Yellowriter

 

The colors of life are communicators. It is almost as though they have a voice and the ability to whisper into the secret places of the mind. A yellow rose speaks of friendship and the connection kindred spirits share. Red is the representation of romance and festivity. Black is the shade of death and mourning so wearing red to a funeral is considered to be in bad taste. I’ve heard that blue is a calm color and hence the reason why so many medical and dental offices tend toward that hue in decorating. For me, blue will always mean a time in my life like no other.

She was only nine when she came to live with me. Strong-willed, intelligent and lazy are the first three attributes that come to mind when I think of Jenna. She was fair skinned with dark eyes and black hair. It was easy to see that she would be very tall as an adult as she stood head and shoulders above her classmates. She has a premature exotic look that doesn’t betray her Irish, English, Mexican and Italian ethnicity. She is a rare mixture of innocence and cold calculation, and is growing into my greatest adversary. The war is a loving one, and before it was over we were both wounded for life.

Divorcing has become an American past time. We piece together our families and do the best we can. I joined the masses of misery when I was thirty-five, and it was indeed a rude awakening. The television shows seemed to glamorize the thirty-something and single crowd. The single-again life style was not to be missed according to the sit-coms. I found my new status somewhat confusing and overwhelming. The hardest part was working and caring for my three young children, two girls and a boy. I had full custody and while that meant that I paid no child support, it also meant that I had no life. I did get pretty handy with the crock-pot.

I often wonder where our parenting skills come from. Some have postulated that all parenting is trial and error. We read the Bible and learn that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. From the world I see there’s a whole lot of rods that never even got broke in. The gurus have the books that tell us how to be good parents, but let’s face it; we learn by example.

My parents were fresh off the farm. These were two Nebraska Cornhuskers that wanted to make a go of it in the big city. They were honest and hardworking, but as parents, they kind of wrote their own book. Mom was easily fooled and Dad wanted us kids to “experiment.” I ruined Christmas Eve when I was sixteen by coming home very drunk. My father admonished me the next day by telling me not to do that again. When I got my first car, my dad gave me a box of condoms telling me that he would buy them if I were too embarrassed. He caught me and some friends toking on a water bong and it wasn’t until the next day that he told me not to smoke marijuana in the house.

I suppose what I want to say is that my parents did the best they knew how. My mother’s world of denial and my father’s urging to try whatever came to mind made for some interesting happenings. I still look at my dad as my friend, and I think he thinks of me in much the same way. We were never at odds while I was growing up and all of my friends wanted their fathers to be like mine. Well, there was one time when father and son refused to be in the same room for a period of almost a month.

I had just graduated from high school and was working at a gas station, pumping petroleum. My eighteenth birthday was coming up and my father told me that I was expected to pay rent. While thinking over my options one day at work a customer asked me what was the matter. I told him and he invited me to come to his workplace and see what he did for a living. The next day I met him out at the gate of the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center. My new friend, Milt, was an air traffic controller and spent his days and nights sitting in front of a radarscope. He had been in the business for more than twenty years and as we walked through the facility I found myself fantasizing about being one of them.

“So how does a guy get into this stuff?” I asked

“The Federal Aviation Administration likes to hire people with military experience,” he answered.

“What should I do? Go in the Army?”

“I was an Air Force man myself. That’s what you should do,” Milt advised.

Dinner that night was the start of our feud, our only feud. When I told my father that I planned to sign up for the Air Force when I turned eighteen, he flipped. My mother burst into tears and my brother asked if he could have my room. It was the beginning of a rift.

It was parents’ night for the AWANA Club. The groups run from three-year-olds through sixth grade and Natalie, my seventh grader, had opted to stay home. The children memorize Bible verses, play games, and have treats. I liked the treat part the best. I had noticed that most of the people were paired up two by two, like the animals in Noah’s Ark. I seemed to be the only parent without a partner. It was then that I spied the circus cookies.

I had a cup of coffee in one hand and a handful of pink and white cookies in the other. I stuffed my face, relishing the frosting and the tiny hard candies embedded on the surface. I think I must have been moaning because a stern looking, albeit a very beautiful woman, approached me from across the room.

“Excuse me, but are you going to save some for the children?” she asked. Before I could answer a woman that I knew came between us. She smiled and made polite introductions. Less than nine months later I married the stern, cookie-police goddess.

Not that being a parent was hard enough, but now I was a stepparent and the book on that one had not been written. Jenna was the top of her class when her mother became my wife. Over the years the ambition and the grades slipped until high school graduation was becoming uncertain. She was on restriction from the first grading period of her sophomore year until she finally left high school.

She had an allegiance to her bio-dad, a sperm donor cop with a chip on his shoulder and an attitude to match. I learned somewhere along the line that when I criticized him she rushed to defend him. Yes, folks he can be taught! I quit calling him “Bonehead” and tried to help her sort out all of the confusion that makes up adolescent emotions.

Jenna was not a neat person either. She refused to clean her pigpen of a room. I even wrote a short jingle called “Sty-girl” which can be sung to the tune of “my girl.” I would break into song whenever I saw the door open. The situation culminated in my taking her bedroom door off of the hinges. She had to go to the bathroom to change and had no privacy for six months. When we moved her bed we found seventeen articles of dirty clothes stuffed in her linen. The chili fries under the bed were left to evolve, a science experiment that would have even grossed out Darwin.

The last year was by far the hardest. Her father had remarried and sired two boys with his new wife. Jenna looks old for her age and whenever she took her brothers out people would ask her how old her boys were. She liked seeing her brothers, but didn’t want to live with her father full-time. The problem was her eighteenth birthday and an alleged graduation. I guess what I want to say about parenting can be summed up in one word, empowerment. Jenna knew that her time was running out. Natalie was in the master’s program at Fresno State and Brenna, the next oldest, was serving with the Army in Iraq. She was next. She had moved from the on deck circle and was walking up to her turn at bat.

Her father was sure that she was moving in with him. He promised that she could go to Junior College (with her 1.7 Grade Point Average) at night after being a nanny all day to her brothers. She was crying one night and I tried to comfort her. She was afraid of the future and it was coming on fast. I continued to give her options, college not being one of them.

“But I need to go to college,” she cried.

“There is nothing you hate more than sitting in a classroom. Why put yourself through that”? I asked.

“Because you have to go to college to get a good job.”

“I have a degree, but I use the skills I learned in the Air Force to make a living.”

“But I’m not you! I can’t do it! I don’t want to be a nanny,” she cried. I reached over to touch her arm. At first she did not want to be touched, but soon relented. I explained that her not wanting to raise her brothers did not mean that she didn’t love them.

“You’ll have your own children to raise. And the years between eighteen and twenty-two are some of the best years you’ll ever know. Don’t throw them away.”

“But I’m scared.”

“So was I. It’s normal to be afraid. It just means you’re normal, honey,” I said.

The ghosts spoke to me. It had been twenty-nine years since I was last in San Antonio and the memories covered over me like a flash flood. We had come for Jenna’s graduation from Air Force Boot Camp. I wrote her nearly every day knowing how one hungers for mail at mail call. The skies were overcast and rain was threatening to ruin the parade. It would be a parade, a parade of airman marching by in their respective flights and formations for all to see.

The ceremony was precise and orderly. When the troops took the oath and vowed to give their lives for the defense of this great land, I felt the goose pimples on my forearms. It was a proud day and the girl had become a woman. A messy teen had come close to being an honor graduate. A lazy, plump kid had become a toned and strong airman. Empowerment works!

We spend two days going out to dinner, touring the Riverwalk, and checking out the Alamo. My wife and I take her shopping and spoil her in ways we never have before. We present her with diamond earrings as a graduation gift. They put the perfect accent on the day.

We stroll leisurely among sidewalk shops and see what trinkets they have to offer. As I admire a burnt orange picture frame near the mall, she scoffs.

“Don’t you like it?” I asked.

“It’s okay, Dad,” she replied, “but for me it’s all about blue, you know, cross into the blue.” For the first time I feel like I am her father, her only father, and the sensation fills me with a rare sort of satisfaction that I doubt will ever come again.

As we finish our weekend visit and take her back to the Air Force Base to say goodbye once again, my wife fights back tears. I tell her to hold it together until Jenna gets out of sight. Her friends assemble in a tight formation and begin the march back to the dormitory. My wife dabs her face as Jenna looks back for one last glance. Our eyes meet and in that moment, all of the discovery, toil and compromise we have shared is laid to rest. For in that moment, together, we both crossed into the blue.