My memory is foggy as to whether I was sixteen or seventeen years old that sunny, autumn Saturday, but the memory is crystal clear when I think of that crisp morning. Dad and I were driving when an encounter with a squirrel changed my life forever.
I am still sitting next to Dad in the front seat of our car, the passenger’s side, but this isn’t a past memory, dreamlike. It’s a vivid replay, over and over, as if it is happening to me today.
I was daydreaming out the window and singing with the music on the radio. I’m sure it was a hippie tune my dad didn’t approve of. “One of those loud hippie songs” he grumbled that I should turn off. We were approaching the intersection of two side streets in this typical Chicago neighborhood. There was a park on our left side, with a swing. In front of a local bar, were brownish-green cubes of lawn between gray concrete city strips. “The Tavern” served great lunches to the factory workers. The streets were so unusually empty. That’s why I was startled when Dad slammed on his brakes as we were turning left.
His right arm went up as usual, to be sure his passenger was braced and safe. We weren’t going fast at all, so I was surprised at his frantic reaction. Nothing was in sight. I stopped singing, sat upright and looked around for a clue as to what the heck he was doing! From that moment on, all I could do was observe.
Dad parked the car quickly and jumped out, never saying a word. I watched him carefully pick up a squirrel. This small creature had just run into our car tire as it raced into the street. Perhaps it was gathering food for the winter chill on the way. But it never completed its task.
I watched my dad as he placed the tiny, gray, fuzzy body on a patch of grass under a maple tree. He looked around for just a second, and selected the largest golden-orange leaf he could find and covered the squirrel. Then I saw it. Dad had tears in his eyes. His bright blue eyes, usually sparkling with passion and life, had filled up and one teardrop escaped. As it dripped down his cheek, he wiped it away quickly, sniffled, got back in the car, and didn’t allow another drop to be seen. I sat there stunned, realizing there was a side to Dad he kept hidden. My feelings were unexplainable at the time.
I had seen Dad cry at funerals, but everyone did that. But cry over a squirrel? A lowly rodent with no sense at all? What would make anyone shed a tear, especially my father?
Here was a man I loved and feared. This was the man who made sure we went to church every Sunday and holiday, but religion was not for him. We did what he told us and knew there was no back-talk, ever. This was a strict man; no-nonsense, quick-tempered but when he laughed, it emerged like a fiery volcano, loud and explosive from a bottomless shaft in his belly. There was nothing quiet about Dad. He knew everything and was often very intimidating. Why would roadkill make him cry? I think I was awestruck.
To see Dad cry pierced my heart. If he would have cried aloud, I would have joined him. I never knew sensitivity existed in my dad; he was strong, tough, hard. The remainder of the drive I sat just like him, completely silent. I don’t recall if the radio was shut off or I just tuned it out. I only heard the silence of our hearts. I pondered the phenomenon I just witnessed. I was never quite sure what Dad’s silence meant.
As an adult today, I wonder if Dad cried from all the sadness and loss he suffered in his lifetime. That Saturday morning, did his past heartaches lunge into the present at the jerk of his brakes from this unexpected accident? Was there any relation to his own subconscious grief at being motherless since thirteen months old and a squirrel that didn’t make it home to waiting little fuzzy tails? Was he worrying about his four defiant children that he thought he didn’t have much influence over anymore? Was he preoccupied with the fact he couldn’t keep his children from growing up and his love could only be shown in strict protection and his desire to keep us eight years old forever? I’ll never know where his thoughts were that day, but I saw a slight scratch beneath the rugged surface that changed how I looked at my dad forever.
There was a deep, reverent side to this man that he wanted to keep a secret. A glimpse of his true spirituality slipped between us that day. I think all the world was his church, though we never spoke of this incident.
Dad’s been gone so very long, yet to this day he affects my own driving. When I see a busy squirrel near the road, I stop.
- Loralee H. Hartje