Condensing a Life to Three Short Pages

Yesterday I took a day off work to finally write my father's obituary.

He died on Jan. 11, so, yes, I didn't get on this immediately. But since he was a business owner, I oddly feel he would understand the delay. Whenever something came up in the family, he immediately consulted his planner to see what else was going on that day.

I took that day off because I had eight pages of material (all chronicled by him) detailing his education and work history, so I really needed a day to focus on just that. Somehow, I managed to condense all that information to three short pages, which is long by most obituary standards and too short to really tell the stories behind those accomplishments.

As I wrote his obituary, I learned my father was a creative and forward thinker, which I didn't know to the precise details until yesterday because he rarely talked about himself.

Now about this photo.

My sister recently posted this photo on social media. I have hazy memories of this particular scene and clear sharp memories of all the elements in it, especially feeling the tug of my kite in my hands under the large eternal sky. 

We lived at 2108 Belmont Ave. in Joliet, which looks very different today. But this photo was taken back in 1964 when the space felt wide and very, very open, mostly due to the lack of trees and houses in this very new development.

I remember my father teacher me how to fly a kite, how to let the string out, how to steer the kite, and I remember this particular kite.

I remember playing in that sandbox.

I remember the white car.

I remember the house before he installed the privacy fence and the metal shed that people thought was a barn on the first glance - but every house must have a shed, he used to say.

I remember my sister as a baby.

The side of the house had an outside thermometer and the mercury measured more than 100 degrees that summer. 

I recalled being amazed that the temperature had reached all the way to one hundred when my mother opened the side door and announced it just as I, who was playing outside, came traipsing up the concrete driveway.

If you had visited this house a few years later, you would have seen the fence, the shed, the rock garden, the honeysuckle hedges on both sides, and the lush green grass without a single dandelion.

You might hear him call you over to him to see a large green grasshopper (large brown grasshoppers were scary) that he had caught in his work gloves and you'd watch in delight as he fed it a blade of grass and then taught you to do the same. Seriously, you really haven't lived until you've hand-fed a grasshopper.

He spent most weekends in good weather with yard work. Late in the afternoon, he'd take a break and sit on the back porch with one ice cold beer. And sometimes, I could persuade him to remove his thumb, a amazing trick to a young child.

We had three wading pools in our lifetime at that house (we moved to New Lenox in the fall of 1974): a round inflatable we used a few times in the front yard, a rectangular one with a hard plastic triangular seats in all four corners (I remember him taking it out of the box assembling it, and I remember my excited anticipating of getting into that large pool), and (later) a three-foot wading pool that sat where the white car is sitting the summer before we moved.

That end of the driveway where the concrete meets the grass was also the place where he'd set up the charcoal grill on weekends. And I got to help shuck the fresh sweet corn.

I often tell my children that time doesn't move for me. I say this because some people might say this happened a long time ago.

But it doesn't feel like a long time ago.

It doesn't feel that long ago at all.

If All Goes Well...

 ...this will be my last blog post until Monday.

For the last nine months, Timothy and I have tried to go to North Carolina to see family, including Sarah and my grandson Lucas and especially my father, whom I've not seen seen since my last trip in August in 2019 and is not doing well.

My father, Loran Scho0nbachler,was working up until the shutdown. He is now in a nursing home with a number of health issues, including Alzheimer's.

If you see a blog post tomorrow, it means we canceled again. Please send up good thoughts that we will be up, up, up, and away in the morning.

Now in the meantime, if you're really looking for something to read or make, please explore the BryonySeries website.

You will find plenty of good books to read and plenty of activities on our calendar of events, which I'm planning to update today.

Three books are not (yet) listed in our store, but you can buy them from Amazon.

These are.

Cornell Dyer and the "Mistical" Being

Cornell Dyer and the Calcium Deficient Bones

Call of the Siren.

And if you read a book, we can chat about it when I return.

Over coffee - virtual, if necessary.

Smidgen of Normalcy

I had a very lovely, quiet day for most of Saturday.

Timothy and Daniel helped Joshua and Amber and the kids move into a new home.

Rebekah played something called a switch.

And I finished the formatting for my werewolf novel Lycanthropic Summer, so Rebekah can send for the proof copy today.

About mid-afternoon, Sarah, who lives in Raleigh, called me. She was on her way to my parents' house. She'd called an ambulance for my father.

And that changed the tone of most of the weekend (He went home yesterday afternoon, and he's doing OK).

Sunday I worked, and I spent a good portion of Monday editing for a client. And that was in addition to helping to manage care for my Dad.

But on Monday morning, I experienced a slight return to normalcy.

Timothy had to paint a room at Joshua's house.

And I went, too, to celebrate the joy of the beautiful new home with family I really haven't seen (except for the surprise visit) since the pandemic began.

Now we all wore masks.

And we stayed six feet or more away from each other. That's why this photo at the end of this blog is slightly blurry.

Riley did sneak a hug around my legs. But she's four. And she did have her mask on.

No one was coughing or sneezing.  And I did spend a portion of those two hours outside in the driveway on the telephone to the hospital.

Still, it was the first testing of the masking and social distancing strategy with anyone outside of where I live.

Hopefully, the experts are right about this.

If they're wrong, well, I might be writing a different sort of post down the road.

Before we went home, we participated in a quick drive-by for Labor Day at the nursing home where Ron lives.

He was "not there" and didn't even respond to his name.

But we got to see him, and we are thankful to staff who arranged the event.

Historically, I have always worked on Labor Day. For me, it's important I honor the day by using the skills God has given me.

My main gift is the ability to communicate.

This weekend, I used it at work, for a client, with my family, and by providing many hours worth of information to Sarah and four different care providers.

No one grilled out. But Sunday night, Daniel surprised everyone by ordering pizza.

So it's all good.

Father's Day Throwback: A Tribute to my Dad

I worked this past weekend so I didn't reach out to my own father on Father's Day until Sunday night.

Naturally, no one was at home, so I left a message.

This post is from 2013 when I had a similar experience, and the photo was from our last dinner in Raleigh last year when Rebekah and I visited Sarah and my parents.

This post is as true today as it was seven years ago.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

So I Went to Visit my Father on Father's Day....

...and neither he nor my mother was home. This was unusual because, as a rule, my parents don't recognize Mother's Day and Father's Day to each other (as they are not each others' parents).

A quick back-up. Father's Day, for me, had already been full. I'd woken up pretty early this morning to work on a story, and left for church an hour early since Timothy was cooking a brunch today at the Renaissance Center, and I didn't have access to a vehicle. On those vehicleless Sundays, we ride with our assistant pastor, who needs to be at church early. Once there, I talked to Sarah (and got waylaid by Timothy's godfather who wanted me to chant the Epistle during liturgy), attended a Father's Day brunch in the church hall, came home to write a second story, and then helped Daniel finish a Father's Day brunch at the house for my oldest son, who had both his sons with his that day. So when Christopher went to bring one of the boys home (We get to keep the older one for another week), I suggested leaving a bit early to see my dad, as he is humbly proud of having lived long enough to see his great-grandkids.

Still, I (wrongly) assumed that my seventy-nine, very healthy, and still working parents had decided to take advantage of a very nice Sunday by going out to dinner.

Furthermore, as my father tends to keep his cell phone on only during business hours, I (again, wrongly) knew that a quick call would not disturb his dinner, but would, in fact, go straight to his voice mail, where he could enjoy it Monday morning.

I dialed. It rang, and my father picked it up on the fifth ring. I'm not certain where my mother was today--she's employed at a gift shop, so maybe working?--because my father was mostly certainly NOT at dinner.

He was about an hour away, conducting, of all things, a home inspection. Not many people my age (I'll be 52 on July 15) can boast about having parents as "young" as mine.

So who is my father?

   *  He's a retired architect, one that built up an impressive business. This included buying a large New Lenox church and converting it into his and other rented office space while maintaining the integral "feel" of the church (stained glass windows, etc.). He held an exclusive contract for all the life safety work on all the Joliet schools. He performed various government projects. He's now a consultant to other architects and a certified home inspector.

   *  He's the oldest of two sons, born to a prison guard (who walked to work) and his wife. He grew up in Napanoch, New York, a hamlet in Ulster County. The 2000 census reported a population of 1168.

   *  He's a Notre Dame graduate, one who rented from a family in South Bend while going to school, skipping meals when cash funds were tight. He didn't attend his college graduation because he had graduated early and had no desire to travel back for it.

   *  He taught me to ride a two-wheeler.

   *  He read every night to my sister and me, him and the book in the middle, and she and I snuggled into his sides.

   * He gave us piggy back rides to bed before dumping us into our respective abodes of slumber.

   *  He paused while cutting the grass to show me how to catch and feed the enormous green grasshoppers that leaped across our yard.

   *  He faithfully mowed every week and pulled out the dandelions. He installed a rock garden and a metal shed in the backyard.

   *  He put up a sandbox, set up sprinklers for my sister and me to run through on hot summer days, assembled and filled wading pools.

   *  He frequently took us to Highland Park--which backed up to our yard--and pushed us on the swings. Moreover, he drove us there, as the playground portion was nowhere near our house.

   * He could link his hands together to form a "swing" with his arms as the chains.

   *  He fooled us into thinking he could remove his thumb, a trick I've showed to everyone of my six children.

   * When we went swimming at the long closed Michigan Beach in Joliet--where a neighbor (deceased) was manager--he taught me the basics of swimming, dog paddling and dead man floating. He also let my sister and me using his back as a "diving board."

   *  He played old Bing Crosby singalong records and taught us songs: Mairzy Doats, KKKKaty, Long Long Ago, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, O Where O Where Has My Little Dog Gone, Take Me Out To the Ball Game, Daisy Daisy Give Me Your Answer Do. These are songs I sang to my children while pushing them on swings, at bedtime, or while driving from one destination to another.

   *  When my sister and I were playing dolls with our cardboard kitchen sink, metal table and chairs, and plastic food to go with our plastic dishes, he'd surprise us by donning his Tiny Tim wig and showing up as a guest. He'd sit at the table, "eat" the plastic food, and play a plastic "badminton" guitar to entertain us.

   *  He spanked us when we needed it. I remember my last spanking. I was seven. I don't remember the infraction, but I do remember thinking seven was too old for a spanking. My father apparently thought so, too, because I never received another.

   * He showed me that peanut butter and bacon go well together on hot, buttered toast.

   *  When I was eleven, and he rented his first office space in downtown Joliet, 325 E. Cass Street, the former Relyea building (and George Relyea is now deceased), he brought me along to help him paint it: the reception/secretarial area, his private office, the conference room, the drafting room, the hall where all the files were kept, and the room where the blueprint machine was.

   *  At fifteen, when the asthma I'd suffered from my entire life was finally diagnosed, my father drove me into Joliet from New Lenox (where we now lived) each week for my allergy shots. When I was old enough to drive, he made sure I knew how to get there.

   *  My first job at sixteen (the previous three years worth of babysitting didn't count) was as a file clerk in his office. On nights he needed extra specs for a job copied, we'd stay downtown after hours, eat in a restaurant, and go back to work.

   *  While working for him, my father allowed me to tear apart and restructure his blueprint filing system and create a library of reference materials. When I was in college and received an "A" for an organizational communication class, he hired me to conduct a communication audit for his business.

   *  When my three oldest children were preschoolers, and my father still owned the former church, he would alternate them as his office cleaning partners. They would help empty wastebaskets for a quarter, some old keys, or the fun of copying their preschool pictures on the Xerox machine.

   * Today, he helps out with rides, He's driven me to and accompanied me on various, in-person assignments. He occasionally takes my two youngest children to junior college or to their job. For a year (just a couple years ago), he was coming into the distribution center at midnight to help us roll papers.

   *  He read all three BryonySeries books when they were drafts. Visage was his favorite. He said he picked it up one morning, and never moved until he completed it. He created multiple displays for BryonySeries events, and even wrote a complete and bound "home inspection" for Simons Mansion.

   * He reads extensively and can speak intelligently on many different subjects.

So how did those kaleidoscope experiences enrich my life? I learned industry, the joy of reading for reading's sake, innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, self-discipline, and decent parenting skills.

I can only hope my own children will remember me for half as much. Happy Father's Day, Dad!