Essays
90 Day Wonder
© Sande Boritz Berger
When I dream about my father, he is usually teaching me something. His
voice is firm, bellowing through the room like a sergeant with a new recruit.
Sometimes his hand flies up to gesture and I flinch, duck my head, afraid
that he might rap me for having my attention wander.
A few months after my birth in ‘44, my father was sent by the U.S.
Navy to Officer’s Candidate School at Cornell University. He was
among a very select group of men chosen to complete the equivalent of
a college education in just three months. The Navy called them “
90 Day Wonders.” In his mostly ordinary life, it became an extraordinary
achievement and probably why he expected nothing less than academic excellence
from his children. To my father, second best was a close cousin to failure.
While visiting my parents’ Florida home, I watch my father proudly
show me racks of golf slacks hung meticulously and arranged by color in
his closet. Then he lifts the bamboo shade and gestures towards the sun,
gloats, as if he were responsible for it being there. It’s a great
day for the driving range. And at last, he can hit that little white ball
again. Today I, reluctantly, agree to let him give me a golf lesson.
Just a year ago, the choice of what to wear seemed insignificant, almost
banal, among decisions of what stocks to buy or sell, or where to travel
during his comfortable state of semi-retirement. Then, like a flash tropical
storm, his life changed dramatically. Two days after elective bypass surgery,
at 72, he suffered a massive stroke.
He had decided on the surgery after several consultations and opinions.
The consensus being, it could add ten, maybe twenty years to his life.
And the operation itself was a clinical success. He said he had felt minimal
pain and discomfort. So on the second day, he became a little stubborn,
insisted on a trip to the bathroom over the indignity of using a bed-
pan. It may have been the mistake of his life. He became paralyzed on
the right side, indicating a clot had lodged in the left portion of his
brain—the part that controls patterns of speech, communication, and the
memory bank of learning. All his words and thoughts lay trapped inside
his brain.
I flew to Florida immediately, not knowing what to expect, shocked at
the sudden change in his condition. My mother begged me not to be emotional
when I saw him. She instructed me to talk very slowly. Then she said,
“ The man in that room is not your father.”
Those words echoed in my mind as I walked down the endless corridor to
his room. He was propped in a huge vinyl chair with support bars. Twisted
tubes connected him to a machine that made loud pumping sounds like an
aquarium. His left arm was bent, the hand pressed against his cheek, holding
up his head. He looked a hundred years old. I gulped hard, choking back
tears while I stood frozen at his right side.
“ Hi Daddy,” I said, the words startled me; I hadn’t
uttered them in years. He groaned and I bent over to kiss him chatting
nervously, trying to avoid his sad liquid eyes. But they searched my face
looking for answers to all the questions he could not ask. “Don’t
worry,” I said, “everything will be all right.”
In the days that followed, doctors rotated in and out of his room looking
for hints of improvement. They did not recognize the vibrant man that
had marched into their office just weeks before methodically gathering
information. Now they seemed to press too hard asking him for the names
of his children and his wife. He looked at them with disgust—annoyed
at this test. They dangled simple familiar objects in front of his face...
a comb, a ball, a cup. When he shoved the rubber ball into his mouth,
I threw myself over his chest, squeezed his cheeks until he released it.
He could name nothing, but once in utter frustration, he screamed, “Get
out of here, all of you!” Involuntary speech unleashed by pure anger.
The speech pathologist reported that further testing had revealed his
impairment was severe. There was a chance he could endanger himself, misusing
a razor, a fork, a knife. Recovery would be an uphill battle. It would
depend on his willingness to relearn the simplest of concepts, and loads
of sheer luck.
Within a few days, in the same hospital, he began his rehabilitation.
Although he suffered bouts of depression, he waited anxiously for his
daily speech and physical therapy. He sat staring at his watch—always
ready for someone, anyone, to knock on his door. Could he really know
the time, I wondered or was it just habit? Like a toddler, he struggled
with a spoon trying to feed himself. And he was insistent on trying to
walk, grunting if you dared stop him. He developed a new vocabulary of
four letter words, commonplace we were warned, for stroke victims. The
staff cheered him on as he marched tentatively down the long hospital
halls in his first pair of high tops. He responded like Rocky with raised
arms, and garbled words that sounded like, “I’ll do it. You’ll
see.”
In less than three weeks, my father walked unassisted, and was discharged.
He continued speech therapy at home on a computer. He sat for hours mesmerized
by the images on the screen. The therapist used simple pre-school programs
that would help him link new words with sounds. And most of them were
truly new words. Dad was starting over. I told the therapist that he would
work harder than anyone. I told her of his passion for knowledge... about
the Navy and Cornell...how he was constantly sending us, his children,
articles to read. They were words of advice or concern, substituting for
words of love. She listened, but turned from me, and my pleading eyes.
She already knew what I was afraid to hear—my father would no longer
be the man I’d known, and she would not dare forecast his future.
Dad’s emotions have taken the place of much of his language. And
while watching him through this struggle, still, I am learning from him,
this being the gentlest of his lessons. His little notebook lists addresses
and our names, names he might never say. And he gives out business cards,
describing his disability, to anyone who looks at him with trepidation.
Sometimes, when our family gathers around the dinner table, his head darts
back and forth desperately taking in the nuances of our conversation.
No matter what, he has made up his mind to be an active participant. He
laughs when we laugh, leans in when we whisper. I watch him struggling
to understand, and my heart pounds wishing everyone would please slow
down. When they don’t, often his eyes meet mine. “Oh God,”
I might hear him whisper.
I’m startled, when my father walks out of his bedroom modeling lime
green golf slacks. Smiling broadly, he says, “ Good, huh?”
What can I possibly say? “Yes, perfect!”