The Last Porch Party
My first screen name was @Lanny_Fuller_007. Not because @Lanny_Fuller was taken. But because I was obsessed with spies. Still am. I’ll watch anything with “double-oh” in the title, and I’m a sucker for any movie that includes a scene of suits failing to trace a call.
I’ve always wanted to be a spy.
When I was a kid, I would hide from my parents in stores. They’d be in charge of what we were actually there for. I’d peel off immediately. My dad would head to the beans and rice isle. I’d be two isles over, in the spatulas, trying to keep track of his whereabouts without being spotted. Hardware stores were the best. Massive. Open. Tons of large things to hide behind or peak through. We even had a truce signal. If it was time to leave, my dad would put his hat backwards. That was the cue to reveal myself. We never had to use it, though. He always spotted me before needing to surrender.
I dropped the 007 from my emails and screen names years ago. But I still have the same itch. I’ll follow someone around the farmers market, pretending I’m a tail who’s there to protect them. Or I’ll note strategies for every exit during wedding ceremonies. Okay, I’ll cartwheel over the groom, grabbing the bride’s tiara on the way down to throw frisbee-style at the intruder. Then, I’ll grab the Bible from Father and use it as my shield until I can parkour my way out of here.
It’s the same quirk that forces me to surprise people today. Not like a surprise party. I would hate that. What I like to do is simply show up. Like the scene in every spy movie when the spy’s boss gets home and flicks on the light, revealing the spy sitting casually on the sofa.
For my dad’s retirement party, that’s exactly what I did. Or at least tried to do.
“Hey, I’m thinking of surprising dad on his first day of retirement,” I told my sister, Alli, months ago on the phone.
“Cool, keep us posted,” she said.
Later that night, I got a call from Kevin, her husband.
“I’m in,” he said. “Get here Tuesday night. Stay with us. Then, we’ll drive to your parents’ place Wednesday morning.”
Kevin’s always been a good planner. When we vacation together, I happily take a back seat. He researches the best places to eat and see. He even knows the “local hacks” for every place.
“Order it southern-smothered-style,” he once whispered to me at a restaurant.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Exactly,” he mouthed with crazy eyes and a nod.
I haven’t flown since the first week of March. Back when I wasn’t even sure how to speak our enemy’s name. Do you spell it out, C-O-V-I-D? Is it Cov-I-D? Is this the same thing as Corona?
I was scared to be back in public and thrilled to be back on a plane. I’m embarrassed to admit, but it takes 30,000 feet for me to disconnect. Sure, you can get WiFi on planes, but I was raised to be ashamed of paying $15 for 90 minutes of online procrastination. And I’m sticking to it. In doing so, I sleep in the air like a baby.
Somewhere between, “Pull out the safety card located in the seatback pocket in front of you” and, “Sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight,” I was out. And I woke the same way I always wake on planes--with drool and a jolt. Only this time, the drool was pooled in my mask instead of on my shoulder.
I missed the people, too. People in airports are my favorite form of humanity. Unpopular opinion, I know.
At O’Hare, I saw a young family, all with pigtails. The mom, who looked in her late teens, had bleached ones. Like Harley Quinn. The dad’s looked immature. Like something a girl would convince a boy to do at a middle school party. “C’mon, let me put your hair in little pigtails. It’ll be hilarious. Then, we can do a massage train.” The child’s were cute. But what was this? Some kind of statement? A family requirement?
In Lincoln, my final destination, I got stuck behind a waddler. Pregnant? I thought. Maybe just cankles? I looked down. She had blue medical masks fastened to her feet. The part meant for covering your face covering the tops of her arches. Strappy sandals keeping them in place. I followed her until she found a seat to take a break. She pulled out a Ziploc bag full of Tylenol. Sunburn, my final ruling.
“How was the flight?” Alli asked.
“Ya know, they really got something right during these times. They board you by row now. Back to front. None of this ‘by group’ nonsense,” I said while sliding my carry-on into the trunk. “Those of us sitting in rows two and three get to watch from our terminal chairs as the twenty-something-ers get outed one by one,”
“Jesus,” Alli said, “I meant, like, COVID-germ-wise-how-was-the-flight, you douche.”
It was Tuesday night, and, just as Kevin had planned, I stayed with Alli and Kevin and Audra for the night.
The next morning, I texted my mom as Kevin and I began the two-hour journey to my parents’ place.
THE EAGLES HAVE LEFT THE HENHOUSE AND ARE IN ROUTE TO THE MOTHERSHIP.
Mom was our informant in this whole thing. She was going on a bike ride with Dad Wednesday morning and the plan was that Kevin and I would be sitting on the front porch for their return. I envisioned us sitting calmly, cross-legged, sipping coffees, one eyebrow raised, sporting smirks.
“How’d you get here?” Dad would wonder.
“We’ve been here all along,” I’d say while taking another sip.
Unfortunately, my parents ride faster than we thought. So when we showed up, they were already putting their bikes away.
“You fuckers!” I heard from the back of the four-car garage as we walked up the driveway.
“Are you kidding me?!” My dad appeared.
“Bitch” is a term of endearment in our household. To get a “You fuckers!” takes secretly flying in on a day that will forever divide my dad’s life into two distinct sections. It’s special. Reserved for rare celebrances.
We went inside. I hadn’t stayed in this house in over a year. I usually call it “my parents’ house” when referencing it to friends in my current life who know nothing of Nebraska. But walking through it now, knowing it’s on the market, knowing it’ll be the last time I’m in it, my mind called it “the house I grew up in.” Already admirably putting it in the past.
It’s an oversized place with creaky wood floors and intricate weirdness. Built in the 20s and it shows every second of it. I love it. And yet I’m glad my parents are leaving it. I can tell they’re more excited for a new place in a new town than they are sad to leave twenty-something years of comfort behind. And it doesn’t hurt that their new place is minutes away from their new granddaughter.
The house is always well-kempt, but the cleanliness was more noticeable than usual as Kevin and I hauled our bags up to the second-floor bedrooms.
“We keep this sucker show-ready at all times,” Dad offered. “Your mother and I are home-selling beasts.”
Kevin pleaded for the king bed as we approached the bedrooms, which is in the room I grew up in. I didn’t grow up with the king bed, though. A bizarre fuck-you from my parents post-emptynesting. Alli and I always thought they’d turn it into a scrapbooking room. Instead, a king bed was promptly purchased after I moved out with the hand-me-down queen.
I allowed Kevin to overstep, noting his back problems aloud while also silently noting to hold it against him.
“What does one do on one’s first day of retirement?” I asked while unpacking.
“Funny you should ask,” Dad responded. “Let me call up a text thread with the Clarks.”
The Clarks are my parents’ favorite friends in town. And “let me call up a text thread” is my father’s favorite phrase to introduce a story.
He proudly recited the quips exchanged, ultimately landing on an overly-formal invite to his retirement day. It was all mapped out. Lunch at a bar and grill on the lake. Allotted afternoon free time. Then, cocktails on the front porch.
Truth be told, my dad would've been fine spending his first day of retirement at an all-day middle school jazz concert, as long as it ended with cocktails on the front porch.
It’s a screened-in, carpeted front porch with ambient lighting, an old wooden swing, one of those hammock chairs made from woven rope, and other cushiony outdoor furniture. There’s an antique desk and a fan fastened to rollerblade-like wheels. It’s a little larger than the living room of the house I live in now. But none of its features are why it's special. (Which, coincidentally, is what Kaitlyn says about me on virtual happy hours.) Like most worthwhile things in life, the memories are what make it special.
I wrote my first song on that old wooden swing.
I fell in dumb love on that old wooden swing.
I fell out of dumb love on that old wooden swing.
Read classics on that swing.
Learned to sit with nothing more than myself on that swing.
Partied with my parents on that swing.
Hosted parties while my parents were out of town on that swing.
For years, I watched my Dad tell story after story on that old wooden swing. And tonight was no different. The only anomaly being it would be the last time I would watch my Dad tell story after story on that old wooden swing.
He’s a master storyteller. Every one of his stories has flow. A setup. Tension. A beat before the laugh. Punchy sections followed by longer ones. He loves “holding court,” as he calls it. But he also loves passing the ball. Like going for a bike ride, he knows the hardest part of storytelling is putting on your shoes. So he’ll put them on for you.
“Lanny’s got one about an empty bottle of tequila in Guadalajara,” he teed me up.
The older I get, the more I know he is why I’m precious about stories. Aren’t we all on an endless journey to please our fathers?
We sat on the front porch. We drank our cocktails. We watched golden hour turn to blue. We drank our cocktails. We watched blue hour turn to dark. We drank our cocktails. We appreciated each other’s company. No one touched their phones. We talked about easy things like the nest of hawks taking over the neighborhood, and we talked about hard things like recognizing racism. We drank our cocktails.
That’s the magic of the front porch. You don’t really have to do life. Life just kind of happens to you.
Every once in a while, we’d have to remind ourselves why we were there.
“To the end of a brilliant career,” someone would say.
“And to the end of this brilliant home,” someone would build.
“And to a new chapter at Little Buddy’s,” Dad would say.
Little Buddy’s is the name of the basement bar in their new house. And while it may have been my dad’s only requirement, it made up for a houseload of opinions by how often he talked about it. Maybe it annoyed my mom. It probably annoyed all of us at some point. But in this drunken moment, I realized something. He wasn’t hellbent on having a bar in the basement. He recognized the need to replace the front porch. And in that endeavor, anything less than enthusiasm would fail.
Thursday, we drove through two hours of farmland to get to a smalltown brewery, which reminded me of Nebraska’s beauty. Not the farmland. There are greater things to be witnessed. Just the fact that it was no big deal to drive two hours for a beer. Nebraskans are forced to think in advance. They are chess players. Planners. They don’t blame the world for their problems. They blame the move they made three moves ago and learn from it.
“How about Joan sober-driving this sausage fest?” Kevin cheered from the back seat.
“Coming from the fairy who needs a king bed,” I said from the other back seat.
“Okay, you know what, you both are idiots,” Dad chimed in.
“Hey, Dad, turn around so I can take your portrait,” I said.
With surgeon-like focus, I fashioned my pointer finger into frame to look like a butt. Like someone squatting on my dad’s face.
“Hang on, one more. I learned this cool new trick from a Paul Rudd interview,” I said.
Now, using my thumb and pointer finger, I created a vagina.
“Here you go,” I flipped the phone around, so he could inspect the results.
“Honey! We raised a genius,” he said to our designated driver.
A few weeks later, I received a text from my dad.
WHAT WAS THE INTERVIEW THAT TAUGHT YOU HOW TO TAKE BUTT PHOTOS?
All of my friends growing up thought my dad was the Cool Dad. Because they only saw this side of him. The dad who would “yes-and” all the stupid shit boys put their energy into. Like figuring out how to take butt photos. But being raised by him exposed me to a different side of him. He was strict. But not the strict you’re thinking. He had his own special flavor of strict. And it was reserved for those closest to him.
In math, which my Dad taught for many years early in his career, strict is a word used for bringing clarity to nuance. For instance, if I say, “x is positive,” you understand that “x” could be any positive number. 3, 35, 8 billion. But could “x” be zero in this case? Maybe. Maybe not. We’re not 100% sure.
But if I say, “x is strictly positive,” you understand that “x” is a positive number and is not zero. It’s strictly a positive number.
Strict, in math, sharpens understanding. It brings clarity. It actively avoids confusion. And that was my father’s strictness. It was defining, without ambiguity and with incredible precision, the path to a happy and fulfilling life. It was born out of helpfulness, not frustration. My dad was the Cool Dad. But he was not strictly the Cool Dad.
On this trip back home, my last trip back home, I was reminded of his lessons I sponged up as a young man. They weren’t always easy. But things worth learning never are.
As I hugged my parents in front of the airport, I wasn’t thinking about the past, though. Instead, I flashed forward. I saw them settled into an entirely new life. A life I’ve never seen them in before. Another life I’ll learn from them all over again.
I people-watched my way back to Louisville, but this time, instead of families with pigtails catching my eye, my interest fell upon the unremarkable. Average families.
Be grateful, kid. I said in my head while I watched a family of three pass by. These suckers are putting their entire lives on hold for you, and you won’t even realize it until they don’t have to anymore.
“Quit staring at our kid, freak!” The mom snapped at me.