Repercussions of Paperwork & Sand

When 9/11 happened, I was confused, and not because a national tragedy just struck America, but because my little eight-year-old self couldn’t understand why Sesame Street wasn’t on the television. I sat at the kitchen table picking at soggy Cheerios while flipping from channel to channel trying to find some sort of cartoon, but instead growing more and more frustrated that I could only find the same building on every single station. The gravity of the situation was completely lost on me and I was unable to connect the dots of what was actually on the screen and what it meant; my only concern was trying to find entertainment during my ‘before school’ routine.

It still didn’t hit me when American flags seemed to clothe the nation overnight or how patriotic songs dominated radio stations for the next couple of years after 2001. I suppose I just thought that it was getting closer to a holiday and we were all celebrating early, which was reinforced by decorative yellow ribbons and storefront signs proclaiming support of our troops. I remember my family piling into our car with our windows down while blasting “Proud to be an American” and my siblings and I trying to out-sing each other to the amusement of our parents and any unfortunate soul within earshot. There was a strange feeling of camaraderie in the air and we were all in this together, but when trying to define what “this” was, I didn’t have a clue.

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My mother called me laughing yesterday to remind me about one of the first dates she had ever had with my father. She told me that when she was younger she loved to go country line dancing, and in an effort to try to connect with my mother, my father went with her. They danced in a couple different clubs with names like ‘The Chicken Lips Saloon’ and ‘The Golden Gate Club,’ but at one part of the night my father went missing. My mom looked around at every single sweaty body in the club, but not one of them was my father.

“Now, remember, I didn’t know your father that well yet,” she began, “and we had just started dating. But I was convinced your father had left me to go outside and do drugs.”

“Dad?!” I was surprised. I hadn’t really pegged my dad as a young adult who did a lot of drugs.

“Yes. But he wasn’t doing drugs at all.”

 “What was he doing?” I asked.

“He had to step outside and get into his car to listen to some rock for about twenty minutes. Your father hated country music so much.”

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Every Wednesday belonged to my father after the divorce. My memory is scattered with warm afternoon father-daughter dates in different low-budget situations. Sometimes we would go out and get fast-food where I was allowed to play in colorful jungle gyms-only after I had finished my chicken nuggets, of course-other times we would go see a movie together that he would let me pick. Looking back now, I am so grateful for his patience and persistence in spending time with me even if it meant sitting through yet another children’s movie or with him watching me play at a local park. Wednesdays were my favorite days, and I’d spend my entire week looking forward to them.

There’s one Wednesday in particular that stands out above the rest because it changed Wednesdays thereafter. My father drove up to my mother’s house and when I jumped in the car he said I could choose absolutely any place to go. “McDonalds!” I teased, knowing he hated McDonalds, but he shook his head no and told me to pick somewhere fancier, somewhere that would make me feel very special because he had something he wanted to talk about. I thought for a minute and told him that if it wasn’t too expensive, then we should go to Red Lobster.

In taking turns cracking the outer shell to get to crab meat, my stomach began to really hurt in anticipation of what my father was going to tell me. He had never treated a Wednesday date like this and he seemed nervous and fidgety, characteristics I had never before seen in my father. After dinner he took me to a park, but we didn’t get out of the car. He turned to look at me with his gray-blue eyes that I have never stopped associating with the calm before a storm, and he told me that he got a letter in the mail from the military. He had two weeks before he was to be shipped off toward Iraq and he was going to be gone for about two years. 

My body was paralyzed with fear and suddenly 9/11 felt clear to me as to what sort of ramifications it would have on my life. I was terrified that I would lose my father in the pursuit of protecting Americans. I just wanted him to protect me, and to protect me here.

I got really sick after that Wednesday and the pain in my stomach didn’t go away for weeks. I remember my father calling me, making me promise that I really was just sick because of being sick, and not in response to being worried about him. I told him that was silly, but I wasn’t so sure.

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My father and I are both dreamers; always have been, always will be. Sometimes when I was with him on a particular weekend he would take me to a newer, developing area seeking brand new home owners for brand new homes. We would go inside a real estate office and request a tour of one of the local model homes, which they almost always happily obliged to. We would both play the game and listen to their spiel regarding the “state-of-the-art” technology that a specific room had, unique features that we should be impressed by, or the importance of certain measurements like square footage. I never quite understood what was going on, but my dad would nod his head knowingly and the agent would be pleased.

After every tour the agent would leave us for a bit to talk about what we thought without their influence. We used the time to go through every room and say what it would be if we owned the house. Some rooms were his, some mine, and some we designated as game rooms in which our friends could come over and spend time with us. My dad explained his plans for the kitchen, how he would use the space in the living room, even how he would decorate the house if given the chance. We were always playful and entertained each other; he claimed the largest restroom he could find in every house, and I would marvel at how fake everything was from the hollow television sets to the baskets upon baskets of fake fruit.

We could never afford to buy any of the homes that we saw, but hundreds of blueprints of plans for a multitude of possible lives in those houses lay scattered across my heart.

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For more on 'Repercussions of Paperwork and Sand,' please contact me at dylan.e.andretta@gmail.com