[Brady and Nati on Rosemary’s East Kingston Green, June 8, 2007]
Who Loves Ya, Baby?
A Rosemary Beach Forever Memory
It was indeed difficult to believe, but I had heard some men confide that they carried a heart wound throughout life, one of never having heard an I love you from any of their fathers or grandfathers. Not knowing the number of days grandparents are granted on this earth and not wishing my grandson to go through life without hearing words of affection from his grandfather, I began this little saying with him as soon as he mastered speaking my name.
Who loves ya, Baby? Was a popular rhetorical expression coined by actor Telly Savalas who played the title role from the 1970’s TV police action drama Kojak. Sometimes with a lollipop in the side of his mouth, Mr. Savalas would end a conversation, reply to a compliment given, or acknowledge a particular fondness for a friend with the words “Who loves ya, baby?” No matter where we were, I could count on Brady’s answer, “Papaw.”
I suppose it was because she had overheard Brady say it her whole life, but it still surprised me when it finally happened. Natalie replied with him on that June 2007, summer day. We were vacationing at Rosemary Beach, that uniquely beautiful Caribbean/St. Augustine architecture inspired, resort and residential community along Route 30-A, Florida panhandle’s fabled emerald coast. I don’t recall the reason why I was driving daughter Erika’s van with both grandchildren that day, but it was there on the way back to our flat that I thought heard Nati respond in unison with her big brother, “Papaw”. Not certain, I repeated, “Who loves ya, baby?” and again heard from both grandchildren! Though barely above a whisper, this time Brady heard it too, but I made him promise not to tell that little Nati knew the answer until we could both “show” mommy with a special demonstration. Nati was a toddler with a whole lot of love but with few words to express it, so Brady and I were excited that she joined in our own little routine. We would just have to make it a threesome now. Needless to say, Mommy and Nonny were quite impressed with Nati’s response in our reenactment back at the flat, and I was given what was to become my most precious Rosemary memory.
The question and response continued for the remainder of our stay at Rosemary Beach. Whether we were shopping at Gigi’s or the Trading Company, enjoying a sweet treat at the Sugar Shack, playing chase on the St. Augustine green, having breakfast on the flat’s railed front porch, getting soaked in the Bridgetown Avenue ground sprinklers, or taking pictures (like the one above) on the East Kingston Green, Nati’s answer was always a softly voiced, “Papaw.”
Totally relaxed and rejuvenated with many new Rosemary Beach memories, we returned home to Lexington, Kentucky at the end of the week. Soon we were all celebrating Father’s Day and I recalled being so thankful and thinking that until dads become granddads, guys just don’t have a clue how sweet, really sweet the sounds of little loved ones can be. “Papaw, Papaw!” followed by wonderful hugs and kisses were music to my 60+ year-old ears.
With repairs to our damaged house (thanks to a recent hailstorm) and our townhouse-to-condo conversion work, the remainder of June and July passed quickly with a great deal of Papaw perspiration and soon Nonny and I packed our bags for England to be with “Aunt Coley and Uncle Mac” as Brady and Nati called them. Normally I never relished hearing the words “airplane engine trouble,” but this time it meant we would return the following day when both grandchildren would accompany Erika’s taxi service for airport goodbyes -- such sweet hugs and kisses. Nicole, our older daughter, and husband Michael (aka Coley & Mac) had to wait an additional day before our arrival to show us around the English countryside and Oxford University where Michael was completing his MBA.
************************************************************
The British Cotswolds, quaint stone cottages on gentle rolling hillsides, were almost like their high gloss travel brochure pictures only richly more colorful. Dry-laid rock fence lined farmland pasture divisions in the haze, all gradually unveiled through the mist chased by the break of day. Not a regular event in this rain soaked English shire for which I was all the more grateful. With the lifting fog disappeared almost every care. What I saw (what I yearned for now in mid August) so naturally framed by the kitchen window was that early summer peacefulness that we left at Rosemary Beach, no worries whatsoever—no remodeling delays, no sub-contractor deadline headaches, no sore muscles, and no realtor calls back home. The conversion of townhouses to condominiums -flipping they called it- was my chief source of pension supplement with Social Security still 2 years off. Good thing Michael’s generous MBA cohort friend Mark was on summer “holiday” in Australia, because we couldn’t possibly afford to rent this charming little country cottage for very long. Could any scene be more relaxing? Well, maybe some rolling coastal ocean breakers perhaps, but we were a long way from England’s Atlantic and much farther still from Florida’s Gulf.
This respite quickly vanished, tranquility burned away with the fog before my next sip of coffee when, Michael without a word handed me his overseas cell phone.
“For me?” I asked.
Earlier, on his way down the stairs I overheard him ask Nicole, “Hey, Babe, what’s your sister’s number? Someone’s been calling us throughout the night from Kentucky.”
“Daddy…,” Erika began (she had not called me that since she was 10).
My baby girl, our second daughter, the one who proudly proclaimed to the whole church congregation on high school graduation Sunday that she was going to college to work on her MRS. Degree, something her youth minister had put her up to, I’m quite certain. Baby girl, whose own birth I had so intently witnessed, no “coached”, because a place called Vietnam prevented my being on hand for her older sister Nicole’s arrival 4 years earlier. She did get that MRS. Degree from Bryan that special fellow she met in college, but that was after the bachelor’s degree, my 2 grandchildren, and some 14 years after she ceased calling me Daddy.
My heart quickened, mind raced, and knees sank with a strange, foreboding. Mom was always her go-to for phone calls, always. Erika was a daddy’s girl all right, but phone calls were a Mom-first, Dad-second thing. What had Michael said, “…Kentucky calls throughout the night?” What could be so bad that she would ask for me?
“Daddy, I need you to be strong…” Whatever did I need to be strong about? I was not.
Ok, so who was in such danger that I had to be strong? Marjorie’s 85 year-old mother Dee, a heart attack maybe? Husband Bryan, a car accident possibly? The grandkids, 4 year-old Brady and soon-to-be 2 year-old Natalie, both so strong and healthy just 6 days ago when they dropped us off at the airport? Oh, Lord, what was wrong?
“Can you hear me, Dad?”
“Yes, Erika, I’m here, honey, what’s wrong?”
“Daddy, it’s Nati…
**************************************************************
In the months following her funeral, I reflected on the many cards, prayers, and e-mails we had received, and asked God to show me the difference between normal grieving and self-pity. For the most part, I pretty much stayed somewhere between heartache and self-pity.
Bryan and Erika decided that a September get-away to Disney World would be best for the family, especially Brady. Wanting to return to Rosemary Beach, Nonny and I first drove down to Orlando for that week while friends and family flew. I recall how comforting it was to have everybody so close in that Disney area home, yet thinking we were still one shy of a full heart.
As September turned into October, Nonny and I left the others and traveled north. At Tallahassee, we drove west through Panama City and rolled through Rosemary’s Barrett Square, finally coming to a stop in the parking lot off Hamilton Lane behind the flats. When we entered 122C Georgetown Avenue, the sorrow was overwhelming. Memories of Nati were everywhere.
No sense of ease came that first day and night, mostly because Nati was in the flat, on the beach, and at all the little shops, everywhere I had ever taken her picture. It didn’t happen until the second full day during an early morning walk through Rosemary’s park side, the area north between 30-A and 98. Sitting on a bench at one end of East Kingston Green, I struggled to visualize the last picture I had taken of them together. Those summer flowers which gloriously bloomed framing Brady and Nati’s precious cherub-like faces capturing them in gold, purple, and coral adornment were now withered or gone. The shortly cropped tiff grass was the only remaining color, and that faded green grew blurry as thoughts returned to our June vacation.
I had often heard it said that life was but a vapor, and I so needed something more solid, more concrete than that already fading memory picture in this park (or the real one for that matter still on my digital camera card). I needed a blessing. Prompted by this park scene, it came in a forgotten conversation, one that Erika and I had shortly before the Kentucky funeral, one that forever connected Nati, Rosemary Beach, and me.
“Dad, do you remember your last words to Nati?” Erika asked. In vain I sifted through grief hardened memories to recall all that had happened before we packed for England, but was disheartened because nothing came to mind. How could any grandfather worth that title not remember his last words to the little one so precious to him?
With grace, Erika carefully guided my thoughts back to the passenger drop off point at Lexington’s Bluegrass Airport, just before kissing the grandkids good-bye. “Dad, you asked Brady and Nati, ‘Who loves ya, baby?’” Slowly at first, I replayed that scene. Gradually, that conversation came back.
Probably because he knew we would be gone longer than a week, Brady with an ornery grin had a different reply, one he sometimes used just to get my goat, “Aunt Coley!” But Nati knew that wasn’t right. Before giving me one of her biggest sloppy from-the-car-seat little kisses, she looked up and gently whispered, “Papaw.”
How could I have forgotten? I was grateful Erika hadn’t. Still sitting on that East Kingston Park bench, I felt a stir deep in my soul. More than a bit, self-pity had begun to loosen its grip.
********************************************************
Writer’s Note: I have considered writing a book about our little Nati for the past 4 years but have only recently found the heart to do so. She has a non-profit foundation which among other things builds playgrounds for kids, and I thought any financial gains could assist putting smiles on toddlers’ faces. With her parents’ blessings and the encouragement of “Nonny” and the rest of the family, I am taking a year to write my reflections. I came to the Rosemary Beach Fall Writers Conference for some ideas and inspiration and found both in abundant supply! Many thanks to Lynne Johnson for help in “mining my memory,” to Laura Lee Smith for her “develop a character with desire and provide a complicating incident” homework assignment, to John Dufresne just for being John with all those “5 minute memory provokers”, and of course to Malayne Demars for being a most gracious hostess and wonderful facilitator! JHB
