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FeedFather's Day Special: A West Chester Writer Recalls His Dad's Daily Retreat
What was he doing in there? (I have a pretty good idea.)
Illustration by Woody Woodman Published June 2, 2011 at 11:04 AM
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As a young boy, I never quite understood how my father could spend hours each evening in that room. The routine went like this: After arriving home shortly before 6 p.m., our dad would join his seven sons—and our poor mother—at the dinner table. Prayers were said, stories exchanged, brothers heckled, rolls thrown (with seven of us, any excuse to have a catch was acted upon), and food shared.
As dinner wound down, we all went our separate ways—some to do the dishes, others to watch TV or perhaps shoot hoops before dusk turned to dark. Our father? He ventured upstairs to the bathroom. It would be the last any of us would see of him for quite some time.
The evening news would come and go. Wheel of Fortune would follow, with still no sign of life from the bathroom. Jeopardy! came next, and it was a rare sight indeed if Dad ventured out before Final Jeopardy.
What could compel a man to sit hunched over on an ill-suited seat for hours at a time? Perhaps it was the fact that the radiator adjacent to the toilet rivaled the local library in its inventory of reading materials. The periodical section included rumpled issues of Reader’s Digest and Time, along with that day’s edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Perhaps it was the news, or more often how it was covered, that prolonged the after-dinner indigestion and the duration of his stay.
