Father's tears

Today I was looking in the old computers files and found a letter Mandy wrote over five years ago that brought so many sad memories. I wish I could take all that back. This is what she wrote:

Mandy Van Leeuwen

I’m locked in my bedroom—well not my room exactly—my grandmother’s room that I’m borrowing.  Yes, I said borrowing.  My mom has always been rather impulsive, but I never knew she’d take it to the next level! I look around the room and my nose wrinkles in disgust at the musty old people smell.  I stare at my reflection in the dust covered mirror of the old vanity that has no fingerprints in the dust.   On the cabinet are black and white photos and an arrangement of delicate porcelain faced dolls.  I scan around the room and see pink frilly curtains and sentimental trinkets about the room.  This room is saturated with memories that are not my own.  I feel like an alien in this room, because when I stare into the blank faces of these glass faced dolls--rather than reminisce I just feel creeped out.

I hear knocking at my door.  I don’t move. 

                “Mandy?” Croaks my grandma. 

I ignore her.  She finally gives up.   I can hear her heavy breathing as she inches down the stairs. 

                I go into the bathroom and splash water on my face to clear up the red blotches I get when I cry.  There’s nothing I can do about my pink eyes, but I decide to blame it on allergies.  I muster enough courage to venture downstairs.  My dad is in deep conversation with my grandma.  They look up like that of deer in the meadow, and a hush silence falls over them.                 

My dad’s gaze is expressionless, and so I edge my way over, and stand next to them. My grandma, I notice, is crying-- I don’t remember ever seeing her cry before.   She looked much more fragile when she was crying.  I wonder if I looked that fragile too.

We stood in her kitchen in silence for a few moments.  Letting the ticking of the clock roar in my ears.  The kitchen was spotless and still smelled of cleaning supplies.  After awkward moments of silence my grandma begins apologizing for getting worked up about the purses and that the purses didn’t really matter.

Finally I lose it again, the damn breaks, and there’s no stopping me now.  A flood of tears are let loose.

Between the hiccups of my sobs I gasp, “I just want to go home!”

“I just want my bed, my room, somewhere I feel comfortable!”  As I’m speaking between sobs I look up to see my father holding back laughter… his face contorts, trying to hold back his laughter and I feel my face get hot with anger.  I become furious!

But then I take a second glance and notice that his face wasn’t twisting with laughter, but with agony.  He was crying! Never in my entire life had I seen my father cry.  Not when he cut his finger half off in the shop, or when he fell off a cliff and his shirt was stained with blood. 

But yet there he was, crying.  Not for any pain of himself but for his daughter.  At the sight of his daughters pain is the only time in my entire life that I’ve ever seen my father cry.

…. This all started in April of last year.  I walked to my house and came in to an empty home. My only home for over 16 years was vacant, and all that was left were nails on the walls and boxes stacked on boxes.   My Mother danced over to me with a big grin and sang the good news.

“Were moving!”

My mom had sold our house without telling me about it and without buying another house to move into.  So I can legitimately say I’ve been homeless for a period of three months.  My mom moved in with Tia Norma who lived two hours away, and I stayed behind because I needed to finish school. 

I stayed at my grandma’s because she no longer used her bedroom, and I could easily sleep there.  However her room was cluttered with a lot of sentimental stuff.  I guess with 80 years of life people tend to accumulate a lot of junk.

So I moved some of her things to make room for my clothes and when my grandma noticed I moved some purses of hers, she got upset.

Although I felt a lot of guilt for moving my grandma’s things, that wasn’t the reason why was crying. I began to cry because I was extremely homesick.  I was an old pine tree with roots buried deep in the soil, and then one day without warning I was uprooted. 

                So now here I am, weeping in my father’s arms.  I can feel his strong shoulders shaking with his sobs.   Being with my dad gave me a feeling of comfort, and I began to feel at home in his embrace.  I felt like I did as a child, and floods of memories drowned my anxiety. 

He always had a way of giving me strength.  Just like when he taught me to ride a bicycle for the first time.  I would fall; skinning my knees and elbows and he would come running to my side, gently pulling me up on my feet. I wanted to give up but he would dry my tears and encourage me to try again.  I remembered when I was little; staying up late watching T.V. with him, and then I would pretend I was asleep just so he would carry me to bed.  Or all the countless times he took me to football or basketball games, especially one particular Jazz game we went to where we cheered so loud that the people in front of us put in earplugs! 

Yet out of all the times spent together, nothing measures up to how close I feel with my dad right now, despite my sniffles beginning to sound more and more like a hog snorting.

  But I knew that this memory would stand out in my mind forever, like pigs in the sky, because for this one night both my dad  and I were as fragile as my grandma’s creepy porcelain dolls.

I remember this day but every story has two sides and this is my side. I wanted to move, I couldn't stand been in the same house that had all those memories of a family that no longer existed. I was looking to buy a duplex in the Millcreek area so I could live on one side and rent out the other side. My family came down to just Mandy and me. However, the bank was not going to lend me the money unless I had proof of income from the home I was living in. The only way I could qualify was to either rent my house or sell it. The house was for sale or rent but there was no sign. I told the Realtor I didn't want a sign because I didn't want the neighbors to know I was even moving until it was confirmed. I put the house on the market. around the middle of April and hope I would still be there for the next couple of months. No one came to see it because the housing market was very depressed. What I did get was an offer from someone who offered rent the house ASAP she needed to move right away. I got the call on April 25 and had five days to move out. She wanted a long lease. She needed to rent  for five years and five years seemed a long time  and that is when I made the decision to move out at the end of the month so she could move in by May first.  School would be over in only six weeks and I thought I could take Mandy with me to South Jordan in my Aunts basement I was going to bring Mandy to school every morning and take her with me in the afternoon but when I told this to Mandy, she refused to come with me. She decided to move with her dad. This broke my heart.  All I remember is that every day, I would drive  to school from South Jordan anyway to bring her lunch or take her out to lunch.


When I told my mom of what had happened she being the most positive woman you could ever know said: "that is wonderful, she will get to spend time with Shirley and have more quality time with her dad." Mandy's dad at the time lived with grandma Shirley but I never knew this was going to be so hard on  Mandy. I imagined and honestly thought she is going to be with family. She is going to be with her dad and her grandma. I never thought this would be a problem because when I was young I remember spending weeks and even months with my grandma Hilda or my great-grandma Antonia and I felt as secured and loved as my own home. This supposed to only be for five weeks. As soon as school was over we went for two weeks to El Salvador.  When we got back I couldn't convince Mandy to want to come with me to South Jordan even when school was over so I rented a condo in Cottonwood Heights so that her friends had a place to visit her that would be closer but it was still too far from her friends. We are talking a 10 minute drive.  She missed her friends in Holladay more than me and that is when I learned something the hard way, friends are more important than a mother when you are a teenager. By the end of July I had gotten engaged and had bought a beautiful home in Bountiful. This time she did come with me and for the next half of the year I drove her down to Skyline High.  Finally Mandy had her own room and we had our own home forever we thought but little did we knew that we would move again within the next four months.