Lessons from the Mountain by Mary McDonough

Author:Mary McDonough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2011-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

DAD

My dad was never a “doctor” person. His farm life prepared him to take care of things on his own. When he was building a wall in our backyard, a cinder block fell on his hand. Blood was building pressure under his nail. He went to the garage, got a drill bit, and drilled through his fingernail until the pressure released. I asked him later why he had a hole in his nail. He said, “To get the blood out.”

He was the same way about pulling teeth. When we were little, he’d ask us if he could just have a look at any loose teeth to “check and see how loose they were.” Then he’d yank it out. We caught on to that one fast enough. Subsequent teeth were pulled by our own timing when he tied our tooth to a string and then the door. We got to shut the door when we were ready. I never shut the door, though. I couldn’t do it.

My father got sick when I was fifteen. We didn’t know there was anything wrong for a long time, as he didn’t go to the doctor at first. I came home from school one day and he was sitting alone, in a dark room, which was so scary to me. He was never home during the day, let alone sitting in a darkened room.

I said, “Is something wrong?”

He said, “Yes, something’s very wrong.” The look on his face and the tone of his voice was unfamiliar. I had never seen him like this before. My legs started to shake.

He told me I had to drive him to the hospital in Pasadena, a good forty-five minutes from our house. I didn’t have a driver’s license yet. He had taught me to drive when I was nine, but this wasn’t sitting on his lap steering down a dirt road, or that deserted highway in Colorado. This was for real, negotiating freeways and interchanges. I was scared, but I knew I had to help my dad. I didn’t question or argue. I got my purse, and we left. My journal entry from that day:

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