The Party

In the late spring following my father's death, we held a party in our house. This was no ordinary party. During my father's lifetime he rarely allowed anyone outside the immediate family into our house. I could say he was a shy man; I could say he was a distrustful, controlling man; but I can't say he was a bad man. My father's heart bled for his children; my father's heart bled for animals; my father's heart reached out weekly to his old coffee shop cronies. But his home, my father's home, was his self-fortified castle.

I was in my late thirties when my father died;all of us siblings were in charge of our own lives. With my father gone, my mother was living alone and finally becoming her own person. The house was filled with her music and her occasional books and her gossip magazines. She began redecorating and reinventing the house, room by room. The idea for a party festered slowly. My father's sister, Aunt Susie, had been contacted after his death. My father and his sister had had some argument way back when and hadn't spoken in over twenty years. She took the news in a nonchalant, uncaring manner, until a few months later when her own husband passed away. Being alone, she welcomed my company. Being alone, she began to share more family history and pictures with this extremely curious niece. Shouldn't our aunt be invited to the party?

Then there was my mother's older, bossy sister, Davina, and our two cousins, Billy and Nancy. Unlike Aunt Susie and Uncle Bob, who had visited us when we were small children, they had never been to our house. My dear Uncle Bill, my mother's brother, must also receive an invitation. I had fond memories of his sitting down at our piano and playing thrilling, dramatic piano chords by ear. With our now deceased maternal grandparents, he had come to our house and inevitably entertained us with his dashing debonair attire and wit.

To be honest, it's not that no one came to our house. But if they did so, the time spent was brief. My best friend Neilani came over once or twice, but the disapproving expression on my father's face was evident...he thought Neilani was a bad influence. We did sneak off to the two Beatle movies together, and we did eat ice cream and dance on our small city's sidewalks, and we did talk an awful lot about the meaning of life. She was indeed my best growing up influence. So Neilani was invited, and our next door neighbor Lorraine and her married daughter, Denise, my sister's childhood buddy, were invited.

My brother and I were by then living in Oregon, and my sister was in Arizona, so party planning happened long distance. We discussed party foods: my mother's favorite Scottish trifle and a jello mold, macaroni salad and vegetable/cracker dips, perhaps a home-baked apple pie. There would be coffee, tea and punch and, if we dared, a little wine. My mom would be able to use her best table cloths and dishes. She could polish the silverware she received for her wedding and get out the wine glasses. She could pick flowers from my father's beloved garden.

We flew in ahead of the party date to stay with my mother. The old house was spruced up beyond recognition, and the smile on my mother's face broader than I have ever seen. We had a huge living room, thanks to my father who took our small inheritance from the grandparents and had an addition built with a beautiful brick fireplace, bay windows facing his garden, and sliding glass doors to a patio. I know that it gave my father joy, during the times he sat there in his leather chair. And for this party, the spacious coziness would be perfect.

And it WAS perfect. Everyone came. Our living room was full of eating and drinking, laughter and shared memories, heart-felt grieving and renewed vitality. I spoke with my much older cousins and discovered life events I never knew about; my uncle, perched professionally on the piano bench, was splendid in his velvet jacket and red tie; my father's aunt was, like her brother, a loquacious storyteller. I stood in the middle of the room and watched my mom interacting with her sister and brother. They all looked so much alike. I noticed Lorraine give a warm hug to her daughter Denise as she spoke with my friend Neilani, who in turn, glanced my way and gave me a knowing grin. We've made it to adulthood, she said silently. My brother, who had his plate piled high with treats, was asking Lorraine about her son, Bruce, a friend of his who couldn't be with us. Our first-class, superbly dressed sister was marveling at the exuberant conversations and reveling as a hostess.

This was no ordinary party. When people walked through our front door, they transformed our house from one of sometimes isolated loneliness to one of joyous celebration. They filled the dysfunctional cracks and creaks with a soothing, happy, slurping buzz. A tidal wave of new energy rose from carpeted floor to dusty ceiling. Everyone hugged; everyone thanked my mother and us for one of the best of times. Our party had been a success.

© 2012

Soldier Boy

Ettrick Alvo Koch, came home from World War II to bury his German-born father, who was killed by a hit and run drunk driver. Nearing the end of high school, I began to understand how this war, and his experiences fighting on the front lines in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, buried the gentle, sensitive man who would be my father. I am a baby boomer, born a few years after my father’s return. He met my mother before the war at the Glendale Star newspaper office in California. She was petite and well groomed, with dark hair and blue eyes. He was six feet tall with, according to my mother, a John Wayne swagger and charm. Unfortunately, my mother was engaged to marry her high school sweetheart, Rex. When my father came home with broken bones and malaria, my mother visited him in the hospital. During the four years my father was on the front lines, my mother had married, been unhappy, divorced, and given up her first-born.

I realize now my parents’ union was based on a foundation of deep sadness and loss. They created a marriage and family to rescue themselves. The heart of my father was family; this was all he talked about: how important it was for a family to stick together against the dog-eat-dog world. With the help of his father-in-law, he built a solid cement wall around our entire backyard. Our corner lot with the three-bedroom home became his kingdom and we children became part of his spiraling, dysfunctional web. When my siblings and I were young, he was a loving, devoted man. As we inched towards adolescence, all the anger compressed inside gushed out. Dad wanted home, family, security, understanding and sympathy for his pain. But the older I got, the unhappier my father became.

Beginning in elementary school, Dad often took us to the local rifle range for target practice. He was an excellent marksman. While we excitedly tried to shoot and make a mark anywhere on the target, Dad consistently hit a bull’s eye.

My father started sharing war stories. His favorite, the one about the tomatoes, began during a soupy black night. His 30^th Infantry was slogging through the European countryside. Mortar fire echoed off the hillsides. As my dad relived these moments, the cigarette, dangling at the corner of his mouth, lit up the raging purpose in his eyes. We leaned in close to my father and couldn’t wait to hear what happened next.

It had rained the day, before and my father shivered as he hiked through the field. His pack was heavy, his gun loaded, his nerves on survival mode. As his feet squished through the dark dirt, he stopped and looked down. He noticed something red beside his mud splattered boots. He reached and touched a gooey, soft roundness. To his amazement he was walking through a tomato garden. Lagging behind the other soldiers, my dad picked tomatoes and shoved them one by one in his mouth. The juice rolled down his grinning, weary face. He picked more tomatoes and shoved them into his pack. Soon dad’s comrades turned and saw dad’s tomato stained smile and the tomatoes he carried to share with them. It became a tomato feast with everyone happily stuffing themselves. Dad always said this was one of the best days of his life.

While telling this story, my father became young again. Though mentioning The War brought an intense and nervous gravity to my father’s demeanor, the tomato story revealed his humorous optimism. No matter how much we plagued our father to tell us more war stories, he never told stories about shooting or killing. To hear Dad talk about The War we would never have known that he fired a gun. He only spoke about the awful rations, the closeness of he and his buddies, the time he stood at attention and saw Winston Churchill stroll by. Mostly, he expressed amazement at his survival.

As I entered adulthood, I saw the damage that The War had done to my father’s soul. He worked hard as a self-employed gardener, came home, showered, put on a suit and constantly talked to himself in the bathroom mirror: “Goddamn bastards…world’s gone to hell...what am I to do?” Before becoming a gardener, he had worked for the Los Angeles Water and Power Company. There, he also occasionally talked to himself. He was a harmless, lonely, disillusioned young man who had difficulty transitioning from soldier to family man. His co-workers became brutal rather than supportive. For his self-talk, they had him committed to a stay at a mental hospital. As a child I wondered what had happened to my father when he was gone for several weeks. After a series of involuntary shock treatments, my father was deemed “normal,” and allowed to come home. But with his unemployment, we were poverty-stricken. My mother had my two-year-old brother taken care of by her parents during the week so she could begin working at our local savings and loan.

This hospital incident was a turning point in my father’s life. His brain had been cracked open, and the result was despondency and periodic violent outbursts. Through the years his work with the earth as a gardener gave him back the grounding he had lost. But he was never the same. His humor, his storytelling flattened. Unhappiness swelled and put a depressive damper on our household. Whenever the truck pulled into the driveway at the end of his work day, we anxiously cringed, not knowing his mood.

War movies, preaching and storytelling soothed my father. He desperately wanted to love his children and to give them “a better life” but he didn’t know how. As we left to lead our own lives, he frantically clung to us. He would show up at my college apartment unannounced to take me out to dinner. I would dutifully sit with him and soak up the sadness he exuded. But I was entering my rebellious phase and wanted little to do with this depressed man.

After a year studying abroad, I remember my father meeting me at the Los Angeles Airport at three in the morning. His tan, weather-worn face was wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his formerly tall, thin body was overweight and bent. As he timidly walked towards me, I felt a stab of emotional pain: my father had gotten old! His shyness in sharing his feelings was pushed aside in the predawn darkness as he told me, “I missed you so much.”

By his sixth decade, Dad's softened anger allowed him to accept his humble fate. He loved nothing more than working in his garden or on his house. He remained the king of his small kingdom, but now he treated Mom with respect. He frequently told me how much he loved her and how much he loved me. His life had betrayed him, and he never fully understood why. Although he died before the Gulf War, the War on Terror and the Iraqi invasion, he never knew what to make of Vietnam.

We placed his ashes in a small garden at Forest Lawn. I cried more than I have ever cried before. I cried for the young, sensitive, intellectually curious boy my father lost and I cried for the mellowed, older gentleman he became. The one object I wanted was his Bible. He never attended church, but this Bible became his memory book. Inside were collected magazine and newspaper clippings, pictures of us children, report cards, personal ramblings and a few school essays we had written. I opened this treasured book and carefully unfolded the brown stained articles.They included statements about the perils and futility of war:

“…Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain, is the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on his own species.” From The Philosophy of William James

“…The 3^rd Infantry Division (my father’s division) had suffered more casualties than any other division in the entire American Army. You don’t celebrate things like that.”

My father had double-underscored the last line above: “You don’t celebrate things like

that.”

When, in the early eighties, I visited Russia as part of a Women’s Journey for Peace, we were welcomed at a special ceremonial luncheon by the Mayor of Minsk. “I met and fought with American soldiers and they became my friends, my compatriots. I will never forget them and I hope we will eventually learn the lessons of war.”

Emotionally responding to the Mayor's simple words, and without realizing what I was doing, I stood up. The Mayor smiled and leaned forward. “My father fought in The War,” I said, “and I am touched by your words and honored to be here.”

Stepping down from the podium, the Mayor reached into his pocket. “Your father was a brave man.” He shook my hand and handed me a small silver bison. “This,” he said, “is my city’s symbol of courage and bravery and I give it to you as a token of remembrance.”

The silver bison stands on the bookshelf as I write these words. Tears flow as I relive this experience, and as I reread a typed note written in response to one of my high school essays and tucked inside my father’s Bible:

B10 English, Students Victoria, 15 and Dad, 45. Subject: Simple Enjoyment

Our Blanket of Stars

…and the sky of blue mist with its hem of woven stars that often seems so wonderful to you and me, Dad.

We find endless beauty as we look up and lift our eyes to a golden sunset…a fluff of clouds…a thunderhead of majestic importance…how fast the sky’s expression changes with the power of a storm.

I enjoy your phrase, ‘hem of woven stars,’ Victoria. The sky is a magic lighted highway…a parade of lasting beauty. I even enjoyed it during the war…with bombs bursting in air…I looked to see if ‘our’ sky was still there.

Let’s be thankful this miracle of miracles has been enjoyed by you and me.

© 2011