ADDRESS UNKNOWN

I’m going to tell you about the dumb thing I did recently. I ordered a gift through Amazon for my sister-in-law and since I was in a rush and on my iPad, I wasn’t paying close attention to where I was shipping the gift. I have a list of addressed in Amazon of family and friends who I may decide needs a coloring book or nectar rings for feeding hummingbirds. I just selected the address for James R. Graham and placed my order. It was only later after I knew it had been delivered and I never heard from Katrina about it that I started to suspect something. James R Graham is my brother’s name. It’s his son’s name and son’s son’s name. I’m pretty sure if that son and his wife decide to have a baby and it’s a boy, that kid will be a James R Graham. James R Graham was also my dad’s name.

I sent Katrina’s gift to my Dad. In Collinsville OK. To a house that we no longer own because my dad is dead.

After some interweb sleuthing, I tracked down the young man who bought the house when Mom sold it and messaged him through Facebook. He was very kind and had been trying to figure out how to contact the family because he recognized the name. I don’t think he opened the package and I’m pretty sure it’s weird to receive a package delivery for a man who has been dead for almost then years. Mail is not so unusual. I still get mail for Chris all the time. But a large box containing a glass hummingbird feeder is an unusual gift for a dead man. I was able to connect him to Katrina and she was able to retrieve her gift.

My dad had an almost zero online presence. He appeared in pictures that we posted, but he didn’t have a Facebook page or Twitter account. He never sent texts and had the most basic cell phone he could possibly have. Dad was not tech savvy, but also did not require a tech savvy person to ‘fix’ something like a printer connection or run a software update. Because of his lack of online activity, it never really dawned on me that there would be internet things of Dad’s that I would need to clear out or download, like what I had to do with Chris. There’s a whole external hard drive in my file cabinet that contains all the content of Numskullery.com, as well as pictures and word documents of started projects. I weeded out so many domains that he had purchased but never used. I still have Dad’s phone number saved in my phone (as well as Chris’s).

Apparently, I still have his address stored in my gift list.

In my explanations to the young man and Katrina about my shipping snafu, I said “I don't know what happened.” I also called myself a ‘dope’, but to be honest, I’ve had Dad lingering around me ever since I started planning our moose hunting trip. His silly jokes just randomly bubble up out of my own mouth. It is not unlike Whoopie Goldburg’s character in Ghost where she plays a medium for spirits to speak to the living. I keep thinking about how his prize for anything was always a fifty cent piece. Always. Inflation had no effect on this. Sort of like the five dollar bill Grandmother put in my birthday card every year until she died when I was in my twenties. I have a small stash of fifty cent pieces, but they were not won by being the first to spot anything. The Tooth Fairy left those and I have saved them all these years.

And I can’t believe I am just now realizing that the Tooth Fairy was my dad.

I haven’t been back to the house where we lived since Mom sold it. I almost asked Katrina how the old house looked, what had been changed, what was the same. I don’t think I want to know. One of the ways I figured out I had tracked down the right person was through his photos. He had a photo that had the old scary shed in the background. That shed was so full of old tools and crap. I don’t think I ever really went in two steps past the entrance. It smelled of dirt and old oil. There were always wasps. But it was something I could still recognize. I don’t know about the rest of the place and I prefer not knowing. I prefer to think that the front brick entry way looks exactly the same as it did when we all as a family would stand there to pose for Easter pictures, Mom’s irises blooming all around us. That place will be forever in a state of Spring in my memories. Maybe summer too when it would be so hot, tar in the road would bubble up. We’d ride over the bubbles with our bicycles and laugh at the popping sounds.

If I delete the address, do I delete the memories?

That address was one of the first things I was forced to memorize and I’ll remember it always, burned into my brain deeper than any password or anniversary date. So, I will be going in and cleaning out the old address list and at the very least remove those who are no longer with us. Oh, and I’ll warn the guy living at the old place to keep an eye out for a second package.

Yeah… I sent two packages there.