"Boy! That is a nice Mercedes, son. I remember when I had one years ago. But then my first marriage fell apart and I left it behind along with my ex-wife."
He drifted off to "Long Ago land" and I drove out of the parking lot, not saying anything. He'd be back soon enough from Long Ago land.
"I called it quits when I learned she was messing around on me while I was in School at ASU. The only things I took from the house were my dog Skip and a box of records and I didn't look back."
Several months ago, my mom called and among the tidbits or our conversation she casually said, "I see your father's first wife died; her obituary was in the paper." And that was all she said because I changed the topic. I always felt uncomfortable talking with my parents about their lives outside of being parents.
This morning, I could tell in his voice that his first wife's infidelity still stung in that mysterious place inside all of us that holds anger and betrayal for too long, decades in some cases.
As I drove him to Home Depot for roofing materials, I wondered in and out of the thought that if children are, in part, the sum of their parents experiences in life, psychologically transfered through the task of raising children, I wondered what part of my father's experiences I inherited.
Not wanting to open up that Pandora's box I asked my father if he ever owned a motorcycle and he said he did, "A Harley."
"That thing could go, man! I wrecked it once and my mother sold it to a kid at the mission school and two weeks later he got wiped out, killed, up in Colorado somewhere and my mom in Navajo said, 'I told you so.' I stood there looking at her completely blank."
We laughed and I said he still looked blank. He laughed again and said, "Hey! That's elderly abuse." We laughed all the way to Home Depot.
I relaxed a little and thought, getting older isn't so bad.
