My Father-in-law Bill

The first time I met my father-in-law Bill my wife, then my girlfriend of three months, was uncharacteristically nervous. “I’m just warning you,” she said on the hour-long ride down the Jersey shore, “he’s as wide as he is tall … and he’s a bit random.”

Random. What an intriguing choice of word! I myself am a bit “random,” I suppose, although not exactly in the same sense that Bill was, as I would soon find out.

Soon meaning later that day.

We drove up to a small bungalow in a corner lot. Christie greeted her dad enthusiastically. It was still cold outside and it was cold in his ill-heated home, so he was standing there in a parka, with gloves and a baseball hat on. He smiled, the first time I saw that toothy up-to-no-good grin, and clasped my hand firmly. “Well,” he said, “what do you guys feel up to today?” My wife deferred to him, and that’s when the fun began.

We picked up his two other daughters, Maureen, age fourteen, and Amy, age eleven, from his ex-wife’s house, three blocks away. Then we went for lunch, per Bill’s suggestion, at Hooters.

Hooters.

He raised a glass of beer and said he was glad to know me.

Bill was a social guy. The Platonic Form of the 1960s / 1970s salesman. Not the high-powered ad men of HBO shows; more the daily grind guys like those from Glengarry Glen Ross. But lacking the bitterness and cynicism. Sure, he wheeled and dealed, wined and dined, and partook of those double martini lunches with clients. But I don’t believe he had a cynical bone in his body. Nor was he bitter. I’d quickly find him to be the type of guy who enjoyed getting to know people and, maybe, in the process, sell them something they might want.

He told me on several occasions he’s sold many thing in his life. I think he may have included “tales” in those musings, as in “tall.” I do know he made the bulk of his money – when he had it, that is – selling class rings and all sorts of corporate awards. He was also connected somehow with CBS and the music scene in New York City in the 70s or so, though we’ve never gotten a clear explanation. But when he found out I worked for a car dealership his heart leapt out of his chest, for he loved cars.

Me, not so much. My job was accounting; I’ve never sold a car or looked under a hood in my life. But that didn’t stop Bill from pelting me with questions and comments about cars, classic cars, muscle cars, Fords, Chevys, transmissions, tires, the auto business, the dealership model, sales and spiffs and incentives. He even wanted me to approach the owner of our dealership with a proposition: he, Bill, would drive down to Texas, buy a cheap SUV, and drive it up for us to re-sell, less his expenses and commission. I hemmed and hawed and hedged, but the car talk continued, pretty much over the next two decades. At first I was an uncertain fencer, parrying his incessant questions; then it annoyed me; and towards the end I just tried to play along with him. I felt he might, after all, be teasing me. “Do you watch the Speed Channel,” was a question I got nearly every time he visited.

A year later my parents invited him to their Saint Patrick’s Day party.

Now, my stepfather is very proud of his Irish heritage. And he loves a good party. Common ground with Bill! My parents were moderately famous for throwing humungous St. Patty’s Day parties, inviting dozens of family members and friends and friends-of-friends, catering with corned beef and cabbage, stocking the house with Guinness. Once they even hired a bagpiper, who came during a spring snowstorm. We’d all arrive at their house early, walk a mile or so to the town center to watch the parade (careful not to drink too much as there never was anywhere to pee), and then headed back for the festivities.

Bill was enraptured at the very first St. Patty’s Day he attended, probably in March of 1999. For the next five or six years, until my folks retired and moved to Pennsylvania, he never missed one. Even brought Maureen and Amy with him. And every year after my parents moved he’d wistfully ask them when he saw them if they were planning on throwing another one.

The highlight of these St. Patty’s Day parties was – inexplicably enough – the Rocket Launch.

My uncle, Ted, and his four boys were into model rockets. My parents lived across the street from an open park. There was lots of beer quaffed on St. Patty’s Day. Thus, at this perfect three-way intersection of rocket-park-beer, we had some of the best times ever.

At first it was a simple launch. They cued up a foot-long plastic rocket on the stand, we’d all back away fifty feet, there’d be a countdown, and Ted would flip the switch. The rocket would, well, rocket up in a zig-zag path a hundred feet or so, and then the hunt was on to find the capsule. As the years went by the rockets grew larger and more complex. Parachutes were added. Thus, the thing would shoot into the clouds, and the younger children would race through the neighborhood to recover it as it cascaded over the nearby houses (and hopefully didn’t start any fires). Bill actually pulled me into his car and sped off in pursuit.

Sometime in December of 1999 my stepfather took the initiative to mail a Christmas card to “Wild Bill.”

After eighteen months of dating Christie, I decided to pop the question. Now, I don’t remember specifically asking Bill’s permission for his daughter’s hand in matrimony, but I did get on the phone and run it by him to make sure he was on board. He was. In fact, he had an immediate game plan. “I know some guys in the city,” he said enthusiastically, “47th Street. They sell diamonds. We’ll go in, you and me, and I’ll show you around, introduce you to some people. We can get the setting done somewhere else ….”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was dealing with the jewelers who’ve been serving my family for three generations. I let him have his fun, but I didn’t let it go too far; I was getting used to this.

The wedding was perfect, I must say, and I hate weddings. There was a bit of friction Christie had to deal with. Her stepfather had raised her since she was two; Bill and Christie’s mom had divorced way back then and for most of her life she only saw him for a week around Christmas and a week in the summer. Who walks her down the aisle and who does she have her dance with? The Gordian knot was split simply by having her stepdad walk her down and Bill get the first dance. Or so we thought. If you were to look at those wedding photos today, seventeen years later, you’d see Bill looking slightly disheveled, particularly a crazy lock of white hair standing at a bizarre angle off his head. He said he forgot his hair gel, but the fact that he may have been slightly medicated should not be discounted. Still, a good time was had by all and there were no fisticuffs. And he got to chat with a hundred-and-four other people.

The bachelor party! How could I forget that? Well, what little of it I remember. I do know that Bill, gentlemen that he is despite his Hooters discount card and all, did not go out clubbing with us during the second part of the night. Sure, he ate all the chicken wings he could washed down with some hefty mugs of beer, but when it came time for round two he headed back to my parents’ house where he planned to spend the night. I wound up there, too, five or six hours after he did, and probably five or six times more inebriated, crashed on the living room couch. I had a vision of him walking out in the pre-dawn hours in his tighty-whiteys, scratching himself, and turning back to his room. My wife thinks I was dreaming; me, not so much.

Shortly after the honeymoon came the Anchor Incident, perhaps the low point of my marriage. Bill, as you’re probably coming to expect, was intimately involved. Maureen was shopping colleges and GWU was one of them. Christie and I had moved down to Silver Springs, Maryland. Bill and Mo drove down, and as I was free, we walked throughout DC together. Maureen found some friends later that day; Bill and I found The Anchor Bar and Grill.

At some point later in life, Bill became a tee-totaler of sorts. This was before that happened. We stopped in to The Anchor for a beer and to rest our aching feet early in the afternoon. Christie was planning to meet us at a restaurant when she got out of work at 5:30. As we were downing our eighth or ninth beer, I remember warbling out “Christie is always late! Let’s have another!” Bill enthusiastically agreed. He was eyeing a group of people at the bar, deciphering their personalities, their relationships to each other, and what they did for a living. He was also eyeing a leggy brunette in particular. Somehow we managed to get out of there intact, though two hours late for our dinner reservations. Christie and I were bickering throughout the meal, and Bill was kicking me under the table whenever things got too heated, that toothy up-to-no-good grin I’d first seen two years earlier firmly in place.

But that was a rare valley. Most of our marriage has been hilly with the occasional mountain. Christie and I bought a house; Bill’s self-appointed task when we refinished the basement was to scrub clean the laundry room sink. He became a grandfather for the first time in September of 2004 with the birth of Grace. Charlotte followed four years later. These were good times; Christie and I were learning how to be parents; Bill was learning how to be a grandparent. A lot of traditions grew from those early years.

We started going down to Grandpa’s for long Memorial and Labor Day weekends. When the girls were little we experimented with kites on the beach. The sight of Bill and I trying to construct a box kite with pliers is particularly funny as neither one of us knew quite what we were doing. At first we stayed down in the main house on the property where Bill’s bungalow was – that bungalow, with its open-flame wall heater, sharp metal corners and uneven doorways was a deathtrap for toddlers – but later we’d rent a hotel room.

He and the girls would spend hours at the beach – their Happy Place – while I, white as geisha, preferred to remain at his bungalow and later apartment to read and write. I vividly remember the two short stories I wrote at his place, as well as some of the books I read – Anathem, a Hobbit re-read, PKD’s Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, some Nietzsche. Though not a big reader himself, Bill must’ve appreciated what I was doing. Twice he gave me very touching Christmas gifts – a thick book about Nostradamus one year, and a twenty-five pound Merriam-Webster dictionary another.

Some other traditions quickly grew up – going in to Rockefeller Center to see the tree every December, braving cold and crowds, the girls drinking Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate with Grandpa and watching him tease the dudes in the Elmo and Big Bird costumes. Every June our town would hold a 50s car show – complete with a 50s band headed by an Elvis impersonator – down by the railroad tracks. It was Christmas in July for Bill; we were mere bystanders. His depth of knowledge pertaining to cars of that era never failed to impress me. Plus it provided good birthday gift fodder for him from Barnes and Noble.

We’d attend the Fair Haven fair every Labor Day. Quickly it became a sad signal to us that summer was over, but what a great ending! Bill would meet us down there and we’d all split a giant flat-bread pizza from a local shop. Then we’d buy $60 of tickets and the girls would go on every ride they could handle – the Tea Cups when they were little to the Scrambler as they got older. The only ride I’d go on with them was the Ferris Wheel, and from the top we’d look down on Mommy and Grandpa, little ants chatting side-by-side, and the girls would scream with delight. I think Bill most enjoyed the Beer Garden, and would unfailingly wrangle me for a six-ounce Coors Light in a plastic cup every year.

He’d treat us to a Yankee game every August. In the early years Amy and Maureen would be with us, then it was just Christie, Bill, and I, then it was with our little ones, Grace and Charlotte. I have a lot of disjointed memory-images of these games. Watching Mariano Rivera come out to strains of Metallica to close out a game. Sweating profusely while chugging a stadium beer with Bill. Seeing Bernie Williams hit a game-ending walk-off homer. Bill and I carrying Yankee baseball bats out of the stadium on a hot giveaway-day loss to Minnesota.

Later on we’d tailgate, eating sandwiches and drinking beer in the parking deck. One beautiful summer day we were enjoying ourselves immensely, Bill, Christie and I just breaking into the beer – nothing like an ice cold beer on a hot day I always say, and I’m positive Bill would agree – when suddenly the cops showed up! A raid! A parking deck raid! We simply tucked our open beers away but Bill had completely vanished. One minute he was there, Big Bill, Wild Bill, open beer in hand, then someone said “Cops!” and boom! Bill was gone. A few minutes later we found him one level down, and I don’t think we ever found out how he got there. He might never have known either.

Summers were always hectic for us once the girls were out of school. Bill volunteered to help one week. This confirmed for us that Bill generally took a hands-off approach to watching children. Let seven-year-old Grace explain: “Grandpa would turn on the TV for us then walk across the street to get us milk and cereal. And one time we were out and Charlotte did a poopie so Grandpa sent me in to the ladies room with her to change her diaper.” Then he’d whisk the girls into his car, Grace illegally in the front seat, and head off to Burger King. “Hi Cindy,” Bill would say as he entered with his two granddaughters in tow. “Hi Bill!” Cindy replied, “Got that coffee for you all ready!”

I spent three weeks in the hospital in 2009. Bill drove up several times to visit. May have even been more, I was heavily medicated for a large portion of that time. I do know he was there, along with my stepfather and brother, when I claimed to have seen my heart surgeon jet ski in from an open window and down the flooded hospital hallway. The memory of him sitting quietly and patiently in a corner chair while I drowsed in and out is a comforting one, a memory no doubt many others have of him, especially as he got older and moved into an apartment complex for the older folks.

One repercussion from this hospitalization was that my company let me go. This was my first bout with unemployment. Bill helped out as best he could, and he did this by yoking me into working for him, sort of. I did run some items from his bungalow to his storage facility, and for this he had me print up invoices to submit to him so he could submit them to his company to pay me. But I’m not a hundred percent certain this was legitimate work for that company. Maybe 85 percent certain. 60 percent? Anyway, he also bought on the company dime what he called his “command center” – a massive right-angle desk shelf thing for his work-from-home life. I assembled it and wired it all up one day and got invoice-paid for it later on. He returned home from his job as I was finishing it up, and asked me to stay for dinner. Unfortunately, I had to get back for some obligation. It was then I realized that he might be lonely.

A couple of months later he had me drive out to western New Jersey to pick up some church bells. Now these are not actually bells, but gigantic loudspeakers. Each one a hundred pounds. To this day I’m not entirely sure why and whatever became of this business venture, but he did give me cash for my effort.

He was always concerned about my professional life, or lack thereof, and was intensely interested in helping me find my way. An older woman whose yard he helped maintain had a daughter who was a literary agent. Bill brought me there one day, and the four of us had ice tea in the backyard while the daughter gave me advice on how to get published. And a few years later, laid off from the accounting stuff yet again, Bill would drive up from the Jersey Shore every Wednesday for six weeks to give me the pep talk. We’d grab a sandwich at Blimpie’s then head back home, haul out the laptops and get to work – me, applying to any and every open position using the spaghetti-against-the-wall theorem of job searching, Bill working on his resume, growing his “personal services” business, or any other random thing that came across the bow that day.

I started the job I currently still do a month after his last job-hunting pep-talk visit.

As the girls got older they wanted to know more about their grandpa. We realized that there were a lot we didn’t know about him. Christie was even unsure for the longest time about his true age, until she was able to catch a glimpse of his driver’s license a few years ago. He generally lived in the present and never dwelt much on the past, even with us begging and pleading for information. As a veteran, he never told war stories. True, he got out of the Navy before Vietnam began full-force, but what tales we were able to squeeze from him left a lot to how much faith you put in a guy whose dream job is to sell cars. Not that he’d intentionally tell a lie, or stretch the truth, unless, of course, he was doing it for the amusement of pulling the legs of his gullible daughter and son-in-law … like the time he was on a ship in the shower and some angry sailor came at him with a knife … or the time where he fouled up in front of the admiral and was sentenced to polishing the railings – he did such a good job that the admiral promoted him to his personal chauffeur and soon he was driving the admiral’s daughter to all the local hot-spots at night …

The last two years Bill showed a real interest in my girls, particularly Charlotte’s athletic career. Char plays soccer in the fall, spring and summer, and basketball in the winter. Bill made it his mission to see as many games as he could, and over those past two years I’d guess he saw twenty-five or thirty. Never missed one unless he was traveling or sick. Rain or shine, in brutal June heat or braving icy roads to drive up for a basketball game, he was there so often he befriended a lot of the other parents. Which isn’t so surprising, nor is the fact that they took to him so quickly and affectionately. On the rare occasions when he wasn’t there, there would be many questions of concern put to us on how he was doing.

During one particularly close soccer game the opposing team had a breakaway shot on goal. The goalie – Char’s best friend – made a diving save that tipped the ball into the upper bar of the goal and over it, out of play, a tremendous feat of athleticism. “Wow!” Bill exclaimed to everyone, “Did anyone get that on camera! That’ll go viral!” Grace and I looked at each other and smiled, knowing that an instant classic Grandpa memory was coined.

Plus, I think his favorite thing to do was to go out to IHOP with us all after a game. When I first met him, when Amy and Maureen were still in middle school and high school, we’d all go out to Charlie Browns when we visited. Now, it was IHOP, and it’s been IHOP for the past decade or so, ever since my girls were little and Grandpa paid a dollar to the waiter to make balloon animals for them.

Sometime Thursday evening or early Friday morning, November 29th or 30th, my father-in-law passed away. Bill was approaching his 78th birthday. It was sudden and unexpected, though in hindsight all the warning signs were there and had been for a long time. When I first met him he was only a few years older than I am now. I am stunned and saddened, and still have not processed fully how much this man has meant to me. And my poor wife – she lost her stepfather in May, and now, six months later, her dad.

I last saw him on Sunday, November 18. He drove up to see Charlotte’s soccer team lose in a tight game, 0-1. Charlotte played very well. It was a chilly, wet night. I drove the girls to the field early, and Christie drove over with Bill, and got to spend some quality time in conversation. Back at the house later that night, as he was heading home, he handed me a final gift: a parka he either no longer used or fit into. He didn’t say, he just wanted me to have it.

We did not have much in common; we were never quite “on the same wavelength.” We were different people – if you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality type, whatever I am he undoubtedly is 180 degrees in the other direction. Similar to my extroverted wife, but where my wife scores higher on the analytical side, I believe we would find Bill higher on the emotional or intuitive side. Perhaps my only regret was that I could not tell him in this lifetime how much he meant to me. But he was always generous to a fault, so perhaps he is up there right now, telling me that it’s okay.

The one thing we undoubtedly share was our religious faith. I had fallen away from my Roman Catholic upbringing as a youth, and returned after a twenty-year wandering in the desert, picking up momentum since my marriage and the birth of my children. I believe Bill had a similar journey through the course of his lifetime. I will never forget attending Mass with him and Christie way, way back, and getting ready to go up to receive Communion. As I was about to leave the pew, Bill reached up, gently tugged my arm and whispered quietly in my ear: “Always let Christie go up before you.” To this day, I always do that simple act of chivalry and allow my girls up ahead of me in the Communion line.

Bill taught me many things over the twenty-plus years I’ve known him. Two stand out as the most important: Love of family and friends, and love of God. The two Great Commandments. He taught me never to be ashamed of devotion to God, to Christ, to Mary, to the true Holy Church. Imperfect as he was, I believe he lived out both of these Commandments as best as was possible for him. He may not have been a saint, but he was one of the holiest sinners I ever had the privilege of knowing. I hope to aspire to his level before my allotted time on earth comes to an end.

Rest in Peace, Bill.

 

Me and Bill, with the family, at IHOP, last January