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Handstand

by Terry Miller Shannon

One thing you could say about my dad: He stood on his hands. A lot.

While I was growing up, we thought nothing of seeing him leap up from watching TV, nimbly toss his feet in the air and walk around the living room on his palms. The most any of us would say was, "Dad! I can't see the TV!"

There was something about being around water that particularly seemed to bring out his urge for a change in perspective. Lake, river, ocean or swimming pool would suddenly sprout two legs unfolding like gigantic sea serpents. Once straightened, they would leisurely advance through the swimmers, white shins gleaming in the sun.

"What's that?" kids would shout, pointing.

And we'd shrug and say, "Oh, it's just our dad."

He liked to enter the water that way, too. At the City Pool, he would press his palms to the searing concrete walkway. His legs rose majestically. Slowly he raised one hand and then the other over and over, finally plunging headfirst into the pool.

Or, at the top of the high dive he would kneel and clasp the sides of the board. Legs waving wildly in the air, he made his way to the end. He paused, to heighten the dramatic tension. Then he'd drop. The kids in the pool went wild, all except his own. We'd seen that show so many times we were blase.

Sometimes the teenage lifeguard blew her whistle at Dad and said things starting with, "Mr. Miller, we can't be having you doing these stunts here. Some of these kids might decide to...."

"Dad got in trouble again at the pool," we told Mom when we got home.

"Oh really?" she'd say. "Again?"

On rare visits to southern California beaches, we would try not to see those familiar legs on their way to the waves, feet pointing to the sky, above the wall-to-wall tanners on their beach towels.

We would hear a fascinated voice or two: "Hey mister! How do you do that, huh? How do you do that, mister?"

"It takes all kinds," some sunbather was sure to mutter to another.

When I was a small child, I thought hand-walking was a thing fathers did. They worked, watched TV, mowed the lawn, tinkered on the car, ate a half-gallon of ice cream at a sitting, read the Sunday comics to their kids, drank coffee, and they walked on their hands. It was neither more nor less than any of the other things fathers did.

But, when I became a teenager, I realized that Dad was different, that what he was doing was odd. And I was mortified to the core of my soul by his absolute weirdness.

"How come Dad has to walk on his hands when other people are around?" I whined to my mother. "JoAnn's father doesn't do that. It's embarrassing."

My mother shrugged and turned a page. "Because he wants to," she'd say mildly.

"But," I'd say.

She'd look at me over her book. "Listen, your dad works hard all day. If that's what makes him happy - running around on his hands like a kid, then that's what makes him happy."

At that point, I'd drop it. Too much questioning would lead Mom inevitably to her "the male mind is a true mystery to me" speech - which I already knew by heart, having heard it a thousand or so times.

There might have been lessons to be learned. About finding your own pleasure, about creating your own joy. That sometimes things were more interesting from a different perspective. r how to liven up a dull day. But I don't think Dad was trying to teach us anything. He was just standing on his hands. Because he felt like it. And anything we thought or learned was incidental.

Somewhere along the line, I grew up and I reconciled myself to having an eccentric father. I guess my sister did, too. One summer, Mom and Dad, who were grandparents by this time, were visiting her in Dallas, Texas. My sister's husband took Dad to see a building removal in downtown Dallas. The plan was to implode the building, causing it to crumple without disturbing the buildings to either side. Dad was fascinated.

Now, Dallas is a stylish, suit-and-tie type of a city. There were crowds of men watching the event, dressed in their business best, briefcases in their hands.

My sister's husband told her about it afterward. "It all went according to plan," he said.

She asked, "Was it pretty neat?"

"Yeah," he said, "it really was. The building went down just the way it was supposed to. And then the oddest thing happened. I went to look for your dad - the crowd had parted us. I didn't see him right off. Suddenly, I saw these shoes, up above the shoulders of all those businessmen."

"Uh huh?" my sister said.

"Your dad! He was walking around on his hands!"

"Oh," she said. There was a silence. "So where did y'all eat lunch?"

When Dad died and it was time to pick out a headstone, no one in the family suggested the obvious. But I'm sure we all saw it in our mind's eye: marble legs rising from the gravesite, white feet waving in the air. It would have been only too appropriate. I can hear visitors to the cemetery now: "What is that?" they would say, pointing. And we, my father's children, would smile and say, "Oh, that's just our dad."

My son has a framed photograph of his grandfather on his dresser.

"This is the way I like to remember Grandpa," he says.

The photo shows two large white legs waving above the pristine blue of the Pacific Ocean. His head is submerged beneath the waves. I can't see Dad's face. But I know he's smiling.

---

Terry Miller Shannon (www.terrymillershannon.com) and her son, Tim Warner, wrote a funny, rhyming picture book. Tim's three-year-old bath-loving son inspired TUB TOYS (Tricycle Press, 2002), which MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW says is "..greatly recommended..whimsical and fun." Check it out at Tub Toys

Terry is also a regular contributor to "The Tale Spinner", a newsletter published by Jean Sansum. To subscribe to this weekly newsletter, send an email to Jean at Jeans@mindlink.bc.ca.



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