You title it - Part One

****I thought I was doing quite well coping with the changes that have occurred in my family over the years. Turns out, all it takes is a little reminder, and I'm back where it all began. I've attempted previously to put this all down on paper, and after reading Jennifer's post yesterday, I took them out to try and finish one. After deciding they were inadequate, I started this one, and so far it's given me what I wanted. I just can't seem to come up with a title I'm happy with.****




One autumn day, during an especially grueling beet harvest, my father had a heart attack. I was in the seventh grade that year, and he was just 42. He’d been feeling some arm pain and thought it was caused by his bum shoulder, which was constantly getting dislocated. Dad's remedy for this had always been to ram his shoulder against a door frame in our house, or to use one of his seldom-used dress belts as a sling until he had time to set it back in place.

The details of how my father actually got to the hospital are a little foggy. All I know for certain is that after school that day, I met my sisters at our town's grocery store (which was owned by our maternal grandmother); where my paternal grandparents picked us up to take us to the hospital in Fargo.

When we got there, Dad was sitting up in his hospital bed, looking a little strange in his gown and mussed hair, but wearing his usual smile and joking around with us. I don't really remember how long he was there, or glimpsing any sign of fear in him, but I was old enough to realize a heart attack was serious business, no matter how minor my parents told us it was.

Once Dad was home, Mom sat my sisters and me down to talk to us about the changes that needed to take place. According to her, Dad had three strikes against him; he was a smoker, he had a very stressful job, and he ate terribly. Mom said we were all going to have to work together to try and change each of those things, and to make it a little easier for Dad to stick to them. She told us we had to start eating healthier, which would include a lot of chicken and fish, Dad was going to have to quit smoking - and she was going to try, too - and that he'd likely have to figure something else out for a career.

I couldn't imagine any of this. There are few things that stick out more clearly in my mind than my father smoking. Every morning, my sisters and I would wake up, pick out our clothes, and start the descent down the stairs of our home. Halfway down, we'd encounter a wall of smoke, created by my father as he downed a pot of coffee with his cigarettes each and every day. Sunday and Monday evenings were strictly for watching football, and I can recall many nights spent sitting on my father's lap, hearing the click of his lighter, the sizzle of tobacco and paper being sucked aflame, and the deep inhale and exhales of that putrid smoke, while the Vikings played on the television. The only thing that interrupted the up/down motion of my father's cigarette to his mouth was the up/down motion of potato chips to his mouth. Pepsi quenched his thirst, and if ever he offered me a sip, I could always taste cigarettes and salt on the rim of the can.

Suddenly, suppers consisted of baked cod, lemon pepper chicken, and steamed vegetables without butter or salt. My mother is an amazing cook, but far too often, she would get distracted from her cooking and the meat would wind up resembling fish or chicken jerky. Where was the homemade pizza? Where was the beef stroganoff? Even the milk was different! Instead of 2%, my mother was now purchasing Calci-Skim, which tasted like chalky water to my sisters and me.

During one of these uncomfortable suppers, my father told us that he was going to quit farming. He was going to sell his half of the farming operation to his brother, Kevin, and was planning to take a job at our local Case-IH dealer working in their parts department. His eyes were so sad. Farming was the only thing my father knew. But he tried to appeal to us all by telling us that this meant he'd have more regular hours. Rather than staying home to plant, combine, or repair broken machinery, he'd now be able to take us to the lake cabin more often, make it to our sports events, and be around in the evenings if we needed help with homework.

For a while, things were looking pretty promising. Dad got the job selling parts, and seemed to like it well enough. He had always been a very quiet man, so the smile we saw on his face each day was all we had for reference. He had quit smoking, he was eating the healthy meals my mother made, and his new job certainly was less stressful than farming.

My mother only lasted a few days - maybe a week - on her path to quit smoking. When my sisters and I confronted her, she said something along the lines of, "I'm not the one who needs to do it, your father is. I was just going to try with him, but I decided I'm not ready yet." And a few months down the road, we noticed that in the evenings Dad was coming up from his woodworking room in the basement smelling like cigarettes. No one said a word. We knew how much life had changed for Dad in these last months, and though we disagreed with what he was doing, we were certainly not going to tell him so. After a few weeks of this routine, however, Jessica, Danielle, and I spoke to our mother about what was going on. She told us that we should confront our father; tell him that if he loved us and wanted to live to see us grow up, that he would quit smoking for good. Danielle, the most brazen of us girls, walked up to him in the kitchen and told him just that through tear-filled eyes. My father just stared, his own eyes filling, then took her in his arms, hugged her, and told her everything would be all right.