I was a son to my father..
And he taught me and said to me,
"Let your heart hold fast to my words."
-Proverbs
My cheek pressed against the wall, I could still smell the cigarette, the smoke that wafted through the air, unseen. I thought of him not as dad at this time, but still as Mr. Urich, he was smoking and furiously typing in his small study, he never smoked inside, not that I had seen so far. The door made a slight squeak as I opened it as silently as I could, it had already been cracked open a tiny bit, so that light from the hallway night light illuminated through, in addition to my own small light, making the room comfortable and safe.
He was stubbornly set on using his old typewriter, perhaps until the end of his days. This was the first time I went to that study in the middle of the night as he worked, moving slowly down the hallway, my barefeet on the cold wooden floor.
The whining glow of that desk lamp, I pretended I was an adventurer, and that I had made my way to a hidden den, bright and warm. That night, I sat huddled near that light, though I did not enter the study, but sat outside the open door, against the wall. Falling asleep to the clacks and dings of the typewriter and the acrid scent of the lingering smoke.
Remembering is funny. I woke up in my bed, in the morning, thinking it was magic or I had stumbled back, perhaps been carried and tucked back in as a parent would. As I lay and attempted to remember my own dream, one of frogs and a weeping woman.
I remember many different scenes. When I started thinking of the Urich's as my family. When I called them mom and dad. Phil and I, together that first evening, laughing like we were already siblings, and I, just happy to have a big kid paying attention to me.
Mom had died when I was still young, it was a closed casket, so I never did see her body. It was the only funeral I attended until his.
Yelling at each other, saying something hurtful, regretful. I see myself beginning to speak, to choose those words, those stupid words that are nothing but angry, foolish, and cliché.
"You're not my real dad!"
I proclaimed it like we both were unaware. Silence, yet a flood of apologies ran through my head, I was too ashamed to voice them. Too afraid to say 'I'm sorry. I love you, dad. You are my real dad, it was never him.'
He knew, I believe that he knew I regretted the words, and spoke much more quietly to me. I deserved to be screamed at, punished, we just left to school and to work. While I sat and prayed that those words would not be the last he heard from me, debating leaving class to call, assuring myself that our last words would be when he was at least one hundred and passing away peacefully, not in some random act of God.
It was alright that evening, he was alive, and I did my best to be a better son, polite, dutiful, not that there were no disagreements, but no major blow ups, no screaming matches. Nothing too major after that. I tell myself it was enough.