the lips without fear of long term ramifications. course he'd never admit that
any thing he did or sang had ramifications of any kind, unless they were negative. the man's self-effacement runs so deep that the profound insights and advices you hold on to end up looking like your own (even though they're not), made indelible not by your admiration for him, but by his for you. socratic parenthood. i only remember "swing low sweet chariot" because he kept on singing it right up until today, and so did i.
i do remember, with help from worn out photos, that on the morning i came home from the hospital to be his son, he went and painted a mural of words right across the living room wall. "welcome home, dannny boy." he was the best speller you ever saw, still is, but he was 26 and blind with fear and enthusiasm. or anyway that's how i imagine danny got his extra n.
reaching back for meaningful traces of him, who i now understand to have been a very young man, i think of untouched half-ash cigarettes burning out on the lips of coffee saucers, their owners hunched over electric instruments, and my father with his back turned to all of them, pounding out a chorus of "will you go to the war in iran" on a white piano. i remember vaguely racist
uncle remus read-alongs and hundreds of sit-ups every night until the marathon and how i saw him cry first when douglas sang
"tomorrow is a long time" at the church before we carried out his father.
plenty of years later, after his black hat and bearded foray into orthodoxy had faded back into chicken pickin' and high lonesome harmony -- pentateuch to pentatonic -- my dad cried plenty more. none of your business why, but he ran off one night without a word and was still gone when the school bus rolled up for
benny and
devi the next morning. we were all stiff and silent with worry.
a few weeks before, he and i had spoken at length on the telephone about how bullshit it could be, being a person sometimes, and how exhausting and unfair. "but there's always the music," we agreed in the end. he turned up later that afternoon and admitted to having spent the night in his car, parked with the seats down, singing harmony with
bill monroe,
the louvin brothers and a couple of double vodkas. we were no longer stiff, nor silent.
when i was 24 he met me in tennessee for a music festival, where we meant to have a look at
doc watson and his milky eyeballs. we got our look, alright. after the show, frowning hard through fear and enthusiasm, we marched past the security guard manning the backstage holding pen. i paused only long enough to flash a meaningless press bracelet, she bought it, and there we were in doc's trailer, announcing ourselves.
I hardly said a word, except to introduce my father and to lie about it being his birthday. after that, he and doc went at it like old schoolfriends,
swapping lawyer jokes and touching each other on the shoulder smiling. it ended this way: "my father was a blue collar guy," my dad told him. "honest. salt of the earth. you can't believe how hard he worked. my father's been gone more than 15 years and i miss him awfully, but when i listen to you sing, i feel like he's sitting right here next to me." doc's face had a permanent clench to it that looked like praying.
what he's always told us about his father, who was a half-deaf dairy farmer, was how you could sit in a room with him for hours without a word spoken between you and come out feeling like you'd gotten to know him. the same's not quite true of my father, who's a half-blind trial lawyer. it is true that he isn't easy to know outright. his emotions are many, but deep down. i never saw him take credit for much or understood, directly, the method to his madness. so, it's true that i know my father best when he isn't speaking.
it's true that i know him best when i'm awake all night, like an elf in a shoe-shop, burning up manic over a project that i'll finish but never put my name on. when i'm five days late. when i'm stupid in love. when i'm afraid, enthusiastic, and breathlessly desirous of everything at the same time. i know him best then, by knowing myself. that much is true. but forget the other half. because no room my father's in stays quiet long. sit that man still for thirty seconds and i promise you, he will be gone. off to his bedroom. ducked down shuffling. back before you know it. mandolin in hand. and then he sings to you.
