--- title: 'The Most Recent Incident' date: '2003-11-17T22:15:05-05:00' permalink: /the-most-recent-incident/ tags: - life - reflecting --- \[Part 1 in a series. Read [Part 2](/memory/) and [Part 3](/how-it-turned-out/).\] While in [Prague](/eerste-things-eerste/) this summer, I got the following email message: > From: \[DLB\]@\[company\].com > Subject: \[GF\]’s Address & Phone Number > Date: June 5, 2003 1:53:35 PM PDT > > If this is repeat information, please forgive me. > > If you would like to stay in touch with \[GF\], you may > contact him at the following address and number: > > \[GF\] > \[address deleted\] > \[suburb of Salt Lake City\], Utah \[zip\] > \[phone number deleted\] > > Thank you and God Bless. > > In Him, Sincerely, > \[DLB\] > \[company\] > \[phone number\] > > The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor…. I have no idea who DLB is. GF, on the other hand, is my father. My father, who up until June lived in Houston (though there was Australia before that, and Saudi Arabia before that). My father, whom I have not laid eyes on in ten years. My father, who sent me this email message for my birthday last year: > From: \[GF\]@\[company\].com > Subject: Happy Birthday! > Date: August 23, 2002 9:27:06 AM PDT > To: \[KF\]@\[college\].edu > > K! > > Happy Birthday! Hope you have a good one. Back in school yet? We just > started a week ago. Love you. > > Dad This has been for decades — three of them now — the nature of our correspondence: sentence fragments, initials, exclamation points. Two lines for a birthday. One for Christmas. We haven’t spoken on the telephone in longer than I can remember. Sometimes I respond to the messages, usually in kind. A line or two. A polite query. No information. Something about the June message piqued my curiosity, though; buried in the ostentatious Christianity — seriously: *three* references in a twelve-line message? — was a mystery. Utah? Was this another corporate transfer, into a domestic desert this time? Or was it something else? I emailed him, but the corporate address I had for him produced no response. Six weeks later, there was this: > From: \[GF\]@\[isp\].net > Subject: address change > Date: July 20, 2003 5:34:51 PM PDT > To: \[KF\]@\[college\].edu, \[DF\]@\[isp\].com > > New email as above. Have just relocated to \[address\] \[suburb of Salt Lake City\], Utah \[zip\] > > — \[GF\] > — \[GF\]@\[isp\].net > — \[phone number\] My sister, who hadn’t been on DLB’s lengthy email list, was included this time, which was notable given that he’d had me forward numerous greetings to her over the last few years, seemingly unable to keep track of her address. I replied again: > From: \[KF\]@\[college\].edu > To: \[GF\]@\[isp\].net > Date: 7/21/2003 10:36:34 AM > Subject: Re: address change > > That’s a change! So what’s in Utah? Hope you’re doing well. Love, K. The next day, there was this: > From: \[GF\]@\[isp.net\] > Subject: Re: address change > Date: July 22, 2003 12:09:42 PM PDT > To: \[KF\]@\[college\].edu > > K > > We’re doing well and getting settled. What’s in Utah? Maybe what’s not in > Utah: humidity, Houston traffic, big city, etc. What’s in Utah: beautiful > mountains, dry (maybe a little too dry right now), nice city–easy to get > around in, good environment for children, etc. > > What’s happening with you lately? > > Love > > Dad This is just the kind of cryptic response that has always made me probe further, and so I answered, attempting to sound newsy, in hopes of provoking a similiar response: > From: \[KF\]@\[college\].edu > To: \[GF\]@\[isp\].net > Date: 7/22/2003 1:58:58 PM > Subject: Re: address change > > That all sounds good! Is the move another work-related one, or just > for the family? It sounds awfully nice. > > Things here are good, just working hard, preparing for the fall > semester and my tenure review. Spent some time in Amsterdam at the > beginning of the summer and remembered being in Belgium all those years > ago. Enjoying the summer, which is slipping by very quickly. > > Back to work for me. Hope all’s well with you! > > Love, > K. This was his reply: > From: \[GF\]@\[isp\].net > Subject: Re: address change > Date: July 24, 2003 4:16:44 PM PDT > To: \[KF\]@\[college\].edu > > Move was for all of us. I’m starting a consulting business here. I’m ready > to supply all your leadership development needs! > > I’d love to see Belgium again, and I’ll never forget your visit that summer. > > Love I let things drop here, knowing that I’d never get an answer. My father and stepmother went evangelical Catholic some years back, and so my hyperactive imagination tells me that they’ve either converted to LDS or they’ve found some fundamentalist Catholic outpost out in the desert and are stockpiling canned goods, waiting for the end times. I’ll never know, though. And the fact that I’ll never know — that I’ll never know the slightest thing about this man — is written all over the message. There were *two* summers. We spent *two* summers with him in Belgium, the years I was ten and eleven. All I’ll ever be able to know for certain is what I invent.