I wanted to share with you-all some of my experiences. They are not extraordinary, and they certainly don’t involved any latent talent of my own come to light. I’m pretty boring. I don’t see ghosts. I can’t tell the future. I get strong instinctual feelings and, more often than not, am wrong. I always choose the longest line at the bank or grocery store, no matter how I open my mind to show me the shortest. Sometimes I second-guess myself, and am wrong even then.
When we were in Frankfurt one day in July, we were driving around looking for someplace to eat. A McDonald’s would have been fine. A Burger King would have been better. My husband drew up to a corner and asked me which direction we should go. He has good instincts, but sometimes he asks me. I paused, and after a moment I said straight ahead. My husband, strangely enough, agreed. I asked, “Know why I said straight?” His answer was straight on. He said, “Because you were going to say right, but knew you always guess wrong, so you said straight instead.” Yes, he knows me well. And that only illustrates just how often I’m off the mark.
But I’ve gotten off track. I’d like to share one of my most cherished memories.
When I was young, I think I might have been nine years old, my grandparents (my dad’s parents) had driven up from Florida to Chicago for a visit. It was summer, and they invited me to drive back down with them, and I’d take a plane home in a week or two, after I’d visited my mother’s parents.
Driving from Chicago to Florida can require one or two overnights in a motel—especially with the elderly. On one of our overnights, the three of us bedded down nice and cozy for the evening after calling my mom and dad back in Chicago. Grandma and Grandpa shared one bed, and I was in the other.
The next morning, they both asked me if I remembered getting up in the night. I said no. They told me I had gotten up and curled into bed next to my grandpa, thinking it was my dad.
“Daddy, I’m cold,” I’d said to him. He woke up and carried me back to my bed.
I’m not a sleepwalker, and I thought it was pretty funny to hear that I’d done something like
that. When we called my mom and dad the next evening, I told them what had happened. My ad didn’t think it was funny at all. He said, “Well, I had a dream last night that you came to our bed. You were cold, and you were having trouble breathing. I tried to keep you warm.” (I have asthma, which was a constant trouble in my youth.)
My father and I had had the same dream. We were very close when I was young, so it didn’t surprise me that we had shared dreams. When I was young, my world revolved around my dad, and this was evidence of how closely we were linked. I thought it was really wonderful.
Later, when I was in high school, I had a friend who was not the best influence on sweet innocent me. My friend had asked me to sleep over at her house. Her mother was out of town for the weekend, and my friend was having a little party. I asked my mom and dad, and somehow, this time, they knew to ask if my friend’s mother was going to be there.
Naturally, I lied.
So my dad dropped me off at her apartment, and the evening progressed smoothly. And then it was 11:00 or so, and it was time for all of us to get ready to go to the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We saw the movie (for the millionth time), and then we stopped off at Wag’s for fries, coffee, waffles, whatever.
Fact was, it was about 2:30 am. We were sitting at our corner table, when I had this strong feeling.
“Uh-oh,” I said suddenly to my friend, cutting across the conversation at our table. “Does your mom know I’m spending the night?”
“No,” she said. “She thinks I’m staying the night at your house.”
This was news to me. But it didn’t matter at the moment. “Umm, I think your mom just called my dad.”
We decided shortly after to wrap things up and go home.
Sure enough, my friend’s mother was waiting for us when we got back to her place. For whatever reason, she'd come home early. She was pretty mad that my friend had lied to her, but said I could stay the rest of the night, and my dad would come pick me up in the morning. In the meantime, I was to call my dad to let him know I was all right.
It was mother’s instinct that made her return home in the middle of the night, then call my father in search of her daughter. Since the apartment was probably in a real state from the party we’d had, it had likely made her doubt her daughter had spent her evening at my house.
But how did I know she had called my dad? How, in the middle of all our mid-adolescent antics, after a night of drinking cheap beer and Rocky Horror and a plate of French fries with friends at 2:30 am, did I know my dad was wondering where in the hell I was?
I didn’t get in trouble for my friend’s indiscretion. I hadn’t known she’d told her mom she was at my house. But I was very much reminded of the bond between my dad and me.
