Picking Annabelle up from school in the afternoon is a big adventure. I never really know exactly how the four winds are blowing; any given day could be the absolute best one of her whole entire life or the most tragic one ever in the history of the world. As I drive up at school, it is my custom to take a deep breath and assume the ready position that I instinctively know so well from the jumpseat on Delta jets. I am braced for whatever should come my way on takeoff from school and during our journey home. It can sometimes be quite bumpy.
A 20-minute drive block-to-block, I am treated to a dramatic interpretation of the headlines and highlights from the freshman class on very that day. There always seems to be something of intrigue going on and, just like with a soap opera or reality show, I have my own sacred favorites amongst Annabelle’s peer group, some of whom I actually know and others who are simply legends in my mind. Each afternoon I find myself anxious to check in on my girls, to get up to speed on their big adventures, and to learn for whom the struggle was real that day. There is always, always a story to be told, and I am a fascinated audience. I learn something new every day, and I am usually worn out by the time we get home. That is one busy group of girls.
However, a few weeks ago in the middle of breathlessly telling yet another tale of Drama in Real Life from the ninth grade, Annabelle suddenly switched gears and simply said this:
“I love classical music”.
With these few words, from out of nowhere I suddenly caught a glimpse of someone I had not seen in a long, long time. For a fleeting moment, I saw a small reflection of my father, Emery Tucker, sitting next to me, right there in the front seat of my little Bug.
I suppose like anyone else whose parent spends the final years of his or her life in a whole different situation than the relatively happy and healthy years preceding them, my first thoughts about my father always tend to be filled with the latter days he spent at St. Barnabas Nursing Home, smiling but without speech, paralyzed, and faithfully pushed around in his wheelchair by my mother. Because the seven years my father spent in this way linger in my head with bold face type; all the preceding ones are pushed down a ways beyond them in more faint normal type. But Annabelle’s four words whisked me way past the bold and back to a time that surprisingly materialized before me. My father's life was always filled with his beloved classical music.
In those many years before his stroke, Emery Tucker lived a pleasant, quiet and stunningly simple life. He grew up in downtown Chattanooga and never lived more than a few miles beyond his childhood home on Houston Street. Courtesy of the McCallie School, he knew the Bible backwards, forwards and upside down and was fully versed in the Westminster Catechism. He modeled remarkably perfect grammar and his penmanship was Declaration of Independence-signing worthy. He always leaned deeply forward to pray in an old-worldly and profoundly reverential manner. I believe he really listened when they talked about honor, truth and duty at McCallie.
My father liked nothing more than being at home. Oh, he did talk some about going a lot of places, but never took the initiative to go. He preferred the safe and comfortable travel offered in books and magazines. Most every night found him in communion with his music—Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Bach— played loud enough to stirringly engulf the small house that was his haven on Tuxedo Circle. With the symphony completely filling the living room, he would pass the evening hours reading the newspaper, working the crossword puzzle (in ink), and smoking a cigar. This was his life for as many years as I knew him, and he went to bed at precisely ten o'clock every night.
Emery Tucker always found great pleasure in conversation, and his favorite subject was always the life and times of the person with whom he was speaking. Genuinely interested in just about everything in someone else’s life, he asked many questions like an eager tourist who had just landed in a fascinating foreign destination. He rarely talked about himself, save for the opportunity to offer a reflection on the other person’s observation to which he could relate. And, no matter from whence someone hailed, my father could always come up with some obscure person with whom he was somehow acquainted and who might possibly be known to the individual with whom he was chatting, asking something like, “Say, do you happen to know old Schnickelfritz?” His inquiry would be spoken as if a lightning bolt had just touched down and had given him this amazing new revelation and, if a connection was actually made, Daddy was simply tickled to death in such a genuine way.
While there is a tendency to designate someone right into sainthood once he or she is gone, with time and distance I clearly see both of my dear parents’ fascinations and foibles. And I love them for their many fine qualities but also for their idiosyncrasies because I find them in myself, so many things I smilingly recognize and acknowledge in the apple that did not fall too far from the trees. I do appreciate so much the immense and immeasurable good qualities of these two people who were, like everyone else, human beings and products of their days and times. My parents lived simply, never asking for much, but they were most often kind and thoughtful and caring. They lived what in the world’s eyes were very ordinary lives but ones that were extraordinary in many quiet ways. As time passes, I see more and more how their subtle virtues are the foundation of what is really important in life.
Every weekend I take long walks in downtown Chattanooga, and I always make a purposeful visit to the place formerly known as St. Barnabas, the spot that was a reluctant last home and haven for Emery Tucker in those bold-faced seven years. I walk beneath the window where my mother used to wave at us every time we got in our car to leave, and I circle the timeless and beautiful Japanese maple tree under which Margaret and Emery held court every afternoon. I can still see them there in my head; for just a bit, I can be back in those moments and remember what it was once like in that very place.
Emery Tucker would be absolutely beyond pleased to know that Annabelle loves classical music. I do hope I catch other glimpses of my father beside me in the Bug, riding along
with us in the afternoon. With the happy words I heard so many times when he greeted old friends and loved ones, I will smile and say to myself, "Long time, no see!"
Honor, truth, duty.
A senior at McCallie.
