I hope it says Snicjers in his meticulous address book

Dad: Send me your new address.
Me: [Blah blah blah street address+ZIP]
Dad: Chicago?
Me: Yep.
Dad: America?
Me: I knew you would ask that.
Dad: Planet Earth?
Me: No, Ork.
Dad: Milkyway [sic] or Three Musketeers?
Me: Snicjers [sic]
Dad: Got it.

I was trying to be funny and write Snickers, but my phone has been all wonked up since I spilled water on it--I was moving, okay, and the water bottle I selected to keep me from heat stroke is missing its top, and I'm a dumbo--and so I have to hold it a certain way to see the screen and...this is all a very roundabout way of saying I mistyped "Snickers."

Then today, I received a package addressed to my old address. Inside was an envelope addressed to my new address. Inside that envelope was an envelope addressed thusly:

He sent me a suncatcher that belonged to my mom. I'm pretty sure it was a gift to her from someone--Aunt Shirley? Beth? Shannypoo?

I have great big south-facing windows in my living room and dining room. I'll have to find somewhere nice to hang it. My urn is already at the apartment, along with a few photos I unearthed: one of the two of us hugging at the airport after I returned from my semester abroad; one of her facing the ocean on a trip to Mexico with Dad.

Moving reminds me of her. It was a hard business when she drove Plum and I down to Chicago. A policeman yelled at her in front of Wrigley, and she snapped, "Do you really want to live in this place?" She hated the apartment Kate and I took over from friends. It was too dirty for her liking, and it had bars on the windows facing the fire escape. And she told me she cried all the way from the Addison Red Line stop to Midway Airport.

Sometimes I think of our mother-daughter relationship as one of leaving and returning: I often waited up at night for her to come back from her 3-11 shifts or from her leaving the house in a fit of pique to see Grandma Winnie; she waited for me to come back from England, only to take me to Chicago four years later. Maybe that's why the sensation of missing her hasn't hit me; maybe I'm still waiting.

She always told me that the first thing you should do in a new place after you've moved is make the bed. Since this move has been gradual, I have done many things before even bringing the bed over to the apartment. I'm torn between petulance and obedience: part of me wants to continue putting books on my bookshelves in an open act of defiance to her rule; part of me wants to make the bed as soon as the movers drop it off, if only to see if she gives some sign of approval.

Never Challenge the Master

My dad routinely gives me a hard time--no, wait, let me finish, ha ha I know--both in writing and in verbal conversations if I use vague pronouns. He's no dummy, and I know damn well he could extrapolate from the implied direct or indirect subjects in the sentence, so it's just one of a half dozen things he does to frustrate-annoy me into a laugh.

Also, if he could figure out how to comment on this booger, he would say, "What the hell does 'extrapolate' mean?"

Today, I texted him to get an update on Chen Lee, his weirdo senior Siamese cat who injured himself trying to jump up on the kitchen table this past weekend.

Me: Chen Lee Report?
Dad: Still at work.

HA HA! Finally! My opportunity to zing Father for the very thing he so often razzes me!

Me: Chen Lee got a job? Good for him!

I ran my laundry down and cleaned the litter boxes, relishing the idea that I would stump him. Perhaps he would not have any response at all! Clearly, I am the champion of the one-liners in the family.

Finally, I looked at my phone...

Dad: Yes he sits on the street corner taking humans from his pockets and throws them at passers by [sic] while skreeching - MEOW!

Obviously, a reference to this Dad classic, and one of the many Simpsons references we enjoy running into the ground.

Game, set, match. I don't know why I bother trying.

And Dad, that bracketed sic means that it's actually "passersby." It's a compound word. Yes, I know: what's a compound word. I hope you once again appreciate what all your money paid for when I attended the venerated learning institute UWEC.

A Mother's Day Eve Post About My Father

I headed up to Madison yesterday to meet up with Dad. He was there for work, attending a UW engineering class, then off to DeForest for a United Church of Christ presentation for his deaconing (? - I think? I get muddy on details that go beyond Dad's stories of food distribution Saturdays and helping his elderly neighbors into their new homes by moving them or building ramps).

We had breakfast at a place my former college roommate/current friend Mary introduced me to, Daisy Cafe, right up my alley with its cute presentation of granola ideals (Dad was skeptical, but declared the chili-espresso steak hash--and let's not get into the pre-ordering-of-an-item-with-espresso we had--"pretty good; the steak was a good cut and quality of steak," which is a ringing endorsement on the grading scale). Then we went rambling around the area for the day.

When I was younger, it was always a treat to go with Dad in his green Ford F-150--the vehicle I would later use to learn the art of driving myself. He knew all the different rambling county-road ways to get from point A to point B in River Falls and chose them based on his whim. I liked his various routines--pretending that he controlled the intermittent windshield wiper setting by pointing his finger at the windshield; saying "Here we go 'round the coh-nohr!"; and singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy," punctuating downbeats by tromping on the brakes (yeah, I know, safety and whatnot, but I was wearing a seatbelt, which is more than I can say for the games Andy and Tony and I elected to create where we jumped and slid from heights and shot each other with BB guns).

But somewhere along the way, I suppose when I became a teenager, it was less of a treat and more of a chore. Why couldn't we go the fastest way home? Where were we going? Jokes became corny. Learning to drive that obstinate old pickup, not to mention parallel park it, took a lot of joy out of spending time in the car with my Dad altogether.

But the passage of time changes a lot. The loss of one parent, suddenly and shockingly, definitely changes a lot. I suppose Dylan Thomas was onto something in that poem "Fern Hill," that I read in a summer literature class at UWEC--you know, that time would take me up to the swallow-thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, et cetera. But loss and the knowledge of mortality doesn't change everything: I still like to know where I'm going most of the time, and if I don't, I walk forward with purpose, much to the detriment of friends who actually know where we're supposed to be heading. But sticking stubbornly to some personal quirks doesn't mean I haven't rediscovered my love of corny jokes or of spending time wandering the cow paths if the man driving the vehicle imitates the birdsong and the noise of passing vehicles.

I suppose my teenage petulance instilled in my dad a nervousness that I need constantly be entertained. He apologizes anxiously, at least once, any time I come back to Wisconsin or we spend a random one-off day together. He is sorry, he'll say, that we didn't do much. I have tried repeatedly to explain that any time with him is entertaining (particularly if he's arguing with his GPS, Mrs. Garmin, all day). But it wasn't until yesterday that I realized why the countryside rambling in a pickup touched my heart, made me more grateful than ever for the time I spent with my dad and will hopefully spend with him in the future. I guess we can't go back in time, but we can sometimes experience something similar to a memory from youth and realize what a treasure each moment with family is, how much those times build you into who you are (someone who also argues with a GPS and imitates the sounds of passing cars and motorcycles, by the way).

Though if he ever makes me parallel park a manual transmission pickup again, he's in big trouble.

Sometimes I want to ask my father...

..."Why is everything a bit with you? Some kind of comedy routine?" And then I look at the myriad conversations my friends are forced to have with me where I'm all "Wokka wokka wokka!" and I hold my tongue. Sorta.

Via Textual Interface on Smart Phones

Me: Would you like a barely used coffeemaker?

Dad: Why? What's wrong with it?

Me: Jill was giving it away because her parents bought her a French press. It has a paperless filter.

Dad: Which has a paperless filter? Why would you want to press a Frenchman?

Me: DO YOU WANT A NEW COFFEEMAKER OR NOT, MULE?

Dad: Yes, if I'm touched I'm touched*. Crabby :p [Ed. note: WHO TAUGHT HIM TO MAKE THAT EMOTICON?! ANDREW?!]

*One of a dozen quotes by Muley, the Joads' neighbor who wanders around like "an ol' graveyard ghost" after all his neighbors have lost their farms to the bank. The Grapes of Wrath. Reading: It's FUNdamental!

Why I Never Should Have Told Dad About My Volunteer Work With Cats

EDITORIAL CORRECTION

My dad pointed out to me that female geese are hens; male geese are ganders.

I want you all to know that in the past, I have told friends that the gravity box being stored in Dad's pole shed by a neighboring farmer was for making ice cream. So just be aware I'm never a reliable source for non-TV, non-bookish related information.

Things My Mother Heard (for Andy, who never gets tired of this)

Also, to be fair to Dad: cell phones and parents and I often make a hilarious misheard combo.

Six or seven years ago, when I was still working up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, I had a 3/4-mile walk through a corporate park from my bus stop. In order to make the corporate park more scenic, a number of manmade ponds were added. In order to make the ponds hugely unappealing and less scenic, a bunch of fatass Canadian geese took up residence there year-round, making sections of sidewalk a veritable minefield (of poop, that is, not mines).

It was particularly tough in the spring, because birds, like any barely evolutionized lizard, are spastically protective of their nests. So not only did you have to hopscotch around poop, you had to be wary of the hissing, sometimes charging mama ganders (who were, and always will be, jerks, motherhood aside).

One morning, I was talking to my mom via cell phone on the way past one such pond. A mama gander hissed at me, even though, as I recall, I was not making eye contact or figuring out how to eat the delicious, delicious eggs in her stupid nest, and I said, mid-conversation, "Oh, shut up."

Mom: Who are you talking to?
Me: Oh, a goose hissed at me.
Mom: ...where was he sitting?
Me: By the pond.
Mom: Was anybody watching him?
Me: ...wait, what?
Mom: Didn't you say a goof hissed at you?
Me: (after 30+ seconds of solid laughter) No, no, no, a goose.

After Mom finished laughing, we had a discussion of what exactly constituted a goof and why he would be hissing at 8:00 in the morning.