Through My Father's Eyes

I am on a small mountain, or maybe a very large hill pushing my Uncle’s Pontiac up a snow-covered road. I am wearing green Pumas and a pair of tan khakis.?

Snow was not on the forecast, though it is late February.?

Surrounding me are nothing but trees. My Dad and two Uncles are sitting in the car, while the cousin I had just met for the first time, is struggling in the cold next to me.?

He is out of breath and swearing. I just want to go home back to Milwaukee.?

My Father and I are in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania for the funeral of his brother, my other Uncle.?

Two days prior, I was in my apartment typing book reviews and nursing a beer. Now I am in the middle of nowhere off the interstate pushing a blue four-door up a mountain.?

I can hear my Dad and his brothers laughing and swearing at each other. Someone must have brought out the ginger-flavored moonshine.?

A staple in these parts, and the go-to beverage for this side of the family. My uncles and cousins have a still somewhere in these woods.?

They convert corn mash into a highly potent whiskey variant that keeps the locals warm during the winter months.?

A side hustle from the days of prohibition that survived well into the 21st century. My family is not without their entrepreneurial spirit.?

It takes some time, but my cousin and I dislodge the Pontiac from the snow and climb back in.

As I wedge myself between my uncle and cousin, because of course I have to sit in the middle, my uncle hands me a bottle. Its contents are clear.?

My Dad turns to me with a scowl and says; “Careful with that.”???

I twist off the cap and take a long pull. It tastes like pure alcohol before I choke up the third swallow and cough. Moonshine sprays the back of the seat.?

“What the hell is wrong with you? Didn’t I just tell you?”

“You didn’t tell me that!” I croaked back. My throat is burning and my eyes are wet with tears.?

My cousin laughs, takes the bottle, and returns it to my Dad after taking a few gulps himself.

“Uncle Bobby, he ain’t tried this before?” He asks laughing. The only people who call my father Bobby are his brothers and my now new cousin.?

“Jesus.” My Dad replies shaking his head.?

The 5 of us continue up the large hill at a snail's pace until we reach my deceased uncle's home.?

From the outside, it looks like a puzzle piece of other houses all put together with nails and a couple of strips of siding.?

A goat is standing there watching tentatively as we pull into the dirt driveway. My Dad turns to me and gives me a look that translates to keep your mouth shut.?

He already knows I have no filter for situations like this. Especially since I had suggested earlier that it would be best if we stayed in a hotel.??

“Get the bags.”?

That is all he says to me as my uncles, cousin, and Dad go inside.

The house sits on a slope with a steep drop inches from the passenger doors. I tiptoe across to the back. The goat hasn’t moved.?

Home is all but a distant memory.?

I am still trying to determine if the goat is a representation of Satan, or my spirit animal to guide me through the next couple of days as I lug out the suitcases.?

“Did Loui die in here?” My Dad asks as my cousin shows us our room. Since the two of us were bunking together, we got the master bedroom.

My dead uncle's bed.?

“No, he died in the chair.” In his matter-of-fact reply, and opens a can of beer.?

The look my Father gives me is a whole conversation in and of itself. His eyes warn me that under no circumstances am I to comment on anything.?

Just put the suitcases away.?

The closet is musty. There is no floor. Just frozen dirt. And not flat and smooth either. It looks as if something was burrowing here moments before.?

Was the goat in here I wonder.?

Back in the dining room, or as I would eventually call it the room with the table, my uncles and cousin are all sitting around double-fisting cans of beer.?

There are several disposable aluminum pans full of untouched food.

My Dad sits next to his brothers as they all pass the bottle of moonshine. When it gets handed to me, my Dad shakes his head no.?

“You’ve had enough. Drink a beer.” He says.?

And for the next several hours as the alcohol flowed freely, I watched from the corner of the table as my Dad became someone that I had never met before.?

He was no longer my father or my mother’s husband, but Robert. A man before responsibility took over his life.?

A guy with memories that didn’t include me.?

I heard stories of a man, who with his brothers, stole sheep from the neighboring farms.?

A teenager who took off for two weeks and hitch-hiked to Florida.?

This one time Bobby decided that he was going to take Charley to Chicago before his brother would enlist in the army. They were the closest.??

All of this was kept from my siblings and me. A whole side of my father that we never knew existed.?

And with each pull of that corn mash, I learned a little bit more about my Dad.?

That following morning I woke up and was told to make coffee. My cousin is in the kitchen with a shotgun.?

“Shhh. I am trying to get the goat.” My cousin whispers. The front door is open and the goat is pacing past the window.??

I just stand there confused.?

“Are you making coffee or what?”?

“He’s got a gun.” I say to my Dad as he sits at the table with a frustrated look.?

“It’s a pellet gun. Just make some coffee.”?

What happens next is a rush of excitement. I hear the distinct sound of a goat baa baa behind me followed by the clicking of hoofs on linoleum.?

My cousin darts past the countertop and pushes the goat towards the open door on the far side of the room. The animal goes left instead of right.?

Bobby jumps up from the table and swats the goat to correct its course as my cousin takes the butt of the pellet gun and cracks it on the ass.

It beelines forward into the dark open room.?

My Dad takes two steps and reaches for the door to close it. Everything is quiet.?

I am still standing there confused. What the hell just happened??

Minutes go by before we hear my uncle shouting. The door flies open and the goat leaps out from the dark heading straight for me.

My Dad and cousin are laughing hard.?

I hop on the kitchen counter and watch as my cousin levels what still appears to be a shotgun, and takes aim at the goat.?

There is a soft pop.? The goat skids into the baseboards before it runs back outside. Everyone is laughing uncontrollably as my uncle comes out of the room.?

My eyes are wide with terror. I don’t know what to do.?

“Are you making that coffee?” My Dad barks between breaths.

When the excitement eventually died down between coffee, leftovers, and even more moonshine, I learned that my cousin, uncles, and my father had planned this the night before.?

This was their version of a joke for whoever passed out first at the party.??

Those next several days at my uncle's funeral, I learned so much about my Dad. I got to witness him not as this towering figure in my life, but as an ordinary person.

I got to see him as a man.??

A boy with hopes and dreams who grew up and had a family. A guy with a wicked sense of humor who had memories of brothers he loved.?

What I saw was myself. I saw all the parts of me that were my father. He and I were a lot alike in so many ways.?

Sometimes we forget to look at our parents as people. We have these expectations of them, but forget that they are just individuals doing the best that they can with the resources available.

It’s hard to see them as anything but parents.??

And it just so happened that God was allowing me to see my father, and myself in a different light. It was a gift that I wouldn’t recognize until a few weeks later.?

Some say that when a goat crosses your path, spiritually it signifies a focus on the coming challenges, sacrifice, and drive you will encounter in your life.?

My Dad and I flew back that Sunday in a snowstorm. I dropped him off at his house and he asked me not to tell my Mom or sister about the weekend.?

He wanted it to stay between us.?

Two days later my father was rushed to the hospital and fell into a coma. He died three months later.?

That was the first and only time I had ever got to spend quality time with my father as two men.

It took me many years to get over his loss, but when I look back at that weekend of pushing a Pontiac up a mountain, drinking moonshine for the first time, and watching a goat run around a dining room table, I can’t help but feel how lucky I was to have those memories.

I got to meet Bobby for the first time.

And that goat guided me along for the ride.