To Go Forward, We Must Remember.
Today I told my friend Julia Mines, who happens to be an extraordinary coach, that I am fully committing to writing. While I love writing, I only tend to do it when the passion arises, eschewing what I believe to be an author’s deep discipline. As an exercise in moving forward with my practice, I will write, at minimum, one story a day for the next seven days.
After my call with Julia ended and my commitment made, I went for a walk, heading up what is known as “Church Hill” in our town. When I arrived at the top, where two of the town’s three old churches reside, I sat on a bench overlooking the valley. I closed my eyes and felt the brisk February wind whip across my face. I filled my lungs with the fresh air. I watched the Root River flow and noticed how the wind upheld the American Flags on our main street. It was as if they were rippling with the unspoken pride, a salute of sorts, to those who’ve served our country. After taking all that in, I asked for a sign of what to write about first.
Within seconds, I had my answer. Out of the Eastern skies came soaring — a mature bald eagle. It was so close I felt like it might just land next to me for a spell. As it glided back and forth overhead, a sense of where to begin, accompanied by a profound sense of joy, overcame me.
A quote from Tom Hanks’ latest film, News of the World, echoed in my mind as well. As a father figure to a young grieving girl Hanks says:
“To go forward — you must remember.”
I‘ve been thinking a lot about the word remember for weeks now. That quote from the movie resounding — paired with the eagle's siting — made for a crystalline sign:
Before I can fully move forward, I both want and need to remember my father, John Thomas Uldrich.
My dad died sometime between the late night and early morning of January 28–29th, 2019. I choose to believe it was January 28th — the Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas.
He was alone, and his heart gave out. Sometime within the year before he died, I visited him in Minneapolis for an unprecedented three-hour chat, just the two of us. His apartment had windows everywhere. He called it the “TreeHouse.” Upon reflection — he lived, much like a bald eagle, perched above the Mississippi River.
My dad became an avid bird watcher in his later years, and throughout that day that we spent talking at his dining room table, we would look to his bird feeder — he’d point out the cardinals and finches that deigned to land and eat. He’d utter a few quick facts about the birds and then return to the conversation. Brilliant flashes of color would catch our eye. Emphasizing the fleeting beauty of the moment.
He shared with me things in his life that I am not sure he ever told anyone else. He spoke of the abuse in his parent’s marriage. My grandmother, whom we called Gemmer, divorced her husband in 1939. An almost unheard-of act in pre-WWII Minnesota. My father grew up not knowing his father — hearing him only addressed by his last name and being spoken of with great disdain. It is almost as if my Gemmer tasted bile at the mention of him.
My father was named after his father, John. Back in the day, Catholics took the naming of their kids after saints quite seriously — John the Baptist and Thomas Aquinas served as the “Patron Saints” of my father. But when the divorce took place, little John Uldrich was known thereafter as Tommy. His middle name summoned forth to displace, or perhaps erase, his father’s presence in his life.
In addition to being called Tommy — he was also called AQ by his friends, acknowledging Aquinas and my dad’s early bent for philosophical thought. Hence my desire to think of him leaving the earth on the great saint's feast day.
Just a few days before his death, my father saw me perform in a one-woman show in Minneapolis. In it, I tell each member of the audience at the end of the show, “I see you.”
It was an intimate house, and I could often see the individual audience member’s reactions to the message. My father — sitting in the second row, held his head in his hands. As I uttered those words, “I see you,” to him, he did not look up to meet my gaze. I have no idea what he was thinking. But I know I had the thought — I need to ask him if he changed his name back to John as a way of acknowledging himself becoming a man — stepping out from the shadow of his mother’s domain and into his full birthright — no matter how mired the history of his father’s name was. It was, as all erroneous thoughts on stage are, fleeting — and not nearly a coherent as what I just wrote.
I never got a chance to ask him because he was gone within a day of the show closing.
That wondrous day I spent with him before he died, he ended our long and meandering conversation by guiding me into the living room and pointing out over the Mississippi. There — in all its majesty was a bald eagle soaring toward us. He said, “Kate — when you see that bird, just know it’s your Old Man.” I laughed and thought, how audacious! Audacity aside — it was duly noted.
So much so that as I found myself with my siblings clearing his papers and things out of his apartment, I kept looking out those very windows, thinking, where is that damn bird? Where are you? To no avail.
We five children and my oldest niece took a break and headed to lunch — there at the diner, we began the all-important process of collectively remembering our father. Piecing him back together as we shared our memories, some delightful, some bittersweet. By the end of the meal, it was as if he had taken a seat at the table with us, as he so often had, at the Longfellow Restaurant across from his beloved treehouse.
As we finished lunch, my niece Terra veered off from the group of us five kids, and together just us siblings headed back to the task of sorting through his belongings.
Then, at the corner light, across from his home, I kid you not, a huge bald eagle came soaring overhead. Somewhere between fifteen and thirty feet overhead, that bird done tipped his wings like the Cessna pilot my dad was (and perhaps the fighter pilot he wished to be.)
I shouted, “That’s Dad!! That’s Dad!” Everyone looked up, and I quickly rattled off the story. Together in the freezing cold of a Minnesota winter, we laughed and cried. The joy of that moment is etched into my mind — my sister Nan’s dazzling smile, the shining eyes of Tom (so reminiscent of my father’s), the deep laughter of my brother Jack, and the solemnity of my brother Ben’s words, “That is a higher power.” The best thing imprinted on my heart was a sense of knowing and connection that courses through the five of us to this day.
It’s uncanny. Bald eagles show up for all five of us kids when we need comfort, and sometimes they even show up when we simply ask. Call it what you will. We just call it Dad.
I wrote this today as a beginning. It is just the beginning. To move forward, I needed to remember…my father.
As a young man, when he entered the Marine Corps, he traveled from Minnesota to New Jersey dressed in his Marine whites and presented himself to his estranged father, who had served as an officer in the Army stationed in China in WWII, saying, “I am your son, John Thomas Uldrich” I can’t help but wonder— did he feel seen then? Is that the moment he formally changed his name from Tommy to John? I have a feeling it was.
My father longed to be a writer. He longed to be acknowledged. He longed to succeed. He longed to be seen. And yet at that moment when I told him, in performance, “I see you.” His gentle blue-green eyes were looking down.
Today some two years plus after you left your earthly form, I want you to know Dad, in the best possible sense, you are often more present to me in your death than you were in life.
I want you to know:
I see you, Old Man. I see you.
Everywhere.
Catherine Glynn is the CEO and Lead Executive Coach at Voce Veritas, The Founder of A.R.T. (Audacious Raw Theater), and is in the process of becoming a far more disciplined writer. Look for her upcoming book Leadership Distilled in the Spring of 2021.
