Conversations with My Father: Six Feet Under Edition

MY FATHER: I know you think you’re finished gardening for the day, but I have one more task for you.

ME: All right. What’s that?

MY FATHER: Do you have the trowel?

ME: Right here.

MY FATHER: Let me just. . . . [Begins grappling with the periwinkle at the edge of the patio]

ME: Are you trying to back those vines?

MY FATHER: Noooo . . . I’m just trying to find the edge. . . .

ME: Do you want me to trim the periwinkle to the edge? I mean, there’s two feet of growth over the concrete.

MY FATHER: Noooo . . . I want you to dig . . . there.

ME [peering at a patch of parched dirt that’s hard as sandstone]: Why?

MY FATHER: Because I told you to.

ME: Listen. That didn’t work on me when I was fifteen, and it’s certainly not going to. . . .

MY FATHER [ignoring me and regarding a patch of dirt a foot away]: No. There. Dig there.

ME [suspiciously]: What is this all about?

MY FATHER: Forty-six years ago, in 1972. . . .

ME: Oh god, it’s a history lesson.

MY FATHER: . . . the first thing your mother and I did, after the movers picked up all our furniture from the old apartment on Waldo lane was to stop at the pharmacy in Lakeside. . . .

ME: Where they sold those antacid tablets you couldn’t find anywhere else.

MY FATHER: . . . and picked up a box of the antacids you couldn’t find anywhere else. . . .

ME: I just said that.

MY FATHER: You mother loved those antacids. I still have a tube of them upstairs.

ME: You keep a package of antacids that’s decades old? Why? It’s not good any more.

MY FATHER: I keep it for sentimental reasons.

ME: You know that you’re the only person not on a hoarders reality show who keeps antacids for sentimental reasons, right?

MY FATHER: Anyway. The next thing we did was to go to the little hardware store next door and make a copy of the deadbolt key to the back door. And what do you think I did with that?

ME: No.

MY FATHER: I—wait, do you mean no, you’re not going to guess?

ME: I mean I figured it out, and no.

MY FATHER: I buried it, right there, and now you’re going to dig—wait, is that what you’re saying no about?

ME: Now you’re all caught up.

MY FATHER: It’s not more than a foot down!

ME: Listen. So far you’ve pointed to there and there and now there. Three spots. You don’t actually know where that key is buried, do you?

MY FATHER: I know it’s somewhere along the edge of the patio.

ME: The patio is eighteen feet long. I’m not digging an eighteen-foot trench.

MY FATHER: Oh, don’t be so . . . besides, I know I didn’t bury it at the end, so you only have to dig maybe a twelve-foot trench.

ME: No.

MY FATHER: Dig for forty minutes, then, and if we don’t find it. . . .

ME: No. Any key that’s been buried for forty-eight years is at this point going to be corroded and unusable.

MY FATHER: That’s nonsense. I buried it in a container.

ME: What kind of container?

MY FATHER: A soup can.

ME: A metal soup can. The kind that rusts.

MY FATHER: I filled it with tissue!

ME: No. What we are going to do is go to the hardware store and make another key, and we will find a magnetic key hiding box that you can attach to a metal object, like the far bottom side of the air conditioner condenser. . . .

MY FATHER [with scorn]: The far bottom side of the air conditioner condenser is the first place a thief would look.

ME: Or we can go to Lowe’s and get a key holder that’s shaped like a fake rock, with a hollow space inside, and we can hide it anywhere in the yard you like. But that’s what we’re doing.

MY FATHER: A . . . fake . . . rock?

ME: It’s a weatherproof manmade material, textured like a rock, that will blend in with its surroundings. It won’t cost more than a few dollars. Get your spare key. Let’s go to the hardware store.

MY FATHER [stalling]: So if there’s an emergency situation, and I need to go to the bathroom, or answer the telephone, or get inside to grab some medicine, and I’m locked out, I have to go hunting around the yard for a fake rock?

ME: If there’s an emergency situation and you need to go to the bathroom, or answer the telephone, or evade terrorists, what would you rather do? Grab a shovel and dig a twelve-foot trench in solid dry earth, or simply pick up a fake rock that you’ve placed in a convenient and easily-remembered spot to retrieve your spare key?

MY FATHER: How about you dig for ten minutes?

ME: Good god, man, but you are stubborn.