Daddy Sounds (memoir)

People describe my dad's hands as "country hands." They seem merely gnarled and meaty to me. Some people wouldn't imagine sensitivity to be a trait of a military veteran with broad, muscular shoulders and gnarled, meaty "country" hands, but there is rich, healing honey in my dad's voice and mischievous laughter in his brown eyes and straight smile. His small, perfectly lined lips conceal the immeasurable size of his laughter, his smile, and his spirit. Although he stands only 5' 8", my dad has a commanding presence. He is a stout, straight-postured man with a stride and carriage full of confidence.  His round, cherubic face is the perfect cover for the mischief which resides in his heart, frequently peeking out from his kind eyes and always escaping through his free laughter.

No matter where he finds himself, my dad always brings the laughter. One year, my dad and mom were celebrating their wedding anniversary with our family friends, the Greene's. For some unknown reason, we kids accompanied them to dinner. For a large group of Black folks to appear in Bushy's Restaurant in downtown Charleston was already an eyebrow-raising situation; furthermore, the noise level my father brought to the room attracted the additional, predictable attention. He told a story which I couldn't hear quite clearly from my seat at the children's booth across the aisle.  All I remember hearing was his laughter. My dad let loose his trademark guffaw which was normally the precursor to his cyclical "Ah huh huh huh! Ahhh! A huh huh huh!"  This time, there were no huh's afterwards. Just silence. My dad's face was in a full scrunch--eyes squeezed, mouth taut, cheeks dimpled, nose wrinkled, teeth bared, faint eyebrows furrowed. He looked like a clenched fist.  A wheezing sound, like an open radiator with no more water inside, was emitting from my dad's throat and tears were fleeing from his eyes to hide in his salt-and-pepper moustache. Slowly, his body began to lose its upright position. He was sliding down. In his specially tailored, pin-stripped navy blue suit and light blue tie, my dad--Morris O'Neal Crockett--was losing it in the middle of Bushy's. When his body reached a complete parallel with the restaurant booth, my highly-embarrassed, exasperated mother Theresa and Louis's mortified wife Farrell, got up and marched out. They left him and Louis there, coughing and crying and not caring at all if everyone in the restaurant was watching them.

I loved it when my father made a scene.

Whether he is passionately singing an old Baptist hymn my gran'ma Liz taught him or fervently preaching a sermon that God gave him, my dad brings the sound. When I call him on the phone, and I hear that click and then the boisterous "Lizamo!" which follows, I cannot keep myself from smiling. There is a vibrancy of life that dwells in his spirit, and no matter how much he dresses himself up and ventures out into the world, he is still going to be himself--the laughter, the smiles, and the sounds.