Summer in Your Veins

• ANNE RUFLIN

4:30 AM, January 4th. The call I’ve been dreading. “It’s Ferris Hills. Your father has fallen and is in an ambulance headed up to the hospital in Rochester”. 

I throw on clothes and jump in the car. It’s an hour drive, and the night is complete—starless and moonless. The car’s heat does not seem to be working. The radio crackles something about ice and snow so I turn it off, drive in silence. I arrive shivering, find a spot in the parking garage, and swiftly step through the sliding door marked “Entrance.”

The air pulses with antiseptic and anxiety. The hospital is on overflow, and people are in stretchers and wheelchairs lining the hallway. The agony is stifling. Everyone is either whispering or crying. My throat closes and my heart pounds. Where is my father? There, the nurse points. In a temporary hospital bed in the corner, I find my Dad, his eyes closed, his face bruised, his neck in a collar. I take his hand. “Dad.”  

He opens his eyes with a question. “Is this for real?” 

I can’t speak the answer out loud. Yes. Yes, it is.

My dad, nearing age 92, has likely broken his neck in the fall, but not his sense of humor. Dad’s eyes are closed, so the nurse asks me about his memory, and I say it’s pretty good. 

My Dad opens his famous baby blues. “Really? I don’t remember anyone ever saying my memory is good.” Upon questioning he knows his name, his birthday, the year, and the name of the president.  He is unsure about his medications. His story about his fall includes variations on a theme involving a martini.

I try to find a spot to sit and settle on the edge of a metal chair wedged near his head and out of the direct path of the general chaos.  Someone nearby is coughing. I imagine all manner of sickness wafting over us. Did something just fall in my hair? Dad starts shifting restlessly —he needs to stay as still as possible! So, I tell him about making dandelion wine this past summer—the flood of spring dandelions perfectly open in the early morning, the work of bending and gathering dandelion heads until my knees gave out and my hands were powdered deep yellow, the months of it fermenting in the basement.

Dad closes his eyes; a small sigh escapes his lips. “My old man wanted me to pick dandelions for him to make wine, but I wouldn’t do it. It sounded like a pain.” For some reason my Dad has always referred to his own father as “my old man”, but to his face I think he called him “Pa”.

The doctor comes back. The X-rays confirm several fractures in his neck and Dad is required to wear the neck collar and his bed is alarmed to prevent him from getting up without assistance. Dad hates both. His eyes turn to steel and his mouth forms a firm line. I know what this means.  

“Keep the collar on Dad.”

“No.”

“Dad, why are you getting up?”

“Because I want to.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.” 

The speaker crackles a code and a team of doctors and nurses run by.  “Are you sure this isn’t some sort of racket?” Dad asks again, loosening his neck collar.

“Yep, I’m sure.” I tighten the collar again. “You just have to endure until we can get you out of here.”

Endure. It’s a heck of a thing to ask of a man who has already endured the Depression, WWII, five children, the deaths of a son and two spouses, the loss of his parents and siblings and friends, the relentless march of age. Dad tilts his head gingerly my way and takes my hand.
His eyes faintly twinkle. “It’s Ok. I can do it.”

The hours lurch and lumber along. Dad dozes on and off and our conversations stop and start. How much more can we possibly have to say to each other? A nurse stops to check his IV and he awakens and states, “I’ve been condemned to hell three times you know.”

Now this is news to me!

“O sure. It’s true.” He gestures towards his plastic cup of ice water and I hold it so he can take a sip.  

“In first grade we were learning the Hail Mary and I asked what a womb was. The nun said she had never heard such a filthy question, and I was condemned to hell.” He takes another sip of water and loosens his collar. I gently tighten it again.

“In 5th grade I asked what the punishment was for skipping Mass on Sunday, and the nun told me hellfire and damnation. But I was curious.” I feel the other patients and families leaning in to hear more.

“So, on Sunday I rode my bike to church like usual. But I just parked it and then I went and sat in the graveyard. I sat there the whole hour. Nothing happened. When I told the nun on Monday, she said I would be damned to hell.”

Someone behind me gasps lightly. Dad clears his throat. Another sip of water. Collar loosened. Collar tightened.

“The third time was in the 8th grade. I was graduating and was getting a history award. But the graduation ceremony was at the Baptist Church. Father Arnold told my family it would be a mortal sin for any of us to step foot into a Baptist Church. And so, my family was afraid to go.” Sip of water. Collar loosened. Collar tightened. 

“But I thought the hell with it, I had already been condemned twice. So, I put on my suit and rode my bike to the Baptist Church. When I got up to get my award I turned and saw my old man standing in the back of the church. He looked terrified. I think he was actually shaking.”

I am incredulous. His father, my grandfather, was a Swiss immigrant, a farmer, a craftsman, and a good Catholic. He possessed the stern good looks, punctuality, and piety you might imagine in such a man. “You mean your father risked hellfire and damnation to be there for you?” 

Dad’s eyes turn impossibly blue. “I’d never thought of it that way.” Around us a collective sigh.

“Sir, we have a room for you!” Relief! The orderly takes us up, Dad is finally settled in. It’s nearing midnight and I need to go. He looks like he’s asleep but I’m pretty sure he is taking that collar off as soon as I leave. He has already risked hellfire and damnation three times. The risk of paralysis for removing an annoying collar is hardly a deterrent.  

The scents and sounds and sicknesses of the hospital accompany me to the car. They stay with me all the way home, swirling around me as if reinvigorated by the dark. They need to go. I turn on every light in the house, take a hot shower and throw all of my clothes into the laundry. In the pantry I find the mason jar labeled Dandelion Wine 2016, swirl open the lid and pour some of the golden elixir into an old champagne glass. With a sip comes a bit of bitterness, then the grassy notes of spring honey and a dusky flowery finish. The Victorians believed dandelion wine had healing properties, and in his book Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury promised that one could “…change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.”

So, here’s to you, Dad, to those who loved you to hell and back and to all of our beloved and those yet to be loved. May we always find enough dandelions for wine, a glass to tilt, and some summer in our veins.

I will see you tomorrow.

ANNE RUFLIN is a retired health care executive and member of the Bristol Bookends II Memoir Group with the Bristol Library.  She lives in the Bristol Hills  of New York State with her husband, several horses, dogs, and cats. This is her first published piece.

This story was previously published in Owl Light Literary: Turning Points 2021.