I could be gone a while. You’re sure about this?”
“Mom, you are leaving me to hang with Dad, not with a tyrannical toddler. Go to your first candidate meeting, would you? I’ve been here a couple weeks. If you aren’t going to trust me now, you never will.”
“It isn’t trust, sweetie. I am just a doting mother and wife. What can I say?” She is flush with excitement. I wonder how many years she has dreamed of becoming more involved, more influential for the sake of what she believes in—education, equality, fair housing, and funding for kids.
“Don’t forget your special lunch. Josiah and I packed it this morning.” I hand her a bright red lunch box covered with stickers. The night before, Marcus asked the kids to decorate white labels with campaign slogans or reasons why Mom should win a seat on the city council.
As she reads these for the first time, she puts her hand to her mouth. I can tell she is about to cry.
“Nobody wants a tardy and bawling councilwoman.”
With a blue scarf draped around her shoulders and her lunch box in hand, Mom kicks open the screen door and walks out into the mild heat of the late morning sun.
“I’d vote for her,” Dad says as he approaches me with careful, slow steps. His favorite trick of sneaking up on people is thwarted by his illness.
“Did you do your exercises with Fabio?” Dad’s therapist, Bernie, doesn’t really resemble Fabio other than in the long hair. But the lean and slightly bookish Bernie seemed flattered by the moniker I gave him when we met.
“All done. Watch.” Dad does a partial jumping jack for effect.
“I’m not sure how to interpret that move, Dad, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Do you have the educational tape of your choice with you?”
“All set up in the study room. Shall we?”
I loop my arm through his and we hold our heads up high. We invented this formal walk so it looks less like I am holding him up and more like he is escorting me around the neighborhood.
“I do believe you are gaining some bicep muscle, Father.”
We enter the empty room and each take a seat at a desk. I have fresh notepads and sharpened pencils ready for use. As part of our deal, Dad has not told me what we will be studying during his time of recovery. As he shuffles at a turtle’s pace over to the old boom box setting on a bookshelf, I can only hope we will not be learning to tango.
“Here’s lesson one.”
“Hit it, DJ Daddy.”
Through speakers torn and splattered with paint from past uses, the first words of our learning adventure fill the space between me and my father.
“Bonjour,” says a rich female voice.
“Bun-jer,” repeats my father with an intentionally horrific accent.
I take the crisp first sheet of paper on my pad, wad it up, and toss it at him. “French? This is what you have selected to make use of our study time?” I talk over the seductive voice as it works through various ways of greeting fellow countrymen.
“You said I could choose. This is what I choose.”
“Do you speak any language other than English?”
“Non.” My father says with pronounced nasal effect.
“Wouldn’t Spanish be more useful?” I throw my hands up in the air. I was all prepared to learn carpentry, Latin cooking, or astronomy.
As I am about to say “What on earth are you going to do with French?” my father quietly says, “Your mother has always wanted to go to Paris.”
From that point on, I learn to shut my mouth—fermé la bouche—and pay attention to the life lessons my father is trying to teach me.