Wishing Dad A Happy Birthday

My father would have turned 94 yesterday. He died 27 years ago, alone, in an apartment in California. He left the area when I was a toddler. The only real contact I had with him after that was via phone and those conversations were few and far between. My Aunt Margie, who also lived in California at the time, called to tell me of his passing. She said, “Your dad didn’t have much, but do you know of anything you might want?” I knew he liked to write poetry so I asked her to send anything he may have written. A few weeks later an enormous cardboard box sat on the front stoop of my raised ranch home in East Tennessee. Inside were 14 spiral-bound journals and enough poetry and short stories to fill two oversized binders.

I may not have known my father as he lived, but I know him now. I’m certain he never intended for his only child to read his very personal thoughts. Some things between a parent and child are best kept secret, but I have read and reread his tirades, epistles and musings. He was a brilliant, yet deeply troubled man. I will not dwell on the demons that haunted him; you can read about that in my memoir if I ever get it finished. For this column, I would like to honor the man by allowing his voice to be released into the universe. So let me introduce to you the guest columnist of A Better Word, Robert Samuel Gott. This in an excerpt from one of his journals where he describes a few childhood memories:

“Who is Robert Samuel Gott? My earliest memories are of the house in the country near Crawfordsville across the road from where I was born. I remember exploring my environment but with a strange kind of sensuousness. I loved the sun, in fact, the mood of the day seemed to set my own moods. I savored the changing things and somehow was involved with them. I remember lying in fields with the warm sun overhead and being aware of the little universe of insects, dust motes and weeds around about where I lay. I think I sensed that this was all the world for certain things; ants, for instance. Somehow putting myself in the ants’ place, things were, I knew, sufficient. I recall feeling sun-warmed wood and the great iron plate between the back steps and the well which kept feet from getting muddy. In the summer, it would get so hot you couldn’t walk on it barefoot. In the winter, it would be slick to slide on. The water pump at the end of the plate often had to be primed in the summer and once it was dry, we would have to take lard cans and go to the spring over in the woods to get our water.

The women, Mother and Mamaw, used to throw dishwater off the back porch and here the soil turned white from the soap and it stunk. Some strong, flat weeds grew up from there and I remember cutting my hand on the sharp edges. We always had a small garden or two on the two acres of land we had. It was always a delight to watch them grow, but sometimes my brother and I would tear things up, chasing each other through the plantings.

It was my grandparents house and we lived there with them during the depression until my youngest uncle was killed in an auto wreck in 1937. My grandparents, grief stricken, moved to town and joined the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

I first knew of death out there when he was killed, I recall touching his waxen, plastic hands in the ruffled folds of the casket, and the artificial, overpowering smell of funeral flowers. I was too young or too inexperienced to know what death meant. I somehow related it to the humming power lines that were strung down the road. The soul, it seemed would enter that energy and be carried off down the way and dissipated to the skies which were heaven. I don’t know where this idea came from. Maybe I was watching and listening to the infinite-disappearing wires during the cortege. Things were never the same in the family afterwards. There was a gloom and solemnity overall; playing and yelling were frowned upon. The grief was profound.”

Dad often expressed himself through poems. He wrote poems about a laundromat at midnight, walking down San Pablo Avenue at dusk or seeing a dead dog in a gutter. I love how he took time to examine small, often overlooked objects. I arranged his poetry in plastic sleeves inside a large, black, three ringed binder. I keep all of his writings in a plastic bin and in the event of a house fire, that bin would be the first inanimate object to come with me after all living breathing creatures were safely removed. He wrote this poem about me and sent it to me in a letter after I reconnected with him in the early 1970s:

Gwynn Ellen

Just when the grass got its deeper green, do you remember?

We walked, you and I, out across the meadow to the stream.

Then, suddenly, you slipped your hand into mine and running

made a laughing somersault in the tufted field.

And I, chasing after, tripped and lay sprawled, laughing beside.

You found many things to laugh at that day; a broken shoelace,

the bobbing white tail of a bunny, a flickering butterfly.

After a while, we came to the stream and as we watched as the cold

water undulate over the impersonal stones, you slipped your small

warm hand into mine.

I don’t remember if I ever sent him a card or called to wish him a happy birthday. Dad, if you are looking down from the Great Beyond or listening through those humming wires, I love you and want you to know you mattered. Happy Earthly Birthday!

Gwynn Wills is a former speech therapist, certified Amherst Writers and Artists workshop Affiliate and Leader and founder of The Calliope Writers Group. After growing up in Crawfordsville, her and her husband returned several years ago.