Buddy

The southwest somewhere, 1992. Trish, her parents, and a young Megan

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Regardless of our relationship with our parents or whether they have passed on or are still alive, it seems important  to look at the synchronistic dynamics  of what we, their children,  gained by choosing them as parents. Or vice versa. Each of us has vivid memories – pictographs, moments frozen in time – of these people we call mom and dad.

Carl Jung, in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, writes at length about his relationship with his mother, his psychic bonds with her, but I don’t recall much of what he said about his father. Jung’s mother was apparently the dominant force in his life as a child – and as an adult. Her archetype was the venue through which he began his psychic explorations.

For me, my dad was that archetype.  I adored my mother, she was awesome and caring and a true guiding light; but my dad understood the mystical underpinnings of my life.

I remember when I was 17, I was holed up in my room and trying to do astrology charts by hand, with a calculator, and it was such a joke since I am not math oriented. My dad stopped by and saw what I was doing and said, “Your grandfather was really into astrology.” His father, in other words, who died long before I was born. It was his way of saying he got it.

When I was maybe 12, we were living in Venezuela, and the American newspaper ran a contest: whoever wrote the best essay about why Henry Clay was a famous American would win a dog. I really wanted that dog. It was my dad who edited my essay, who made suggestions, and yeah, I won that dog, a German shepherd puppy. Never mind that I later found out Henry Clay was a guy I wouldn’t have voted for.

When my first novel was published in 1984, my mother read the book and loved it, but was mortified by the sex scenes. My dad, an accountant by profession, never commented on the sex scenes, but started an accounting record of the sales and checked it regularly against the royalty statements. He, like me, hated the cover of the book. “Your antagonist  isn’t wearing a suit and tie when he kills these women,” he exclaimed. “Not in Florida.”

When Rob and I started writing for Omni Magazine in our early freelance days, my dad read the magazine from  cover to cover and in one issue, took the magazine’s Mensa I.Q. test, which led to his  eventually being admitted to MENSA, the high I.Q. society. I don’t think my mother read too many of our articles  in OMNI. What we wrote about just didn’t fit into her belief system

But my dad read everything, even the UFO pieces.  He clipped the articles, created a scrapbook that I found the other day, stowed away on a shelf in a closet in what had been his bedroom. He understood me in a way that my mother simply  couldn’t. It wasn’t a failing on her part, but just that her particular belief system couldn’t accommodate my interests.  I don’t think my dad’s belief system could accommodate these interests, either. But he possessed something  that enabled him to explore, to ask questions, to push beyond his comfort zone.

When Megan was born, neither Rob nor I were spring chickens. But my parents used to arrive at our house on weekends to take Megan out so we would have some time to work. My dad was hunched over, my mother used a cane. But whenever they arrived, Megan knew she was headed somewhere cool and we all knew she would wear them out in a few hours. Yet, when they arrived back at the house, both of them seemed younger and more vibrant. Megan was the one who was exhausted.

“She’s sharp,” my dad said after one of those visits. “She’s curious, like you are. She’s resolute, like Rob. She’ll make you two proud.”

In the final months of his life, when he was in an assisted living facility in Georgia and I was visiting once a month, I brought him a DVD my friend Carol Bowman had sent me.  I’ve written about this before, but the story is important in that it illustrates how our beliefs can change in a split second through something we read, hear, experience.

It was about a case she was researching and 20/20 had covered it. During the three years that my dad lived with Rob, Megan and me, he probably got more than his share of New Age ideas. But after viewing the James Leininger   piece on reincarnation, the DVD Carol had sent me, he wept. “Its the most convincing material I’ve ever seen about reincarnation,” he said.

Several  months later, he released  his hold on life and passed on. He was almost 92. Today, October 20, 2011, he would have been 98. Happy birthday, Buddy, and thank you for choosing me as one of your daughters.