Little Things

Grieving about missing a family event because of work, a friend wrote me that you don’t get these times back. Someone I greatly admire, he has his priorities in right order: loved ones, all else after.

These missings happen in every life, and his comment stirred memories in me. Some gladnesses and some grievings even after long years. Spring of 1980 after a couple of weeks driving around New England and the MidWest with an Australian client, visiting American defense firms who were or might become customers, we drove across country, visiting various manufacturers in Texas and Kansas and California, a trip of about two more weeks, and when we finished I dropped him at LAX for his flight home to Sydney. My drive home to Harrisburg was fast including a hundred miles an hour one full half-day on some long, lonely highway, one overnight stop in Missouri, then straight home so as not to miss Joe’s graduation from Cumberland Valley High School. Someone in the family commented, “Tom must have a death wish.” No, it was a night that if I missed it I would never be able to get it back.

Oddly, something I remember from that month is that when my Australian friend returned home and filed his trip expense claim with his company, someone in the accounting office told him that the company would not reimburse him for his every-other-night overseas telephone calls home to his wife in Australia, only one call home a week. Enraged, he shouted, “Telephone calls? I missed making love with my wife eighteen times, who’s going to pay me for that?” He raised such hell that the company changed their policy. But he couldn’t get those nights back.

One week in May 1984 I was in Florida teaching one of my classes at the University of West Florida. The class ended Saturday noon and my usual practice was to fly home to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania immediately. But this particular Sunday I had an appointment with the vestry and search committee of Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola. At our church back home in Harrisburg, our Junior Choir was performing a musical, I think it was Joseph but may have been Godspell, and Tass was in it, my star. I struggled with the choice of what to do and still am not sure I did the best thing for my heart. Our family course in life changed and many good things flowed out of my meeting with the folks at Trinity Church that Sunday morning, but missing Tassy’s performance was agony for me then and still is three decades on. I wasn’t there to watch and hear her sing, and I can’t get it back.

When Kristen was little she was truly Papa’s Girl, and spent many nights with me, both here in Panama City and at the rectory in Apalachicola, every time a treasure and a happy memory of reading stories and hearing her say, “Papa, tell me about when you were a boy,” and being with her as she dropped off to sleep. One week in the fall of 1997 I left Linda and her mother at the airport in Birmingham for their flight to visit a friend in Sherman, Texas, then sped home to Panama City to see Kris and to take her to family night at HNES. When I arrived home, she and her mom and brother were getting in their car to go to the fair at the fairgrounds, skipping the HNES family night. I was so upset that after attending family night alone I drove on back to Apalachicola. When I walked in the door the phone was ringing. It was Malinda trying to find me. She said Kristen was sobbing because she had expected to spend the night with Papa and I was gone. I missed a night with her when she was a little girl, and I can’t get it back. It was a very little thing, but the sadness never quite goes away.

Spring 2011, one day I went to the ER at Gulf Coast, with a breathing issue, was diagnosed with pneumonia and told I should be admitted to hospital. But that evening Kristen was to graduate from Bay High, where I had graduated in May 1953, fifty-eight years earlier. I wasn’t about to miss her graduation, and refused to be admitted. It was a bit risky because I was only four months out of heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic; and then halfway through the graduation ceremony that night a violent thunderstorm came through and we got wet as the ceremony was shifted from Tommy Oliver Stadium to the gymnasium. I was there through it all, not only every flash of lightening and crash of thunder, but as my child walked, and it cannot be taken away from me.

In his prayer of benediction Sunday mornings, Father Steve says, “My friends, life is short, and we haven’t much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be quick to love, and make haste to be kind.” That prayer has become a mantra for me, a highway sign as I try to pay closer attention to what is important. Part of our family lives right here in two houses together on the same property, one facing south, the other east. We try to have lunch together on Sundays; it doesn’t always happen and when it does we have to hurry because Ray works Sunday afternoon and evening, but sometimes. Yesterday instead of going out to lunch as Malinda and Ray and Kristen had offered as Linda’s Mother’s Day gift, Linda asked that they bring fried chicken and biscuits from Po‘ Folks, take-out and let’s eat at home. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Nothing matters but the little things, and if you miss them you can’t get them back.

T in +Time