What nearly freezing to death taught me about my Dad.
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Note: author uses “i” to remain humble
It was the winter of 1979-80. My parents had recently divorced and Dad was living back in Chicago. i was on Christmas break from college and had elected to spend time with him. A year earlier, when my parents told me of their plans to divorce, i went into cellular rejection of my Father. Proximity was toxic. Not for any known reason, there was no trauma to their marriage, no infidelity, dishonesty—they just had been unprepared and or unsuited for the 24/7 nature of mutual retirement on an island (San Juan, WA).
Unnecessarily, but unequivocally, i had chosen sides. For three to four weeks, even being in the same room as my Dad was unbearable. Time back at school, classes, weekend alcohol binges all worked their healing effects, so when quarter break came along, i was ready (and wanted) to see my Pop again.
Dad appreciated food like Jimmy the Greek appreciated odds
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Going back “home” to Chicago was heart settling – as was seeing Dad once again, now with a calm and reasonable perspective (i’d probably broken up with – and gotten dumped by – a girl friend or two myself in the meantime). i was born and raised in Chi-town, and we’d lived in a good number of its neighbourhoods. If Lake Michigan was on my right, i knew that i was facing north. If i was facing the reassuring, yet horizonless body of water, then i knew that south was to my right.
It was impossible for me to get lost in the city – i didn’t have to be able to see the water, i could feel -smell- where it was, patched into its lay lines. In the summers between my high school years, i’d night swim from beach to beach. In the winters i’d see how far i could brave venturing out on its sheet ice and shore piled bergs.
That shit was HOT!
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i remember little about that particular visit aside from what should have been a short jog along the lake front, that and some chilli. Dad appreciated food like Jimmy the Greek appreciated odds. He loved to cook good food, loved to eat good food. “Good” was measured in Scoville units. But for me, this was never an issue: while other kids traded Twinkies for Ho-ho’s, or Milky Way bars for Snickers, me? i was happily munching on a pickled jalapeno that my Mom had thoughtfully included in my lunch box…
Hot peppers were in my mouth and in my blood from my early, high stepping baby days. The chilli that he’d put together was irrefutable evidence that he’d been onto ghost peppers before they’d gone public. That shit was HOT! It went beyond hot. Unholy, demoniacal searing scourged my tongue. And yet, certainly only table manners held him back from lifting his own bowl to his mouth… There was sweat on his forehead, and a euphoric cast to his eyes as he shoveled in the magma. It was, to my memory, the only time i turned down something that he had cooked. And, probably the only time he wouldn’t have taken offense at the rejection. He finished mine, too. He was smiling. He was proud.
…pre-divorce we had always had an easy way of being together
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It was the day after the chilli (reckon even one teaspoon should have rendered me meteorologically impervious to cold) that i decided to go for a crystal clear run along the lakefront. i was an active young college lad, jogging occasionally, lifting a lot, martial arts, climbing when i could get off campus – buildering when i couldn’t. Running hadn’t become a passionate obsession for me (i still marvelled that my brother, John, could run 3 miles without stopping), yet.
this city couldn’t afford to mess up a snow report
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It was wonderful to just hang with my Dad, pre-divorce we had always had an easy way of being together, and this felt like that. We’d chat, we’d read, he’d have some new find of an uber-rare classical music LP on the stereo, i’d doze off – waking to find him still reading his volume of German poetry. i had successfully exorcized the silly ass, painfully powerful blame-demons that had possessed me. But, i knew that dinner was coming, and room would have to be made, so i suited up.
Remember, this is 1980… “Suiting up” involved putting on a pair of Nike running shorts, a cotton T-shirt, and my Stanford sweatshirt – a garment so sturdily weather-proof it even had a drawstring hood! i told my Dad i’d be back soon; i was just going for “a couple of miles” along the lakefront. In spite of the few little patches of blue, the first flakes of predicted flurries floated around. i tugged at the end of the cotton crimson sleeves so they’d cover my wrists a bit better and headed south along the lake path.
The snow gathered force, falling more thickly, carried and driven by a rising wind. It didn’t worry me: i was warm running (hands a little chilly, but my core was warm), Chicago weather forecasts were fairly reliable – this city couldn’t afford to mess up a snow report. If it got serious, i could always just turn back. The stuff was sticking, the ground was white and my hoodie had its own coating. i opened and closed my hands rapidly keeping my fingers from getting too stiff from the cold and the snow melting on them.
i got worried – i couldn’t hear any cars
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Snow was beginning to cling to my legs, my eyebrows, even my eyelashes – anywhere there was hair, it attached, melted and then refroze. We had a proper blizzard, no one was out, or at least not that i could see. But then, i couldn’t see squat – visibility was a few feet. i made the decision to go a couple of more minutes and then turn around. i have always loved how quiet snowfall makes a city. i tuned into that quiet around me, and got worried – i couldn’t hear any cars on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares just yards away.
Spying a pedestrian underpass, i ducked in just to catch a break from the cutting, warmth-sapping wind. My hands were pretty well frozen – i could flex my fingers as whole units at the palm, but the individual, more distal knuckles were history. My legs were white with each hair covered in ice, top and bottom eyelashes were freezing together from the corners. i was officially worried. In getting to the underpass, i’d seen cars at funny angles in the street, simply left where they’d spun out. Scarier still: a city bus had been abandoned – i didn’t know such a thing could happen. This was a very, very bad storm. Chicago got caught with its shorts down on this one.
first and foremost was to make it home … Dad was there
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Running in place, alternately stuffing hands in any warm junction i could, i had one of my first “come to Jesus meetings”. i remember feeling (accurately or otherwise) fairly confident that i wasn’t going to freeze to death – i still had a decent amount of energy in me. My half hour had now become 1.5hrs, but there was some gas in the tank. i triaged further – i would make it, what about fingers? There was some doubt, i guessed (nothing but brutal honesty at this point in the game) i might lose one or two since they had entirely stopped working for me. But first and foremost was to make it home. Warmth was there. Dad was there.
Fuck. My thinker was struggling.
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The ice on my legs was hard frozen, i couldn’t brush or shake it off, too painful. i had to keep moving, i didn’t have far to go. In transit, through the white blur, i saw one light, a window? A trailer? Maybe in a parking lot? Not important. i kept going toward home; there was no evidence of a path anymore, but reckoning by time, i had to be close. SHIT! i ran back inside my underpass. Yeah, mountain climber me had just unknowingly, and devastatingly run in a circle. A shiver of cold defeat seeped into my heart. Fuck. My thinker was struggling. Thoughts abbreviated into images. Snapshots. Curse words, but little else was coherent.
“Find the window”. That helped. “Fuck. Where was the window? Fuck!” No directions anymore. Just white. It was just white. Once i stepped out of my cave there was a brief moment of forward, right and left, then it was all one: white. A thought broke through – i had some idea of time to the window, it hadn’t been far or long. i would go out, and if i circled back, go out longer on the next outing. Good. A plan. Good. i didn’t think about missing it and not circling exactly back to the underpass – there was a very big lake next to me through whose ice i would fall…
Fucking cops. Drinking coffee…
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Fuck. No time. Off running. Stumbling. Gas was evaporating. i was shaking – bonfiring fuel against catastrophic heat loss. My hood was solid, a cold helmet, ice caked my cheekbones (they hurt, which was good), HAVE to find that window. Break it, and crawl in. Run. Cold. Just cold, everywhere. In me. Cold. Fuck. Run. Reliable, sequential memory ceases about here.
The gale force blasts of abrading, snow. Moments of abatement. i found the window, the trailer. Barely managing the three steps to the door, i kicked at it. It opened – inside, two Chicago cops. Fucking cops. Drinking coffee. i shouldered the door closed, shutting the storm outside. Somehow, i stood – not falling, crying, into the warmth of the room.
“Still snowing?” one of them cracked.
i stared. This was no joke. They got it.
“You gotta…. call my Dad…” i mumbled. They asked where i lived.
“Oh hell, you’re just a few blocks from home.”
i stared. Tears and collapse edging closer. Fucking. Cops.
The one at the desk pushed the phone across.
Stiffly, i raised my arms, held up my hands. His eyes widened. Fucking cops.
i told him the number, he dialled.
“Don’t worry, son, he’s coming.”
i remember ice melting off of me. Off my face. Leg ice puddling around my shoes.
i remember the cops staring at me, a little scared.
i remember it took my Dad a half hour to drive those few blocks.
My Dad.
i don’t remember him arriving.
i remember being in the car. i don’t remember getting home.
i remember slowly, very slowly getting into a hot bath.
i remember him giving me a hot toddy.
i remember him coming back, saying,
“One more.”
i remember waking up in bed 14 hours later, and moving my fingers.
POSTSCRIPT
It was only in the writing of this that i awakened to my Dad’s experience. i’ve shared pieces of this close shave with friends – explaining away my Renaud’s, explaining why my hands get so weak in damp, cold. But, what my father endured – embarrassingly, shamefully, never hit my self-centred radar. Dad was tough. He ran a tough business, in a tough town. He had connections, he could make things happen, he could solve problems. This piece pivots around memory, as does any “true” story.
It nails me to my ego cross to realize i cannot remember EVER having thought about how my Dad felt
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But it wasn’t until i sat down, preparing to share this story, that i examined it more closely. Only then—now—i saw the big box i had never bothered to open and unpack. It nails me to my ego cross to realize i cannot remember EVER having thought about how my Dad felt to have his son out running in a Chicago blizzard—in shorts and a sweatshirt. He would have been waiting; watching the storm through his single pane, frost-rimmed condo windows. He would have been listening to news bulletins of the city of Chicago shutting down. Dad survived polio—he spent a year as a child flat on his back bed-ridden from the disease. Physically, he couldn’t have gone out after me. He knew that. It must have killed him.
no parent can prepare for, or survive…
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Now, looking back, i can feel his fear, the indescribable unknowing of where or how his son was. His devastating incapacity to change anything. My Dad—“Big Bill”, the strong man. None of his people could go and find me. My half hour came and went, then an hour, an hour and a half. More. Two hours passed before the cops called him.
The cops. How do all cop calls start? “Hello. Mr. Brolley? This is Officer….” Holy shit, the phrase that no parent can prepare for, or survive… But then, to hear that i was there, alive, waiting for him, needing him. That redemption, if it happens, is once in a lifetime—for both parties. i’ve spent nearly 40 years mentally, spiritually, walking past it like it was litter on the street. Maybe (i hope), that memory can feel just like i did in that hot bathtub—it’s home and truly safe now.
He probably took the clothes off his barely conscious grown son
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At dinner, tears flow and i cannot control my voice as i tell my wife that i have no other recollection of my father actively, physically taking care of me. This is it, this recent reclaimed memory of long ago. He probably took the clothes off his barely conscious grown son. Dad was tough, and i grew up in his image. i was fifteen, when working in his South side truck yard for the summer, i cut my forearm wide open on a broken mirror. Tell him? Go home? You kidding? i bound it till it stopped bleeding.
Dad had just died in his arms.
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But this time, his son needed him. Bad. He was there—with nary a word of scolding. Not a second of well justified hurt, frustrated, scared anger at my foolishness. i am so grateful for that; so amazed, so dumbfounded that he just embodied the caring, the love. It is an undeserved blessing having the opportunity in my self-focused world to finally (at age 54), fully remember and own that.
A last recollection gifted to me by working on this story: i saw the inside of my Dad’s condo only once more, three years later. i was all grown up, big man (or so i thought, again) living on my own in New York City. My voice shook then too, buying the bereavement ticket after a 5 am call. It was my brother, in Chicago, telling me Dad had just died in his arms.
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I am 52. My Dad died one year ago March 11. Because of your piece here, beautiful write, I shall will myself to dream of a significantly positive experience that I had with my Dad. I know it will come to me in my sleep tonight. Thank you.
Dear Caryn, Thank you for your comment. i hope that your dream intention worked. My Father was in my dreams for years and years after his death. i remember (maybe ten years after he passed away) my Mother asking me if i ever dreamed of him. i told her that, indeed, i’d been having dreams with him in them for 4-5 nights out of 7 since he had died. She was quite shocked – being the very good and astute psychiatrist that she was ( she passed away about 12yrs ago) – and asked if i thought i should talk… Read more »
i hope that a take away for readers is the immense, and yet unknowable, gift that writing can be for the writer. This story gave me more of my father — 30yrs later.
Start scribbling. Please.
wolf