Dad Rehab

It was a month before that Greek buffet in South Carolina, and outside the airplane window, the Nevada dessert unfolded in ripples of brown. I thought: peanut butter. It looked like peanut butter, spread by God's spatula.

I was flying to visit my dad, a man I hadn't seen in seven years, in an intensive care unit. Maybe he was dying. Maybe not. I was calm. I was wearing my brave face, one that I recognized from previous times in my life, like in 1983, when I left Missouri for good at age 22 and drove my Subaru hatchback to New York City to look for a job and start life. I was vacant. I was Scarlett O'Hara. I would think about it all tomorrow.

The last time I had seen my dad, he was drunk, passed out on the wooden floor planks of his back porch on Christmas Eve in South Carolina. Afterward, I returned to my home in University Park and wrote him a letter: Please stop bingeing like that. You are at your best when you are sober.

With the exception of two cryptic -- and I do mean cryptic -- phone calls, that had been the last time we had communicated.

I was calm. I was surrounded by revelers pumped up with the prospect of fortune on their way to Vegas. I might have been the only person on the plane with a different kind of agenda.

What that was, I was not entirely sure.

The pilot, clearly enamored of the role of cruise director, announced sites along the way -- The Rocky Mountains! The Grand Canyon! -- and our final destination with the enthusiasm of a carnival barker. "Buckle up and sit back. We're on our way to Laaaas Vegaaaas!" he said several times during the flight. The cabin erupted in cheer.

Three days earlier, I had been having a yard sale when the phone call came. A customer wanted to buy our futon and frame, which was sitting in the front yard, the clean, canary-yellow mattress cover looking perky and inviting against the brilliant green of the spring lawn. I would have bought it, too. My kids were selling lemonade and brownies.

The customer needed change. In the kitchen, I saw the message light blinking on the answering machine.

I listened to four messages from my various siblings: There's been an emergency out in Arizona -- our dad has had a stroke. Arizona? I went back outside and completed the transaction with the customer. I helped him get the futon into his truck. I sold a few more things to customers. I did not call back my siblings until late afternoon.

It turned out that one of my brothers, Joe, had been on vacation with our dad in Nevada and Arizona. Joe had never seen the Grand Canyon, and Dad had wanted to see it for a third time. Off they went without telling anyone -- which was not unusual in our family.

It turned out that Dad had had a "mini" stroke a few months earlier and hadn't told anyone -- not even his doctor. Instead, he had arranged the Grand Canyon trip.