CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“If my memory serves me correct, that was approximately, February of 1945?” Fred asked.
“That’s right.”
He counted on his fingers before continuing, “You were there six months before the end of the war.”
“That’s correct, also,” he answered. “From the day that the bahay kubo was finished, Pedro was my faithful roommate. But, Tala, on the other hand, wouldn’t even come through the door. I don’t know if it was because it was new, or different. That first night she preferred to sleep with her grandmother. The second night, Pedro and I started settling down to go to sleep when I heard a little voice coming up the path in the almost dark of the dying campfires. She was calling for malaki tatay. The villagers had been calling me malaking tao which means big man.”
Olivia said, “Well, she wasn’t that far off. How old was she, two?”
Tom looked at her with a real soft smile and answered, “Yes, she was two. BUT. Malaki tatay means……..big daddy.”
Olivia’s mouth dropped open, “Oh, my gosh! She had started calling you daddy. Oh, Grandpa that was quite a breakthrough for that little girl.” As she looked deep into his eyes she saw something else. “It was a breakthrough for you, too, wasn’t it?” To hide the tears she knew would soon make their appearance, Olivia once again held his arm real tight and gently laid her head on his shoulder.
Tom could feel the warmth of her tears as they fell on his shirt. With a little difficulty, he opened up, “Honey, up until that time, I had spent hours agonizing with my memory. Was I married? Did I have any children? I just really didn’t know. But, the moment I heard her voice calling for me, I knew that God had given me the responsibility to love and raise a little boy and a little girl. It had only been a fleeting thought in my mind before.
"Her innocent little voice calling me malaki tatay filled my heart with joy and gave me a purpose to live. I accepted with great peace the challenge that God put in my heart that night. I didn’t know what the future would bring but I knew the ‘right now.’ And right now, I was going to pour my love and God’s love into those two children. In return, they poured their love into me. Through God’s love, we enjoyed some heaven right in the middle of the earth that had been unkind to the three of us.
“And, how was I to know that half a world away, God was going to send a godly man into the lives of my wife and son? Sin and man’s ego caused us to be separated. It wasn’t God’s perfect will for us to be apart like that. Man got in the way and messed up something good. So, God got busy making all things work together for our good. And, He did.
“While I was busy building Pedro and Tala, God sent Brian to help Ellen build Billy. He got married and you came along. What God had instilled in Billy, God used to build something in you. What Billy taught you helped you to choose Ryan. And now, y'all are raising two wonderful children in a Godly manner. It’s not God’s perfect will but His will was still being accomplished. And, I would like to think that I had a part in what God brought about in your lives because I was obedient to Him when He asked me to be.
“That’s why when the war was over, I refused to be taken to the Americans. I knew that there was a job for me to do. I didn’t worry about the past because I couldn’t remember it. I busied myself doing what I knew He wanted me to do right then and there. I left the future up to Him. It looks like all those separate paths have caused us to come full circle, now, hasn’t it?”
Oops. What a time for Olivia’s phone to ring. “Well, let me see who I can ignore,“ she cracked as she pulled the phone out of her pocket. “It’s Elaine,” she sang and quickly pressed the answer button and said very happily, “It’s my sister. Oh, my grandfather? Why, here he is.” Holding her hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to hold back her laughter she held the phone out to her grandfather and said, “Here.” And, she promptly fell back on the couch a rolled off onto the floor laughing.
Tom was left holding a phone that he was expected to answer. He said as he pulled it to his ear, “That girl is the spittin’ image of her grandmother. My Ellen would pull the same trick on me, except back then we had a party line and….well, I guess you wouldn’t want to know the rest of what she did. Hi, this is Tom.”
The voice on the other end asked, “Uh…….is this Mr..uh .. Olivia’s grandfather?”
“Yes, it is. This must be the pastor’s wife,” he answered.
By this time, Olivia was laughing so hard that she had to crawl into the kitchen so that Tom could hear Elaine without having to listen around her laughter. Arthur had already climbed in his daddy’s lap and the two were trying to keep from howling themselves. Fred didn’t even try. He went outside.
Elaine went on, “I’m not surprised at anything that girl would do, Mr. Dandridge. As a matter of fact, I could fill you in on a few thousand things she‘s done just since I‘ve known her. She is a pure joy to be around.”
“Yes, Ma’am, I can see that for sure. But, please call me Tom. Mr. Dandridge makes me sound so old and I’m only 82.”
“OK, Tom,” Elaine chuckled back to him. “Just tell that cackler when she gets through with that egg she’s laying to make sure she reads her e-mail before going to bed. She can do that and laugh at the same time. I’ll let y’all get back to your fun. And, Tom, Jim and I can’t wait to meet you. I hope you’re planning on staying around some.”
“Well, since God brought things out the way He did, it looks like I’ll be a permanent resident until He decides to take me home.”
That stopped the laughter for a few jaw-dropping moments, and then it was Arthur jumping out of his dad’s lap and running to hug his grandpa and then to his mother and then to his daddy and then he went outside to find Fred. It’s a good thing a policeman wasn’t walking by at that moment. He might have arrested Arthur for assault and battery on poor old Fred. That boy was in a tizzy.
“It’s going to be a long time before that kid settles down to go to bed,” Tom stated.
“I guess I’d better get off this phone so y’all can corral that little mustang. Have a good evening, Tom. Good-bye.”
“Good-by. Elaine.”
Olivia settled down enough to ask, “What did she say?”
As he stood up to bring her the phone, Tom answered, “She just said to check your e-mail before going to bed. She knew that you could do that while you’re laughing.”
Ryan got up also and declared, “I guess I’d better go rescue Fred. And, it sounds like I need to pull the fuse on Arthur, real gentle like. He IS going to take some unwinding before he hits the sheets tonight.”
As he walked toward the door, Ryan pointed his finger toward Tom and warned, “I hope you’re in good shape, Grandpa. That boy has a tendency to wear people out.”
As Olivia came over to get another bear hug from her new ‘fella,’ Tom admitted, “It surely looks like I’ve lit the fuse on a hot little powder keg doesn’t it?”
“He’s alright, Grandpa,” Olivia said as she held him and swayed back and forth for a moment. “Hmmmmm, Grandpa…….Grandpa……… You don’t know how long I’ve waited to say that.”
Tom observed, “Throughout the evening, you have made it seem as if you have been expecting me. Am I just being egotistical?”
“No, Grandpa,” she whispered with a little quiver in her voice. “Whether anyone else believed it as hard as I did or not, I knew you would come. BUT“ she leaned away from him to beam a smile at him to let him know her word was final, “we’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
The three amigos were coming through the door about that time. Fred butted in, “I know you’re going to monopolize his time all day tomorrow…..”
“And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that until I finally get tired of the old goat,” she said with a giggle. But, she didn’t let go of him.
“Well, I guess the better question would be, what time tomorrow are you going to start monopolizing his day?” Fred asked
She broke her hold j
ust far enough to look at him seriously and say, “Uh,…..you know it will be around 9:30 now that I think of it. I will have to get Mr. Blister up and off to school.”
“Aw, Mom, can’t you declare it an official holiday or something?” whined you know who.
“No, no, no, sport. I know you’ll have him in the evenings and on the weekends, so during the day……he’s mine,” she answered a nod of her head for emphasis.
Then to Fred she said, “I will also need to go by the bank and pick up a few items. And, tonight, I’ll e-mail Elaine for her and Jim to come over for breakfast and we can plan this Sunday’s dinner on the grounds in my grandpa’s honor.”
Tom started to argue, “Now, Olivia, I really don’t want……”
Fred interrupted him, “Wait a minute, Tom.” He walked over and picked up Tom’s coffee cup. “Here ya go. You and that coffee cup are good friends by now. And, you’ll have more luck trying to talk it out of being a coffee cup than you will trying to talk her out of something she set her mind to.”
Tom took a long look at her. She just crossed her arms, tilted her head to the side and smiled. Finally he gave in. He smiled a defeated smile and sighed and he took her in his arms again, “As long as you’re alive……….Ellen Dandridge will never die. You are just like her for the world.”
“Then my daddy did a good job of raising me, didn’t he?’”
“You betcha, Darling,” Tom readily admitted. “Well, Fred, it looks like we’re going to have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Would you mind dropping me off at the hotel?”
“I'd be glad to. After all it is past my bed time. Good night, all”
Good nights were said. Hugs were passed around several times. Arthur reminded Tom of everything under the sun that Tom wasn’t going to forget anyway. You could tell he was tired and sleepy although he refused to admit it. It got to be real funny as he began stumbling over his words. So, Olivia scooted Tom and Fred out so they could all go to sleep.
As they got into the car Fred suggested, “Why don’t I pick you up at 6 a.m. I have two reasons. The first one is we need to find you a place to live instead of staying at the hotel. Personally, I don’t think you need to be staying with Liv and them. You’ll probably need a place to stretch out and relax a bit.”
“I’m all for that,” Tom admitted as he strapped himself into the passenger’s seat.
“Second of all,” he continued, “we will need to go back to the bakery in the morning for a couple of cups of coffee before Liv picks you up. We need to find a way to introduce you to the folks as Tom Dandridge and break the news to them gently. I guarantee you that by 9 a.m. the Elmhurst tele-woman broadcasting network will have the latest news burning on the wire. Those ladies at the church are great about planning a feast and the food is plentiful as well as delicious. But, Tom, you know as well as I do that in every bevy of women, there’s two or three that have tongues that would reach from here to Jacksonville, Florida and back.”
Tom laughed at the way that Fred told the truth and added, “And we might even find some men coming in knowing more than we do about my past.”
Fred laughed along with him, “You’re probably right. Still, the bakery is where a lot of the men meet. It’s kind of a tradition, that if someone has an important announcement, they don’t wait to put it in the paper, they tell it at the bakery over a cup of coffee. For example, if you want to get elected in this town, the first place it needs to be known is at the bakery. If you don’t, you will lose by a landslide no matter how good you are.”
“Then things haven‘t changed much since I was here,” replied Tom. “I remember my dad telling me about it. I remember thinking that it was the dumbest thing you could ever do. Yet, when Ellen and I actually set the date for our wedding, I was there when the doors opened at 5:30. That’s when it was The Elmhurst Café. Remember that, Fred?”
“Yes, and I remember who laughed the loudest when you made your announcement.”
“Who was that?”
“Your father. He fell out of his chair laughing.”
“Oh, yeah. As he was getting up off the floor he was making fun of me, wasn’t he? ‘Telling everybody in the café. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.’ And then he finished by pointing at me and saying, ‘So look who’s dumber than dumb now.’ He was some man,” Tom finished.
Fred pulled the car into the entrance of the hotel lobby and stopped close to the door. “Do you want me to call you in the morning?”
“Not necessary, my friend,” Tom replied. “I am automatically up at 4:30 every morning to pray and study. Been doing it for years and don’t seem to want to break the habit. I’ll be right here at 6.”
“Ok. G’night, Tom.”
“Good night, Fred. And thanks.”
“No, Tom. Thank you and welcome home, my brother.”
Tom watched Fred pull out onto the street and on down toward the high school. He said out loud, “Home. Lord, I guess you did bring me full circle.” Then, he went up to his room for a restful night’s sleep.
Little did he know that God was not through drawing the circle. There was a lot more for Him to show to Tom and a lot more healing to be done. God was a long way from being through with Tom’s circle.