October 18, 2016 – My other dad

Listen to this post:

Joe woke me up sometime about three in the morning last Wednesday.  “Dad is gone.”  Crumpling into tears I got up to take a steamy shower to try to clear my head and chest of the congestion from this bug I’ve had – while he caffeinated himself.  Just like his dad, he can’t jump right from sound asleep to behind the wheel of a car without assistance!  We arrived sometime after 3:30 am at the Redwoods in Mill Valley.  Joe’s sister Anne was there already, keeping Mom company, while Dad’s body was still in his bed in the other room.  The end of a life had come.

Bob Greenwood was, as he called himself, my “Dad number two” and we shared a very sweet relationship.  We met under really unusual circumstances – in the out-patient surgery waiting room at Kaiser Hospital in San Rafael – without Joe there to introduce us.  I said I was Joe’s “friend.”  To Bob, and Joe’s mom Evelyn, I was someone their son had just taken to dinner for the first time less than a week earlier. I can imagine how they’d have been a bit wary of me – especially with my shoulder-length, permed-wet-look dark hair, tight jeans, ankle boots and black leather jacket – my single, city-girl look.

But we quickly won each other over.  The incredible circumstances of the beginning of my relationship with their son called for me to show up in a way that I hadn’t ever before.  After being diagnosed with lymphoma on that day I met his parents, two weeks later Joe moved into my house in San Anselmo – so he’d have someone to care for him as he underwent chemotherapy.  A couple of months later Bob sent me a note in the mail to tell me he felt like their family had been – like a TV show he watched – “touched by an angel.”   I wasn’t feeling very angel-like, I was just head-over-heels with this amazing man and I was doing all I could to help him get better. But his note touched me and showed me a whole lot about the kind of guy Bob was.

I became close – forming a unique bond with my guy’s parents when went to the San Francisco Ballet together.  We saw the entire season for several years – just the three of us.  I was still working in San Francisco, so I’d meet them after work at a restaurant near the Opera House for a bite before the performance. New to the ballet, I learned about the dancers in the company, the pieces in the repertoire that thrilled me – and not.  And I learned who these two were as people – not just in-laws at family dinners.

By the time I came into this family, both of them were retired, so I have no direct knowledge of their working lives. I’m told both were exceptional teachers.  Bob was legendary as the music teacher at Tamalpais High School for something like 40 years.  In sharing his love of music, he opened a world for the thousands of students who took his classes.  Many of them went on to successful careers as musicians – among them are some well-known names:  Bill Champlin, George Duke, Grace Slick.  In an interview of Bill Champlin I found online, he had this to say about Dad:

“So he didn’t just teach what the book told him to teach.  He teaches what the student looks like he needs to learn.  I had a natural affinity for music but he managed to get it across to where I could actually see it mathematically and it served me really well for a long time….Look at most high school choirs.  They’re really tame.  This guy took some serious chances and pulled out some really outrageous music.  You know, Stravinsky and stuff like that, things that you wouldn’t ordinarily hear in a high school choir.  He found some of the more avant-garde choral arrangers and we took a shot at it.  And there was nothing but flat nines all over the place and it was great.  He really opened our eyes to where music CAN go — not that you necessarily WANT to go there — but it showed you where you can go.”

And he was more than just a music teacher.  Posts on his Facebook page tell of how he provided support to former students who were struggling with personal problems too.  In the last weeks of his life he received many visitors – people who wanted to touch in one more time with this man who had inspired, supported, encouraged them in their lives.  The Thursday before he died, he had a visit from a man who Bob had taught in the early 50’s in his first year teaching, in Corning – a town in the Central Valley – where he taught for one year before coming home to teach at Tam.  Bob had touched this person so much that more than 60 years later, he was compelled to reconnect.  He shared on Bob’s Facebook page something Bob had said in that visit:  “He reminded me that we aren’t really teaching music–we are teaching PEOPLE, through the lovely medium of music.” As a new teacher, I’m thankful for Paul Bostwick for having relayed these words from Dad to me.

On my first date with Joe he asked me about Christmas.  What was Christmas like when I was growing up?  I didn’t realize this, but I was being interviewed!  Because Christmas is important to him – and this is because of Dad.  The stories I’ve heard reveal Dad as a magic-maker.   He decorated every room in the house for Christmas – even the bathroom!  He set up all the toys brought by Santa, staging them around the tree for his three kids to greet them on Christmas morning.  At Easter he left trails of jelly beans leading the kids outside to hunt for eggs.  Evelyn has told me that when the kids were little and they got cranky, he packed the family into the car and took them on a “trip to the Moon.”  This meant a tour around the three bridges: the Golden Gate, the Bay Bridge and the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, with a stop at an ice cream parlor somewhere along the way.

The culture of the Greenwood family has this kind of make-believe magic in a way that mine so does not.  We Browns are pretty literal bunch.  There is a sense of play, an enchantment, a twinkly sense that life can be more than it appears, that has enhanced my life since I’ve become part of this family.  Bob brought this to his family and I have to believe that it had to have been in his teaching too.  He believed in striving for excellence, taking risks to see what might come of it.   He brought so much to many people – and in doing so he lives on in them – and in us.

He leaves behind his beloved Evie – the love of his life who he proposed to two weeks after meeting her – who he always referred to as his “dear darling wife” whenever I called there. They were married 63 years and he could not have lived the life he did without her – without the support she offered him that gave him the freedom to be who he was out in the world.  May we all be blessed with her continued good health so we can keep making family memories.

Dad, your body didn’t last you to make one more holiday season with us as we’d all hoped. But, rest assured that when we feel the magic – the tree farm, the “happy” lights, the punkin pie, the goosebumps we feel when hearing of the music of Chanticleer – we’ll know it’s you.

With all my love,

Cara