Charming, but single

My Daddy – and no, I do not always call him “Daddy,” just when I’m being sappy or cute or when my car is making a weird noise – loves music. My parents liked to grill a lot of on the weekends when I was younger (they still do, actually), and almost every one of these weekend dinner memories is fantastic, with a soundtrack like The Eagles or Santana or Steely Dan or Pat Metheny or Peter Frampton or whomever struck my Dad’s fancy at the time. (And really great food, like beef and chicken kabobs, grilled sausage and juicy hamburgers – each time my Dad grills burgers, he goes around to everyone and says, “Who wants their buns toasted? Buns? Toasted? Come on, sit right here, I’ll toast your buns.” I still giggle like I am seven years old when he does this gag.)

My family is not perfect. We have our disagreements. We fight. We disappoint each other. But I think the reason that I have so many fond memories of growing up and actually have fun spending time with my family is because, at the very heart of it all, we enjoy each other’s company. Maybe not always and sometimes not enough, but as long as you have that core love of another person (or group of people), an appreciation of their quirks and a desire to remain connected to them, most negative or annoying things quickly pass.

One bad habit I inherited from my Dad – and there are many, because we are very much alike, all stubborn and talkative – is listening to the same songs or albums over and over again. And not once or twice. No, I’m talking about 10 or 12 times in a row. He almost lost his life once for playing “The Way” by Fastball a good six times in a row on the car stereo before we were even able to get a half hour out of town on a family vacation. My Discman blissfully saved me from this one hit wonder on repeat. (The soundtracks to most family vacations were Jimmy Buffet and Billy Joel. We’d fly down the highway in a tan Astro van listening to cassette tapes of “Turnstiles” and “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” that my Dad painstakingly labeled with their names and full track lists, in his boxy engineer-like handwriting.)

For several months, Dad was obsessed with John Hiatt’s live album “Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan.” He played it almost every weekend when he was grilling. And it is truly a fantastic album full of great tracks – “Have A Little Faith In Me” and “Lipstick Sunset” and “Drive South.” Years ago, he spent several weekends installing and wiring speakers outside to the stereo system inside so he could listening to music while he grilled outside or worked on one of the cars, and the music would continue inside as he went back and forth getting utensils or something to drink. My fondest memories of my Dad are him bursting inside through the door in the living room, singing, in his goofy Dad voice, “It breaks my heart to see those stars, smaaashing a puurfectly goood geee-tar,” while he strummed his air guitar or handed my Mom a tray full of grilled meat.

When he is singing, my Dad squints his eyes into small slits and curves his neck to the right and tilts his head, listening intently to the song, completely lost in the music, momentarily unaware of work or bills or anything else but really hearing the song, breathing it into his lungs and then back out again. (One of my other favorite memories is how my parents used to let us have “candlelight” dinners sometimes on Saturday nights. My brother and I loved this – our favorite menu was steak, grilled mushrooms and baked potatoes. And we’d all sit in near darkness, with candles on the table, their flickering casting the only light, and eat. We felt so special and grown-up doing this and my parents always indulged us.)

My Dad’s favorite song, and the one that always makes me think of him, is “Feels Like Rain” by John Hiatt. It is a beautiful song about a romantic relationship and I know that he loves it because behind his playful demeanor is a very sensitive man who loves his wife, his family and being outdoors. (Also he named his first fishing boat “Feels Like Rain,” and I can think of no higher endorsement of or honor for a song than this.) He spends time out at his fishing camp, down in the far far end of the bayou, where you can only get by boat, where there isn’t running water. And thank God, because it is so still and peaceful that if everyone could get out there and put up with using a bucket instead of a toilet, no one would want to do anything but sit out there in the serenity. My parents will build an on-land camp out on the coast when they retire and they’ve made it clear that they will be packing up a Jeep and going down there for months at a time, driving into town for groceries every two weeks and my Dad will fish, my mom will sit in a rocking chair with hot tea and read and in the evenings they will go on boat rides alone after they eat fresh-caught fish. (Also, should I have children, they can go to camp Grandpa and Grandma for two weeks each summer and we can all visit on the weekends, I have been told.)

And I can imagine my Dad bursting through the door to the camp one evening while my Mom is making a salad, extending a hand that’s holding a platter of grilled redfish, his eyes squinted and his head tilted to the side, singing that “We ain’t never gonna make that bridge tonight, across the Pooontchaaaartraaaain …” One part silly and another part completely serious.

If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d pay off my student loans first. They’d want me to.

And then I’d buy them a house on pilings on the coast, with a porch that stretches around each side, a place to dock the boat and a good roof to protect them when it Feels Like Rain.