“Old as she was, she still missed her daddy
sometimes.” — Gloria Naylor
When the sun begins to drop behind houses and
buildings each day, I find myself looking out through the windows of my past
and thinking about my daddy.
It is late afternoon, mid-October, 1955. A nippy breeze drops
down to settle for the night in our small South Carolina town while I gossip with
girlfriends in a neighbor’s yard.
Smoke climbs over the
rooftop of the Brantley’s house making my nose sting from the pungent smell of
burning leaves. Like other things I scarcely notice, the nose-sting and the
smell of burning leaves occupies a rightful position in my young life.
Down the street,
my friend Linda sweeps the driveway to earn her dollar a week allowance. Her
daddy rakes leaves and stuffs them in a wire mesh basket to be burned Saturday
morning when he is off from work and his teenage boys are not at football
practice.
My friends and I
talk about homework assignments, the cute boy who just moved from Charleston,
the hot, new lipstick color, my brand new Wejuns, and the upcoming Sadie Hawkins
Day Dance on Friday night. We take turns talking, and we flap our hands a lot.
Pretty soon I
will hear the sound for which I’ve been unconsciously listening. No, it’s not
the ring of a cell phone interrupting our girly conversations. It is much too early
in the century for microchips and fiber optics to govern our lives. We have
only one basic black telephone with no dials and no touch-tones. I’m not even
allowed to use the phone until I’ve finished all my homework and practiced the
piano for an hour.
Upon hearing the
anticipated sound, my friends and I stop talking and hand gesturing. We listen
for the second sound we know will follow soon. Sure enough, it does.
My Daddy is
whistling for me to come home for supper.
Like all the fathers
in our neighborhood, Daddy’s whistle is unique, used only for calling my
brother and me. He puts two fingers in his mouth, presses down hard, rolls up
his tongue and then blows through his fingers. The sound he makes has its own
timbre, slightly rising as it reaches its final “ah-whew.” It is loud enough to
be heard a block away.
I recognize the
whistles of other fathers, but it is my daddy’s distinctive sound that I
respond to as quickly as I can. He whistles only twice, allowing a full ten
minutes for my brother and/or me to stop what we’re doing and come home to get
washed up for supper.
The crisp autumn weather will
put Mama in the mood to make a pot of chili and a full steamer of rice. (South
Carolinians seldom eat a meal without rice.) With our supper, my brother and I will
drink milk in quart bottles left at our door before the morning sun came up.
If any chili remains in our
bowls, it will be sopped up with thick, crusty bread, lathered with Aunt Polly’s
country butter -- a sweet, slightly sour taste that Parkay can only dream about.
After supper,
Mama and Daddy will go into the living room to sit quietly and read the day’s paper.
My brother and I will go to the kitchen to wash and dry the dishes and try not
to kill or permanently disfigure each other.
It is a ritual, an
evening regimen played out in our little family and it’s how we close the door
on another day. We say grace before eating supper; my brother washes the dishes
and I dry; Mama and Daddy read the paper, and it all begins with Daddy’s
whistle.
There is not a
doubt in my mind that cell phones are a far better form of communication
between parent and child. But nothing can replace the warm feeling I get when
my nose starts to sting from the smell of burning leaves, when I grab a sweater
to ward off the afternoon chill, or when a nip in the air tells me to kick off
my sandals and put on sensible shoes. My soul then nudges me to cook a pot of
chili.
At those times,
I ache to hear that special, unmatched whistle that came from my daddy’s lips.
I know I can’t ever go back to that time, but if I could, I’d let him know how
much that small piece of everyday life meant to me then, and means to me now.
