Dad In Spirit: Chapters 2-4

Recommended for ages 8 & up. Ebon will never memorize the phone book like his brother Sam. He can't sew Halloween costumes like his sister, Joliet. And he'll certainly never build a backyard castle like his dad. So Ebon grudgingly accepts his place as the normal kid in a weird family... that is until the day Dad falls alseep – now he has to find a solution. This is the continuation of Ebon's story Chapters 2-4 with more to come...

Transcript

Hello,

This is A LaFey of Sylvanosity and I'm here to share the next three chapters of Dad in Spirit.

Before I do,

I want to invite you to take a deep breath,

Light it out slowly and relax.

Settle in,

Imagine you're joining the Jones family on a particular morning after a fun game of hide and find in the Bailey's Ornament.

So we begin with the chapter.

Dad,

The next morning started out pretty normal in a brand muffin kind of way.

I ate cuckoo berry Captain Crackle for breakfast.

I flicked the cuckoo berries at Samuel.

I hated those pukey little balls and my little brother was a good target.

He always listened to his headphones at breakfast.

That morning he recited math problems.

312 divided by 3 equals 104.

246 divided by 12 equals 20.

5.

He probably recorded a portion of his math book to memorize for our test that day.

What a twerp.

I could solve any word problem you plopped down in front of me,

But a lot of math was just stupid numbers.

I'd probably fail that dumb test,

No thanks to Dad.

He'd promised to help me study,

But he'd forgotten all about it by the time we got home.

Big surprise.

Dad could remember the days of the week each president got married,

But he couldn't remember when he'd made a promise to do something with me.

I hated depending on Dad to keep his promises.

Instead of working through problems with a guy who could make a game out of learning the periodic table of elements,

I had to listen to Samuel spotting off the last two chapters of our textbook.

Both of them deserved to be pelted with cuckoo berries,

And since Dad still hadn't gotten up yet,

I let Samuel have it.

Some people can't chew gum and walk at the same time,

But Samuel wasn't capable of listening to his headphones and keeping his eyes open.

In my way of thinking,

When his brain went into overdrive,

His body went into reverse.

I guess it was cool in a way.

I could hit him right between the eyes with a cuckoo berry.

Most kids would dodge me.

Pow!

His eyes snapped open as the pink milk oozed down his nose.

Ah!

He screamed.

Mom didn't even look up from the newspaper as she said,

Evan,

You jettison one more piece of cereal and you're mopping the kitchen floor.

Samuel stuck out his tongue.

It was purple as usual.

The kid was addicted to grape juice.

You're such a creep,

Evan,

Juliet moaned.

I didn't think about Dad until the two-minute alarm on the stove went off.

Dad slipped in a lot because he stayed up so late hunting down all ball historical facts on the internet for his authors,

But he never missed saying goodbye.

Sometimes he showed up at the bottom of the stairs wearing his flying toaster house coat and Basset Town slippers as he shouted from his closet window,

Or he shouted from his closet window.

I didn't see him shuffling down the stairs with his hair looking like the victim of a static storm when I went to get my coat from the closet under the stairs.

I didn't worry until we got outside.

Juliet already sat in the car.

Goofy dads were worse than dorky little brothers in school days as far as she was concerned.

Samuel messed around with his raincoat.

He loved the way it crinkled when he moved,

So he pretended to do a walk on the boot or something.

I jumped off the front steps then turned to wave at Dad.

He wasn't there.

Juliet says I wear my heart in my pocket.

It felt like it fell right in there when I saw that empty window.

It was almost like Dad was my twin brother instead of my father.

I could tell when he was in trouble.

I ran back inside,

Nearly knocking Sammy over as he planted a pretend flag.

I climbed the stairs before Mom could shout,

Last one out to the door,

Jogs behind the car.

Dad slept on his stomach,

His arm tucked under his chest,

One foot sticking out over the edge of the bed.

Dad?

I knelt down and gave him a little shove.

He didn't even moan.

I can't tell the rest.

I get all shivery inside when I think of the ambulance.

Those strange people in white poking Dad with all those needles and tubes,

The crackly radio and screaming sirens.

It all happened in slow motion.

I watched from the hallway.

Seeing Dad lying on his back,

Those people in white hovering over him like anonymous angels,

Looking for the reason Dad wouldn't wake up.

Mom sat next to the pillow,

Stroking Dad's hair,

Saying,

Luke?

Luke?

She kept repeating his name,

As if he were just too tired to answer.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to yell so loud,

The light bulbs in the fixture above would break into a zillion pieces.

Dad!

Wake up!

He didn't.

Coma.

We sat in the hospital waiting room like three kids called to the principal's office,

Silent,

Scared,

And shaking.

I swam around in my head,

Fishing for a way to put my heart back where it belonged,

And stopped shivering.

I couldn't even keep the images in my mind from shaking loose.

One minute I saw Dad smiling at me over the shoulder of a stone gorilla.

A second later,

Dad lay face down on his pillow.

I wish B.

J.

Was sitting next to me,

My best friend,

And the greatest person to have around when your mind was falling to pieces.

B.

J.

Could keep calm during Armageddon.

Her dad had a blizzard-sized fit over things as little as leaving the cap off the toothpaste.

Thanks to him,

She'd learned to be calm during any kind of storm.

I could have used a couple pounds of her calmness,

But I didn't want to leave this spot where Mom told us to wait.

I tried to think of Dad working on secret panels in Hamilton Hall,

But then Juliet popped out of her seat like someone had poked her with a pin.

I'm going to find Mom.

Juliet walked off.

I watched her go down the long,

Wide hallway with its school-tile floor,

Then through a windowless metal door.

Watching the clock overhead tick made me tired.

I started to think about how much Dad loved to sleep.

If he wasn't building or hunting down the origins of the flushed toilet,

Traveling to remote county historical societies,

Playing with his kids in Castle Brook,

The castle he built in our backyard,

Or acting out books with Mom,

Dad's favorite thing to do was dream.

He even ate cucumbers before going to sleep because some doctor-dodoologist said it gave you wackier dreams.

Mom said all it did was make Dad burp in his sleep.

Dad falling asleep in a permanent kind of way had to be ironic or something.

I used to think irony meant food that tastes like iron,

The way it does when you have strep throat,

But Dad told me it meant you expect one thing and get another.

The thing you get is either too much or the exact opposite of the thing you wanted.

Dad loved to sleep,

And now he was asleep for good.

That was ironic.

I took a deep breath to keep from crying.

I told myself Dad would wake up if I didn't give in.

Crying meant I didn't believe he'd leave the hospital with us and take us out for hot fudge sundaes at Sebastian Joe's.

I wanted him to be the one to walk through the door at the hospital,

But Juliet did.

She's on the phone with her boss,

Juliet said as she sat down.

Samuel whispered,

Why can't we be with Dad?

Read the sign.

I pointed to the door.

Screwed to the wall at adult height,

The sign read,

No children under 16 years of age allowed beyond this point.

If they weren't going to let us be with our mom and dad,

The least they could have done was put the sign lower.

Say it to our face.

Oh,

Samuel sighed.

How long do we have to wait?

Long enough,

Juliet answered.

I hated it when she turned mean.

What did Samuel do?

He was just scared like me.

I kept lying to myself,

Though.

If I didn't think bad thoughts,

Dad would be okay.

Samuel and Juliet started to fight,

But I didn't listen.

I just sat there trying to list off the US presidents in order to keep my mind off Dad.

George Washington,

John Adams,

Thomas Jefferson and the M&M guys I never remember and John blah blah Adams.

Mom showed up before I could think of his middle name.

No news yet,

Troops.

Mom sat down on the couch and just like that,

We went into movie mode.

All three of us kids piled in around her,

Samuel on her lap,

Juliet and I on either side of her.

Dad rarely watched movies with us.

He said they were the biggest waste of valuable researching time.

Mom saw our movie nights as good cuddle time.

Closing my eyes,

I could almost imagine us back in the TV room.

I can't stand the waiting,

Juliet said.

Then how about a prayer?

Mom gave Juliet a squeeze.

Dad could use God in his corner right now.

That never works,

I said,

Remembering how hard I had prayed for a mountain bike for Christmas.

Mom tweaked my ear.

Hey,

God's not a mail order catalog.

She knew exactly what I meant.

I told her how my pray for a bike campaign had failed.

Don't forget Baron,

Samuel said.

Juliet moaned,

Not again.

I like this story,

Mom smiled.

When Uncle Todd turned 10,

They found out that his dog,

Gin,

Had cancer.

Grandma had taken on the role of family historian a few years back and always supplied a family to an rescue.

Uncle Todd prayed and prayed that God would heal his dog,

But they had to put Gin to sleep.

I figured I could hurry things along a bit,

So I said,

And Uncle Todd said he didn't believe in God anymore.

Mom said,

Let him finish.

Grandma Winslow told Uncle Todd,

God always answers our prayers with what we need,

Not what we want.

And two weeks after Gin died,

A new puppy showed up out of the cornfield.

Uncle Todd knew as soon as that little guy licked him in his face,

God had answered his prayer and they named him Baron.

How sweet,

Juliet wrote her eyes.

That started a shoving match.

Truce,

Mom shouldered her way between them.

If you ask me,

Dad's not the only one who needs a little help through this.

If you're not going to pray,

Just sit for a while.

Relax.

I kept my prayer simple.

Dad,

Please send Dad back to us.

After the amen,

I sat there thinking,

It didn't seem right to compare Dad's situation to the life of two dogs,

And the whole putting to sleep part gave me the chills.

Dad had to be okay.

I didn't just want that to happen.

I needed it.

I missed Dad enough already.

Sometimes Dad's office became a black hole.

He'd get sucked into some research project and not come out for days except to fill his plate or hit the john.

Dad found out all kinds of cool things this way,

Like the fact that Abraham Lincoln kept all of his important papers in his hat.

But crazy facts didn't make up for all the softball games,

Piano recitals,

And plays Dad missed out on.

Dad promised to show up,

But those promises dissolved when a new fact-finding mission pulled him in.

And now he'd been pulled into a black hole asleep.

Would he ever come out?

If anyone but God knew the answer,

It should have been Dad's doctor.

She showed up just after Mom said,

Amen.

This doctor didn't wear one of those eye-hurting white coats.

Instead,

She wore a jogging suit,

One of those shushy nylon things that makes all the noise when you walk.

As the doctor approached,

Mom pulled us closer.

Mrs.

Jones?

She nodded to Mom and sat down on the floor and folded her legs up in front of her,

Saying,

Mrs.

Jones,

I'm Dr.

Parker.

I wanted to say,

We know that.

We'd met when she set Dad's leg after he fell off the roof of Castle Rook during the final stages of building the castle.

Did she think we didn't remember that whole fiasco?

I wanted to talk to you about your dad.

Is he dead?

Juliet asked,

Her face wet and red from crying.

Jolie's question knocked the wind out of me.

I gasped for breath as Dr.

Parker smiled and squeezed Jolie's hand.

No,

Sweetheart.

My lungs expanded again.

What's wrong with him?

Samuel almost fell off Mom's lap.

I wanted to put my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet so Dr.

Parker could tell us,

But Jolie did it for me.

It's okay,

Juliet.

Mom patted her knee,

But Jolie pushed her hand away.

Dr.

Parker tried to tell us how the body can fall asleep so hard it can't feel,

Hear,

See,

Taste,

Or smell anything.

But I wanted to know why.

Why would Dad go into a coma?

BJ's grandfather was diabetic and he went into a coma because he didn't have enough sugar in his blood.

Dad ate candy like a chimp eats bananas.

His veins were sugar coated.

There had to be another reason for Dad's big sleep.

Dr.

Parker said they'd be giving Dad all sorts of tests to find a reason.

She told us the first test would be a CAT scan.

Samuel giggled.

She laughed at the most serious things.

A CAT scan meant they were going to shoot x-rays into Dad's head so they could see thin layers of the stuff his body was made of instead of just his bones.

Dad had explained it all to me when he did research for a book about a guy with a brain tumor so small the doctors couldn't find it,

Even with a CAT scan.

Maybe that was the problem.

Dad had a brain tumor.

But brain tumors gave you headaches and made your vision go blurry for a long time before you went into a coma.

Dad didn't have those problems.

No it couldn't be that.

But he did hit his head.

First when he fell in Hamilton Hall.

Then again when Samuel knocked him over.

It was Samuel's fault.

I shouted,

He hit his head!

Everybody stared at me like I'd just announced I was about to explode.

Then Dr.

Parker said,

Yes,

Evan,

We were able to determine that your dad has a minor concussion.

But that injury wasn't severe enough to cause a coma.

What now?

Juliet asked.

Now we try to determine what is causing the coma and wait for your dad to wake up.

Wait?

I couldn't wait!

Research.

Dr.

Parker tried to send us home saying there was nothing more we could do.

I think they learned that line in medical school.

All the doctors on TV say it.

But it isn't true.

I could find out why Dad went into a coma.

There had to be a reason.

No one else seemed to care,

But I did.

I was going to find the cause of Dad's coma and reverse it.

I lay in bed that night trying to find a reason for Dad's long sleep,

But I kept hearing my mother ask,

You all right,

Luke?

I could see Dad fall,

His head crashing against a rock.

Counting didn't clear my mind.

Humming didn't either.

So I started to pace the room.

Everything I did just made the images in my mind clearer and Mom's voice louder.

I shook on the inside.

My skin felt cold.

My body started to go out of control.

Then my mind wandered off,

Noticing how dark the house had become.

The darkness made me think of Dad's nightly habits.

The house was never entirely dark when Dad worked.

He got up in the middle of the night to hop on the computer.

He liked to do research on the internet after midnight.

Less traffic.

Before he went to his study,

He'd do his nightly rounds,

Turning on the hall lights as he went.

Our house was pretty huge.

Big enough to get lost in,

B.

J.

Said,

But it echoed so I could hear Dad when he was on the ground floor,

Even though my bedroom was on the floor floor.

Sometimes I'd hear him roaming the halls,

Going from bedroom to bedroom to make sure everyone had fallen asleep.

If he started to feel lonely,

He'd make another round through the house.

Part of him was glad to put covers over us when we kicked them off or pick a teddy bear up off the floor.

I know because I'd pretended to be asleep when I wasn't,

Just so I could see what it felt like to have him cover me up and retrieve Wendell,

My stuffed alligator,

Then give me a kiss on the forehead.

Call me Mr.

Mushy,

But it felt like he'd give me a great big juiced up hug after I'd been away at camp for a week,

All warmth and love.

What made Dad even happier was if someone hadn't fallen asleep yet.

He'd plop down on the floor and say,

Guess what I found?

Learning new things always made him go goofy.

He couldn't wait for breakfast.

I remember when he researched a book on castles years ago.

I've got a movie oot in my head.

He woke me up one night,

Didn't even bother to check and see if I was awake.

He shook me until I listened.

Did you ever think about living in a castle?

He asked.

Dad,

It's the middle of the night.

No it's not.

Dad tapped the window shade next to my bed.

Well,

He could reach more than three feet,

So it was really a ways away.

There's sunshine out there,

My boy.

I peeked a pink purple glow shone through the sliver of glass showing at the bottom of my window.

It's not done yet.

I buried my head in the pillow.

Don't get technical,

He shook me.

Come on,

Eben.

I want to share this stuff.

Tell Mom she's making Creatures of the Night.

That's what Dad called Mom's gargoyles.

She just started back then and she carved them all the time.

We had tons of them in our kitchen.

They were like creepy gray mold we couldn't get rid of.

Okay,

I sat up.

Dad smiled,

Saying,

How'd you like to sleep in a bedroom as big as this one,

When it's below zero outside,

If our house had stone walls,

No glass in the windows,

Only wood shutters and a fireplace as far away as your sink over there?

Dad had a way of speaking in extremely long sentences that made you think he'd run out of breath and faint before I got to the end.

I got the chills just thinking about the castle bedroom.

My bedroom was totally cool.

I had my own kitchen and bathroom,

A regular pad.

But it wouldn't be if it was made out of stone and butt-freezing cold.

Good thing there are no castles in Minnesota.

Ha ha,

Dad said,

Getting up.

He squirmed into my bed.

Resting his ankles on the baseboard,

He put his arm around me and kept talking.

For an hour,

He told me everything about castles,

From how the people who lived there got water,

To where they went to the bathroom.

I even learned that they put hay on the floor to soak up the food they dropped and the poop from the animals they kept inside.

Can you imagine having a pig running around in your house?

Everything he said was fascinating.

I went to school too tired to think about anything but castles.

I even wrote a paper on it and got an A.

Here it is.

A Time of Castles and Kings by Evan Jones.

England wasn't always just one big country with a president and a queen to run the country.

A long time ago,

In another century,

England was a bunch of little countries called fiefs,

And each fief had its own king who lived in a castle.

All the kings wanted to have a big fief.

The bigger the fief,

The more money they made from the crops their servants,

Also called serfs,

Grew.

So kings fought each other to take over their fiefs.

You know,

Like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,

Lancelot,

Gallehead,

And those guys.

They all fought to make Arthur's kingdom bigger.

In war,

Kings needed castles to keep them safe.

They had big stone walls around them so no one could get in,

And lots of towers so the knights could go up there and look out the windows and see if anybody was coming.

And it's really hard to shoot through stone when you only have a crossbow.

They also had a moat,

Those castles.

It's a kind of ditch around the castle that the serfs dug up and filled with water,

And maybe crocodiles,

So the attacking guys couldn't get over into the castle.

Guns weren't invented yet.

Kings didn't always lead armies to attack other castles and collect crops from serfs.

Sometimes they had parties.

A lot of those kings were Christian.

They believed in God and saints.

Those were really special people who help others do well.

They were so nice,

They get to sit next to God in heaven and get called saints.

My dad says Mother Teresa should be a saint for all the good she did for people.

The days those saints were born,

Did something special,

Or died were holidays,

Like St.

Patrick's Day.

He's a saint because he got all the rats out of Ireland,

Supposedly.

Dad says that's the Pied Piper,

Sorry,

St.

Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland.

Anyway,

His saint's day is March 17th.

A king would invite all of his serfs and knights to have a party to honor St.

Patrick that day.

I learned all this stuff from talking with my dad.

He does research for authors,

Writing books about knights and people like that.

What dad didn't tell me,

I looked up in the library books on knights.

Now not all dad's goofy facts made it to my paper,

But I was so proud of myself for coming up with cool questions like how they make the block square and where do the knights sleep when they weren't fighting for the king.

But by the time I got home from school,

Dad had started to build a castle.

Typical.

A year before,

Juliet had brought home a home project on the Old West.

She'd been asked to make a diorama of a town called Dogwood from the olden days in the West.

So dad took her straight to the library.

They looked at book after book on the Old West.

Or so Juliet said.

Anyway,

A week later,

Dad announced at dinner that he was building a new Old West playground at school if the local Lions Club got the funding.

After a great chilly cook off of a fundraiser,

Dad hit the playground.

His Dogwood playground was up and running by the next fall.

He was unstoppable.

Dad always did things no other dad would even think of doing.

Building castles,

Eating cucumbers before bed,

And waking up in the middle of the night.

The night he fell asleep,

I got up to go to the bathroom and wondered what dad was up to.

I didn't go down to see what he was doing because I wanted to stay mad at him for not helping me study.

If I had marched into his office to tell him how I felt,

He'd pull me into whatever fact haunt he'd started.

When we'd talk until dawn about something that wasn't even slightly related to math,

I'd probably fall asleep during my mouth test.

It'd all be a repeat performance of last time I tried to talk to dad at night.

If I had gone downstairs,

I would have known dad hadn't gotten up to do research.

I'd have gone into his room and maybe he would have just been sleeping then.

I could have woken him up.

He'd have gone to the doctor.

She would have fixed whatever was wrong.

And I could have gone to school and taken my math test.

But no,

I didn't go downstairs and dad didn't wake up.

I thought about it for a while.

Then I wondered,

Well,

What was mom doing?

Why didn't she wake him up?

How could she not notice that he was in a coma beside her?

I ran downstairs and went into her room without knocking.

She wasn't in bed.

I panicked thinking,

Oh God,

Not mom too.

Evan?

Mom's voice came from behind me somewhere.

I turned from the hall I called out,

Mom?

In here,

Evan.

She sat in dad's study,

Curled up on the window seat,

Wrapped in dad's nap blanket.

He slept bunched up on the window seat sometimes.

He covered up with a blanket his grandma had made when he was my age.

It smelled like him,

All dried grass and mustardy.

Mom opened the blanket and I crawled into her lap.

Kissing the top of my head,

She whispered,

Missing him too.

I hummed a response.

I didn't want to talk.

Turned by her body heat,

I could feel mom and hear her heartbeat,

Dad was there too.

I could smell him.

I dreamed we had all piled up the hammock like mom,

Dad,

And I used to do on summer Wednesdays when Samuel was away at swimming lessons and Jolie was doing her art class at the library.

That night I fell asleep,

Dreaming of the hot sun on my face and the creaking sway of the hammock in my ears.

And tonight I'd like you to fall asleep with pleasant thoughts and memories of someone you love.

Picture them now and picture them at a time when you were all very happy,

Very comfortable and very safe.

And maybe tomorrow night or a few nights from now,

You can read,

Or I mean listen to the next few chapters of Dad in Spirit.

Thank you so much for listening with me,

And I pray that you have a restful,

Fulfilling,

And happy night.

Sweet dreams.

This is A.

Le Fay from Sylvan Arsene,

Saying goodnight.

Reviews

Heartwarming interesting tale with a nice positive conclusion and good wishes for a happy memories

Are you going to post one every day? This one was really good because it had more chapters in it Danke (thank you)

Wonderful story, looking forward to hearing the rest, such a gift to listen to. Than you for sharing 🙏❤🦋🌈