Here's the conversation I would have had with my dad this morning, if he hadn't died last week:

Me: "Hi Dad!"

Dad: "Hey, old man!  You're all safe back in New York?"

Me: "Yeah, got in just before two last night.  Made it in just under nine hours!  Eight hours and fifty-nine minutes, actually."

Dad: "My God, you're a wild man."

Me: "Yeah, I dunno, Google Maps says it should take eight hours and thirty-two minutes, but they've never been stuck behind a slow truck on Route 3."  (My dad probably wouldn't have had much of a response to that; he didn't mind getting stuck behind a slow truck on Route 3, or any route, because he liked to drive 45 or 50, and not just in his old age.)  "Ten hours door to door, I usually think, with, you know, moderate traffic.  Although, I didn't take Route 3."

Dad: "Really?"

Me: "No-went-through-Bangor."

Dad: "But that adds a good fifteen, twenty miles."  (You get to the Interstate much more quickly if you go via Bangor, you see.  We've discussed the pros and cons of going through Bangor, as opposed to taking Route 3 to Augusta, for at least fifteen years -- since around the time I figured out that my dad, wiser than I in many ways, nonetheless didn't necessarily know the best routes to take from one place to another, even though he was my dad.  Anyway, I always approached this Bangor-vs-Route-3 issue as if it were a new topic that we could bat around.)

Me: "Yeah, I know.  Took the River Road.  There's all the construction on 1A this summer.  And I don't like 46; it gives me the creeps."  (Route 46 is borderline Deliverance territory.  That's no fair, actually: it's just not a nice drive, and you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, even by Maine standards.)

Dad: "Well, that's grand -- any traffic around Boston?  I suppose not; must have been nine thirty..."

Me: "...Right, yeah, a little near Worcester and Hartford, nothing big.  I did pick up the Wilbur Cross sooner off of 91 than I have before.  Nice to get away from the trucks a little sooner, and you can still make good time."

Dad: "Now... The Wilbur Cross just becomes the Merritt, doesn't it?"

Me: "Yeah.  I'm not sure where it happens.  Some town line, I guess.  Then over to the Saw Mill on --"

Dad: "Ooooooooh!  So you do it that way even if you're going to Brooklyn?"

Me: "Sure; otherwise you'd have to -- I don't know, go over the Whitestone or something into Queens, then down the... something, I dunno; it'd be an ugly drive, anyway.  Coming in in the West Side, though, it works better if you cut over to the East Side like you were taking 95, except that you don't; you get off and zip down the FDR.  Better than West Side Highway traffic (unless it's rush hour cuz things can get snarled up there)...  Hey, Dad?  What's the thing about the Mosholu Parkway?  The poem or something?  'My moon over Mosholu Parkway?'  I always think of it when I come into the city that way, cuz you go under it..."

Dad: "Oh!  Ahhhh, well... Perelman, S.J. Perelman.  'You're a double-malted with two scoops of whipped cream; you're the moon rising over the Mosholu Parkway'..."

Me: "Oh, right...  Who was he, Perelman?"

...Christ, you're not asleep?  I commend you on your stamina.  Perhaps you've had a lot of coffee.  Perhaps you kept reading because you thought something substantial would eventually be discussed.  Yeah, sorry.  Because that really could have been a Steve-and-Dad conversation -- although we would have switched it up after a bit and talked about Obama, or how we both regretted that we'd been cautiously in favor of the Iraq war, or Seinfeld, or how the internet worked.

But so my question is, who the fuck am I going to have that conversation with now?  That stuff -- where the Wilbur Cross Parkway turns into the Merritt Parkway, for God's sake -- was stuff which my dad and I found interesting.  Seriously!  Go figure.

I was, in fact, on the Merritt near Greenwich last night when I realized that I'd made really good time to New York from Maine, and I thought about how I'd tell my dad about the good time I'd made, but quickly realized that I wouldn't be telling him about it at all, ever.

My dad, Edwin Roy Schneider, Jr., died on Friday.  My sister called me on Friday and said, "I need to tell you something about Dad, Steve."  I said, "Okay."  She said, "Well, he died."

I took this photo a week ago, on July 4th, at the town park here in Blue Hill:

My dad is reading selections from the Declaration of Independence to twenty or so of our family friends.  He's been doing this annually since at least 1976; terminal illness and morphine were not going to keep him from doing it once more.

I didn't know this until after the fact, but he'd been looking forward to and talking about his annual Declaration-reading gig for weeks.  He knew (he had to have) that this was the last time he'd see many of the assembled friends, and certainly the last time he'd see more than one or two of them in the same place.

He slept for sixteen hours in preparation.  An hour before, I had serious doubts that he'd make it out of bed.  But he did make it out of bed, and into the living room.  My mom pointed out that his hair was getting a little long, and wondered aloud if he'd like for one of the hospice nurses to cut it for him.

He said, "...No... No, that'd... sap my strength...  saaz-mn..."  It'd been taking my dad longer and longer, over the past few weeks, to get the words out, any words, and they didn't always make sense, these words.  Translating the ideas in his head into sentences and getting them out into the world through his mouth was exhausting for him, and the morphine -- which did a first-rate job at what it was supposed to do, i.e. relieve his pain -- didn't help.  This talk of saaz-mn and of strength-sapping haircuts sounded to me like the stuff of the strange, druggie dreams he'd been having.  My sister was brushing the hair on the back of his head, which was sort of tangled from having been slept on.

He said, "...I had this girlfriend once...  She was something else... Delilah...  Real handful..."

Saaz-mn: Samson.  Samson and Delilah.  Bible stories.  (From a self-described atheist, no less.)  Ye of little faith, Steve.

That was my dad.  Not a joke-a-minute guy, but an very social person who used wit to connect with people, and didn't -- couldn't -- stop doing that.

Half an hour later, we were at the park and he did his reading of the Declaration, pulling it off with a pitch-perfect balance of levity and gravitas and with his lawyer's appreciation of the words of Thomas Jefferson.  He nailed it; he aced it; he hit it out of the park.

Congratulations, Dad.  And thank you.  And all of us miss you very much.

My dad is in the hospital.  It's not serious.  Or, my dad doesn't think it's serious, and my mom doesn't, and my dad's doctor doesn't, and his other doctor doesn't, so I don't, even though he had (non-open-heart) heart surgery a few weeks ago: to the extent that an eighty-three-year-old man can spend several nights in the hospital in an un-serious way, it's not serious.

Anyway, he doesn't want any visitors, aside from my mom.  (Or my sister and me, but neither of us live in Maine, or near Maine.)  So, when anyone says to my mom, "I'm so sorry to hear that Ed is in the hospital; perhaps I'll stop by and see him," my mom has to say, "oh, Ed doesn't want any visitors."

I imagine she has to say that a lot; my dad is a popular guy.

I'm not sure why he doesn't want any visitors.  He entered his "plucky old man" phase (that's a direct quote, from him) about ten years ago; perhaps he doesn't want for people to see him when he isn't feeling plucky.  His voice wears out rather quickly too (he's getting over a mild case of pneumonia, "mild" to the extent that pneumonia can be mild for an eighty-three-year-old man), and he coughs a lot; maybe that's why.

But Walter (whose real name isn't Walter) asked my mom if it'd be alright for him to pay my dad a visit at the hospital.  My dad said he thought that that'd be okay.  Walter is a member of the clergy, so one might think, "well, of course Ed would make an exception for Walter; he's a minister."  But the thing is that my dad is an atheist.  He enjoys being one; he like saying things like, "Well, frankly, I'm an atheist."  Still, Walter got a VIP pass to see my dad, even while closer friends were denied a pass.  He's the only person to have gotten such a pass, as far as I know.  Perhaps my dad felt alright about Walter seeing him in less-than-plucky state because Walter, as a minister, sees people in hospitals all the time who are not at their pluckiest.  (Walter would be the last person my dad would want to see if he thought there was any chance that Walter would try to convert him, in his weakened state, to the Ways Of The Lord, but Walter isn't that sort of pastor, and anyway, he knows how my dad feels about The Lord.)

So Walter went to see my dad.  They talked about this and that, and during the course of the conversation, Walter told my dad that someone had said something to him earlier in the day that had made him very angry.  (What the thing was isn't important, and anyway, I don't want to betray anyone's confidence.)  He hadn't let his anger show, but he'd become quite angry.  My guess is that Walter doesn't think there's anything wrong with anger per se; my guess, though, is that Walter felt he'd let this anger get to him in a way which wasn't useful or healthy, although that's just a guess.

Anyway, he told my dad about this incident during which, he felt, he'd become unduly angry, and asked for my dad's forgiveness for becoming unduly angry.  He hadn't, of course, wronged my dad with his anger; my dad hadn't known about Walter's anger incident until Walter told him about it.

Walter is two or three decades younger than my dad, but my dad has never been a mentor of any type to him, offered him sage or plucky advice, anything like that.  But Walter respects my dad, likes and respects him (and my dad likes and respects Walter); perhaps that's why he sought my dad's forgiveness.  Or perhaps -- Walter is a pastor, after all -- he was doing some reverse mental minister-jujitsu-shit on my dad, I don't know.  But I'm certain that his request was sincere.

My dad told Walter that he, Walter, was the fucking minister, and that he should forgive his fucking self.  No, he didn't say that: no.  My dad, whose name, as I've said, is Ed, told Walter that he would be more than happy to forgive him; that all he'd have to do to in order to receive absolution was to say five Hail Eddies.  And then all would be forgiven, my dad said, no problem.

Five Hail Eddies.  I don't know exactly what a Hail Eddie is; I assume it goes something like, "Hail Eddie, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst..."

And Walter said them.  And Dad absolved him of his sins.

That's my dad in a nutshell.  Or, there's much more to my dad than that, but if one were to put Dad in a nutshell, that anecdote would need to be in there, even if the nutshell were a small one, a pistachio shell or whatever.

Today is the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday, and so it was this year, this past Thursday, and now it's Saturday: the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

But also: it's the Saturday after Thanksgiving, 1966.  My parents have known each other for about seventy-two hours.  My thirty-three-year-old mom and my forty-year-old dad are preserved across more than four decades on eight-millimeter celluloid and they're getting along quite well for two people whose friends Bill and Lucy just introduced them on Wednesday:

But I need to back up a bit.

Bill and Lucy are old friends of both of my parents.  My dad met Bill and Lucy in 1946 or 1947, when Bill and my dad, both recently out of the Navy, were undergraduates at the University of Michigan.  Lucy was Bill's new bride.  After graduation, my dad left Ann Arbor for Washington, D.C., and Bill and Lucy ended up in Seattle.

My mom met Bill and Lucy around 1960, in Seattle.  She'd graduated from the University of Washington there, and worked at the University after graduating, and some grad-student friends of hers introduced her to them, and they became fast friends.

In 1966, Bill and Lucy decided that they ought to introduce their friends Ed Schneider and Justine Sires to each other, and invited my dad to Seattle for the long Thanksgiving weekend.  He arrived the afternoon of the day before Thanksgiving; Bill picked him up at the airport.  "Thanksgiving Eve, 1966" is written in Lucy's handwriting on a small box containing a three-minute home-movie reel which I found in a closet at my parents' house in Maine a few years ago; the following frames, and the ones above, are from that reel.  My parents have known each other for less than an hour, two strangers inhabiting each other's force fields for the first time:

I've never heard much about the next day's Thanksgiving dinner, but I assume that all of Bill and Lucy's kids were there, as well as a bunch of other friends.  My mom's descriptions of weekends at Bill and Lucy's (there were many, many weekends at Bill and Lucy's) sound a bit like The Big Chill, but without William Hurt having lost his male sexual area in Vietnam, and without someone having died by his own hand a few days prior, and without the Creedence, and without everyone except for Jeff Goldblum having sex with everyone else, so perhaps it was that sort of gathering.

What I do know is that the day after Thanksgiving, Bill and Lucy and my future parents and a few others went camping overnight on the Olympic Peninsula, and that on the following day this group went to a party at the S____'s place, where (see the first sequence of frames above) my parents seem to have been having an awfully good time in each others' company.

At three in the morning Eastern three months later, my dad proposed to my mom over the telephone, and they were married a month after that.

I'm fond of this bit of family lore.  And I like that, as of a few years ago, I have documentary film footage to go with the oral history.  I like that the film has no sound, and I like that the whole thing, two evenings' worth of documentation, is only three minutes long.  Around Thanksgiving, I often think about how my parents came to know each other.  I've thought about it more this year than in past years, because Persephone and I are getting married in a few months, just as my parents -- though they didn't know it yet -- would be getting married to each other a few months after the Saturday after Thanksgiving, 1966.

I've also thought about that weekend more this year than in previous years because Bill died last weekend.  He was eighty-eight and he lived an extraordinarily full life.  My parents and I had dinner with Bill and Lucy last month, in New York.  I shook hands with Bill as we were leaving, and he said to me, "You're one of those people whom I know we'll always see."

I'll always see Bill, because my memories of him -- many of them from my childhood -- are so very vivid.  Among his passions was one for Woody Guthrie-type folk music.  My family spent several summer long weekends at the beach with Bill and Lucy and Lucy's extended family and many of the Seattle crew, and I don't recall a weekend when Bill hadn't brought his guitar with him and led the assembled beach-house guests in the singing of "Roll On, Columbia, Roll On."  There was a lot of music at those weekends by the shore, but that song, especially, reminds me of Bill when I hear it.  In that way, I'll always be seeing Bill.

Bill's obituary from the Seattle Times is here.

It's Veteran's Day in the U.S.  My cousin LH sent me this photo today of her dad (left) and my dad (right) at the wedding of one of my dad's sisters, January, 1946.  World War Two had been over for about a month:

While my dad looks twelve, he was, in fact, nineteen, still on active duty in the Navy.

It's odd to look my father in the eyes -- the early prototype of my father shown here -- and to know so much more than he does about what will happen to him in his life.  He knows, basically, nothing.

He will finish college at the University of Michigan.  Then he'll move to Washington, D.C., where he will go to law school, and then become a lawyer.  He will own an MG TD.  He will live on Thomas Jefferson Street in Georgetown.  A partner at the firm where he works will attend one of the legendary parties which he and his roommates will throw and later say of it, "that's not an apartment you're living in, Mr. Schneider; that's an abattoir."  He will get married, and then divorced a few years later.  He will marry again; the woman he marries will die three years after that.  He will have many three-martini lunches and play many games of squash at his club.

For a brief time, he will experiment with wearing a beret.  Also, he will experiment with having a goatee.  These experiments will lead him to conclude that he is neither a beret person nor a goatee person.

Over a Thanksgiving weekend several years later, friends will introduce him to his future, third wife.  They will conduct a mostly telephone-based romance for three months (she in Seattle, he in Washington).  He will propose to her over the telephone at 3:00 AM east-coast time; they will get married a month later, in Seattle.

They will travel around Europe for six months.  When they return to Washington (which will be in flames following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.), they will have two children, and then he will move with his wife and two children to a small town in Maine.  He will continue to practice law there.

His daughter will become heavily involved in raising goats and in massacring her brother on the tennis court.  His wife will become heavily involved in teaching kindergarten.  There will be animals other than goats, too: there will be chickens, rabbits, ducks, and (while he'd prefer otherwise) cats.  And pigs, and his wife will develop a lifelong love for pigs.  His son will drift slowly towards computer-nerddom (later to drift away from it, only to return to it years after that).  There will be much music and community theater and drives down country roads which don't go anywhere and Caribbean steel drumming (a staple in the small Maine town) and selling lemonade at the county fair which E.B. White had in mind when he wrote Charlotte's Web and getting up at 4:45 to go to the office but always being home by 6:30 in the evening to watch John Chancellor.  In winter, he will play tennis on the high-school basketball court, whose hard-rubber surface is about twenty times faster than the grass at Wimbledon.

There will be family trips to many places in the beloved Volkswagen camper which he and his wife will have purchased in West Germany at the beginning of their six months in Europe.  When the VW has long since become little more than a bucket of rust precariously balanced atop an engine of sorts, a transmission, and wheels with studded snow tires on them, he will wait until the rest of the family is elsewhere and then hire a tow-truck to haul it away.  He will take pictures of it as the truck tows it away.

He will know almost everyone in town, because so many of them will be clients; the few he doesn't know, his wife will probably know because she will teach their children in kindergarten.  His son will have a paper route.  When his son goes away to boarding school, he will take over this paper route; around Christmas, his customers, who will get a bang out of the fact that their paper boy is a lawyer -- their lawyer, perhaps -- will tip him not with a crisp ten-dollar bill but with a bottle of bourbon.

He will marry people for free; lawyers in Maine are also justices of the peace, so he'll have the authority to do that.  His "fee" will be that he will be the second person to kiss the bride.  His son will move to New York to go to college.  His daughter will go to school in Nova Scotia.  His son will work for a publishing house for several years.  His daughter will work with mentally retarded adults.  His son will fall backwards into a career building what will be called "web sites."  His daughter will move to a farm in Pennsylvania.  He will take many cross-country trips with his wife. 

His wife's bile duct will become clogged, ruining her liver, and she will require a liver transplant, which will be a success, and every year, on the anniversary of this transplant, he and his wife will eat liverwurst and wonder who the man in Tampa, Florida was whose liver she has.  He will have been smoking a few packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes every day for several decades when he is diagnosed with lung cancer; he will be told by a surgeon that the tumor cannot be removed.  He will get a second opinion from another surgeon, who will remove the tumor, which will not have returned fifteen years later.  He will walk less well than he once did.

His best friend RC, organic farmer and gentleman, will die.  He will not go to church much, because while he was raised in the Episcopal church, he is agnostic or atheist.  But sometimes when his wife is out of town, he will go to church because he likes Rob, the minister.  Generally, though, he will say, "why should I go to church when I can see Rob at the post office?"  He will serve on the board of the small town's excellent library.  He will organize film festivals.  He will participate in "celebrity spelling bees."  He will walk still less well than he once did, but he will purchase an electric scooter which will make him "feel thirty-five again."

My dad, age nineteen, knows none of this.  He knows only that his older sister is getting married to her terrific high-school sweetheart JB (also just back from the war), and that that's swell, and that he's in the Navy but that the war is over and that the good guys won (the next war, a long, cold one, is brewing, but he doesn't know that yet), and that he's posing for a photo with his other older sister's husband, and that life is grand.

Thanks to PW, via LH, for the photo.