I received a text from my dad just before I woke the other day. I had never gotten a text from him before -- it had not yet become popular when he died, in the late nineties -- but this one was brief and clear, as real as any text I've ever received. "Go to Starbucks," it said.
Most of the time, he watches over me quietly. He was never one to meddle. Occasionally, though, he hovers close, makes some noise to get my attention. I got out of bed and made a mental note to listen to him. Even when he was alive, he would rarely butt in; I could forgo the drive thru Dunkin Donuts only minutes away from my new home and brave the cold, just this once.
Like the scraps of paper on which I tend to jot reminders, my mental note was nowhere to be found when I finally headed out for coffee. It didn't turn up until I returned home and dropped the still full cup of Dunkin Donuts brew on the stairs as I tried to balance several other items on my arm and save myself another trip down. Trying to hang on to the rest of my load and keep the dog from lapping up the lethal liquid as it trickled down the steps, I remembered my dad's text. This was his handiwork; a minor catastrophe just to remind me I should have listened.
I would make it to Starbucks. I made another mental note. Again, the mental note was quickly misplaced as I began to obsess about a particular phone call I awaited that would reassure me a certain pesky item of business had been worked out. I busied myself with more unpacking while I made a concerted albeit unsuccessful effort to not think about the phone call and managed to forget about the text with pretty much no effort at all. To pass the time, I attacked the stack of framed wall hangings the movers had encased in bubble wrap that was as impenetrable as a steel safe. Impenetrable as a safe, maybe, but nowhere near as secure, I realized, when I heard the tinkling of falling shards of glass that used to be my downstairs bathroom mirror. Dad, again.
This time he had orchestrated a minor catastrophe that was far more likely to get my attention, and not just because of the prospect of seven years of bad luck. It was the mirror we had purchased and hung in his honor, finally heeding his complaints about the naked and useless wall over our powder room sink. Back then I didn't necessarily lose mental notes; I just ignored them. But my husband and I had scored a funky (and, come to think of it, quite hideous) frame in a market somewhere in Mexico City, and we both knew immediately what we would put into it and where it would go. Dad, as usual, was right. It was good to have a mirror in the downstairs bathroom, and the hideous frame and the story of our adventure in acquiring it amused him.
The broken mirror certainly got my attention, at least momentarily, and, again, I promised myself I would make it to Starbucks, even though I was no longer in the mood for coffee. My back hurt from mopping up coffee that had managed to drip its way down every step (thank goodness I didn't get a large) and blood continued to flow from the place where my hand had encountered a particularly sharp edge of glass. What I really needed was a stiff drink.
I remembered the elusive mental note. I thought about my dad, and I thought about how I always knew he would make things turn out all right. He was my fixer, my safety net. He was the guy waiting with open arms for me in the pool, his dark hair slicked back after he dove in and swam under water the entire length of the pool and back while I teetered on the edge, marveling at his power and his grace. He would coax me gently but he would wait as long as it took, and he would catch me, and the water would feel strangely warm as long as his arms were wrapped around me. And we would race down the length of the pool and back, and he would stay just close enough to me to let me know that he was not so much winning the race as leading me in.
He must have seen me teetering the other day when he sent me that text. Go to Starbucks. It wasn't that he thought I needed caffeine; he just wanted to remind me he is there, waiting for me in the pool. And as long as he is there, everything will somehow turn out okay. All I have to do is listen. So I went to Starbucks. Nothing spilled. Nothing else broke. And the phone call came almost immediately, reassuring me that the latest pesky item of business had been worked out.
My new home is taking shape. As I continued to unpack yesterday, I stumbled upon a DVD my brother had sent me years ago with home movies from our earliest days. I fast forwarded to a random frame. My father was holding me tight while my brother jumped up and down at his feet, just itching to torment me. I made what appeared to be a half-hearted effort to squirm free. Even then I somehow knew my dad would make sure everything turned out all right.
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