Down the Red Steps

You always hear that one of the saddest parts of life is not knowing when it’s the last time. The last time you make love to a partner when you know things are about to end, you just don’t know exactly when; the last time you hang up the phone after saying “I love you, grandma,” and then it’s two days later and your mother sits you down after school and says your times tables can wait, that your grandmother passed away peacefully in her sleep early that morning. The last time your dog was able to run and catch a stick before the vet found an inoperable tumor; the last time you could think, uneasy but still a little grateful, “nothing truly bad has happened in my life yet.”

You always hear that, but I wonder: if we only realize later that that was the last time, does that really make it a sad moment? Why, when before we learned that a certain moment had been a final moment, and that memory brought us joy, must it now only bring sorrow?

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When I was small, still small enough for my father to lift me in his arms and carry me down the basement steps–which he’d for some reason painted red and which always looked shiny and dangerous–I cried a lot. If I could have defended myself, I’d have said that I was very much justified in my outbursts: my sister hid my favorite stuffed hippo, my mom was making me wear shoes that made my toes feel weird, my bedroom ceiling fan wasn’t working and the heavy summer air was keeping me awake past the unfathomable hour of 10:00pm. My mother would have either not cared or doubled down on what was bothering me. She’d refuse to let my dad take a look at the ceiling fan, would roll her eyes when I complained about my feet, would only maybe tell my sister to give my toy back. Dad, though? Dad never needed my justifications, which as a toddler I could hardly articulate, anyway. My father was, in a way, happy to see me cry. He didn’t like seeing his daughter’s face darkly pink and scrunched up, tears and snot running toward the collar of my blouse, but he liked what it meant: he got to take me to our favorite place in the whole house, a place my mom and sister hardly ever went, and where I never dared go alone, because why would I want to go without dad?

The house I grew up in was on the larger side of modest. We had a two-car garage, and a sitting room with a fireplace and sliding glass doors that looked down a gentle slope to a little creek that swelled during spring rains. Turning left and moving past the kitchen island, you’d find the dining room, with a little brick patio and my dad’s small herb garden out the French doors and to the right. Then, around another corner, you’d find a second sitting room with a view of the forest on one side and our backyard pool on the other. Past our happy yellow lab and up the stairs, there was the computer room with its modest library (one side for my dad’s books, another for more or less just mine, considering that reading for pleasure was something my mom and sister held little interest in), the laundry room, three bedrooms, and the little deck my dad had built off his and my mother’s bedroom, where we all sat outside and had cookies, coffee, and orange juice on mornings early in the summertime.

I dream of that house sometimes; my family moved out while I was in college, and if I helped with the process at all, I don’t remember it. I think my brain decided the trauma of leaving my childhood well and truly behind was too great: I could see the house when I slept, when it became unreal and dream-like and the rooms looked nothing like they had in real life, but still–I would always know when a room was from that house.

****

During my most recent visit to my parents’ house, about an hour away from the one I still dreamt about, we ate dinner, drank a few glasses of wine, and then I stepped out into the early fall night to see if the stars were out. I’m in my 30’s; my mother, 60’s; and my father, early 80’s. I didn’t like to think about the time we’d already had together, how it was starting to feel like a whole lifetime, one that might soon come to a close for which I was not and would never be ready. As I spotted just one faint constellation (somehow, always the Big Dipper), I felt a little bit like crying, so I turned to go back inside. I must’ve locked the door behind me, because the handle wouldn’t move, and I had to knock a few times before my father opened the door and stood in front of me.

Only, he didn’t move. He was 83 years old, this man who used to carry me down the shiny red steps when I was a kid. He was 83 years old, and my mom said he was starting to act forgetful at times, but in my mind he was still my pharmacist dad who would come home from work with stickers and toys to make up for the long hours he had to spend away from my sister and me.

But right now, he didn’t move, and instead of walking into our childhood home with smiles and the faint antiseptic smell of a hospital pharmacy, he was standing at the threshold of this new home, just looking at me, and suddenly a realization punched me in the middle and I backed away, making myself small and innocent.

“Dad?” He was looking at me as though I were an intruder, and I remembered he was 83, and my mom said he was forgetful, and I was about to cry.

“Who are you?” he asked, once, softly, and then again with a bit more confusion. Silent, I backed away again, until suddenly my mom was behind him, gesturing for me to come inside. We locked eyes, but we never talked about it, not that night or since.

That night, as I slept, I went back to my childhood home, with its two stories, glass doors opening onto a sunny deck, and a little creek running alongside for my sister and me to play in. I didn’t go into the woods, the stream, or my bedroom; I did not step out onto the deck, and I did not sit on my parents’ bed and pretend it was a school morning in 1999 and I was faking sick so I could watch cartoons all day. No–in my dream, I was crying. Maybe my feet were cold, or my hair was touching my forehead in a way I didn’t like, but it didn’t matter–what mattered was that when I cried, my dad appeared.

He was wearing his pharmacy jacket, long and white with his nametag still clipped to the chest pocket, his tie loosened as soon as he’d pulled into the garage. He appeared, and then he was carrying me down the red steps to the basement, our favorite place in the house. When we reached the bottom of the steps, he opened a dull, gray door to an electrical panel that to my young eyes looked horribly complicated and a little bit frightening. But then my dad was pressing the “test” button, a little red thing no bigger than the pad of his thumb, and the whole room was filled with a harsh buzz, which lasted for as long as he kept his finger on the button. I laughed, and he lifted his finger and poked me on the tip of my nose. “Can you make the same noise?” he asked, smiling, and I shook my head. Already I had stopped crying, and when my dad poked my nose again and tried his own imitation of the buzzing noise, I laughed again. He told me to reach out and press the button on my own, and I got scared, but he held my hand and pressed it with me.

When I had fully calmed down and my tears were just dry, itchy tracks on my cheeks, my dad turned to carry me back up the steps. “One last time?” I asked him, and he pretended that he had to think about it, that denying me something that made me happy could ever even occur to him as a possibility.

“Okay,” he said, “but just one last time!”

****

I don’t know the true last time we went into the basement together to press the red button and stop my crying. I don’t know if it was because I became a more inward child, one who internalized sadness and discomfort rather than cried about it, or because I simply became too big for my dad to carry me, and without that part, it just wasn’t the same.

What I do know is this: when they say that not knowing when you’re doing something for the last time is one of the saddest things in life–no matter if it’s something that brings you joy in that moment–they’re right. When I look into my father’s eyes now, and I sometimes have to wonder who he sees, I remember him poking my nose and making me laugh, the red steps behind him still looking wet long after they were painted. I remember him holding my weight on his hip as he turned and opened the panel door, laughing and telling me we were going to press the button, hear the buzz, one more time, just one last time.