Ciao Papà

Part one of three: “Real Old John.”

After a failed early career as a theoretical physicist, I opted for a completely non-related job working as the Assistant Director of Activities at a small memory care facility called Ebenezer’s. I have always liked old folks. I think they’re adorable. We have forty-nine residents, three of which are men named John. There’s Young John who is eighty-five, Old John who I think is ninety-four, and now - thanks to me - there’s Real Old John who says he’s one hundred and four years old. When he was found, he had no wallet or ID. I say, “thanks to me” because I’m the one who found him standing on the sidewalk near our house. I was getting home from work one night and there he was, standing there in his brown sweater vest, leaning on a cane and looking pale and lost. I knew almost instinctively that he had dementia. There’s a look in their eyes, like they want to say something... like they want to share their stories, but their brain won’t allow them. The police canvassed the area with no luck and a search of missing persons came up dry. So, Real Old John got his name from being a John Doe. I was even interviewed by the local news about finding him, but no one stepped forward. Eventually, the State placed him at Ebenezer’s where I have pretty much adopted him. I like to think we have a bond. He calls me “Operator” which I don’t understand, but that’s okay. He doesn’t call anyone else “Operator.” He doesn’t have a lot to say, but his cute wrinkly face smiles when I walk into his room. He reminds me a lot of my Grandpa. I often think about Real Old John and that he has no one in his life. No one to care for him. On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself with tears in my eyes. Just - stupid raw emotion. Maybe it’s because I know he’s near the end of his life and I selfishly want more of Real Old John. Maybe because he reminds me of my father.

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Part two of three: “My Father.”

My father was an engineer which inspired me to pursue physics. Remember what most of the guys looked like in Mission Control for the moon landing? That’s him. Black, slicked back hair, thick rimmed glasses, and smoking cigarettes. He was quiet and calm and carried a peacefulness about him. A man of few words - few spoken words at least. But he would write all the time! All the time, jotting things down in these small black notebooks. I remember the notebooks’ covers had almost an oily feel to them. He must have filled dozens of them. Hundreds over time. He worked long hours. A lot of overtime and weekends - so he wasn’t around much. But I do remember, he would come into my bedroom in the morning before leaving for work, brush the hair off my forehead with the index finger of his right hand, and say, “ciao piccola mia.” Goodbye my little one. That’s one of my fondest memories of my father. While I wouldn’t wake up fully, I always heard him. “Ciao piccola mia.” Looking back, I wish I would have hopped out of bed and eaten breakfast with him. It might have been a good opportunity to get to know him and ask him questions. Tell him more about my life as a young teenager... to tell him... that I loved him. But he was up and gone before the sunrise.

I wish I had known that day that it would be the last time his hand would grace my sleepy head.

Robert Sebragondi disappeared from my life and everyone else’s on December 19th, 1974. Disappeared. Vanished. As in - one day he was in this life and the next day he was gone. There was an investigation that involved the police and men in suits in the house. No foul play was discovered. No note. No dead body. No signs of struggle. No phone calls. No explanation. There was just… nothing. I thought, some people just go away. Eventually, there are no more questions to ask. No more leads. No more men in suits searching the house. No one to tell you why. It’s the worst feeling in the world. Much like the missing person posters we hung on telephone poles… the hope that my father would return faded - and over time - vanished.

That is, until the first check for twenty-thousand dollars showed up in the mail a year later in 1975. There was no return address on the envelope. The check was made out to my mother from a company called Arrviesse Incorporated with the letters: FYEO in the memo line. Arrviesse… Arrviesse. Arr. Vee. Ess. R.V.S. Robert Vincent Sebragondi. FYEO, we learned, meant for your eyes only. Mom and I decided this clandestine communication had to be from my father. It had to be! He was alive and sending us money, a lot of money somehow and didn’t want the authorities to know. But so many questions! We deposited it and waited. A similar twenty-thousand dollar check showed up every year. My father did not.

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Part three of three: “Mold, The Hidden Room, and the Revelation”

My father’s hidden room was uncovered by Bill who worked for Black Star Restoration and Remediation. Mom discovered mold in our basement and hired Black Star to take care of it. It was expensive. We could afford it. Day one, as Bill and his team were ripping off four by eight painted wood panels from the wall - they found it. A recessed, hidden, padlocked door. Bill called us down to ask us about his discovery. As neither my mom or I knew anything about the door or what might be behind it, we gave Bill and the boys the rest of the day off. Ca-chunk. The lock fell to the ground thanks to Bill’s bolt cutters. Mom and I looked at each other and swallowed hard. I don’t know why, but I thought I would open the door and my father would be standing there with a smirk on his face.

The metal door pushed open with a creak worthy of a haunted-house. We moved together carefully into the darkness of the square room. The smell of stale cigarettes. A rug underfoot. Mom found an architect’s lamp on a desk. Ca-click. We were in a workshop. My father’s secret workshop! Through a haze of dust filled air stirred up by our presence, we saw wires, small screens, glass tubes, cables, unknown tools hanging on the wall. Not woodworking tools but electronics. His workbench was flanked by oak framed partitions filled with blueprints for some sort of device, equations, plans, maps, and notes. Nothing obvious jumped out at us. No real ah-ha moment. It was like someone created a set for a sci-fi movie from the 50s. Actually, one thing did stick out to me - a photo pinned to the map of the US. It was a group of Native Americans. The wall to the left was floor to ceiling shelves three quarters filled with cardboard boxes. We pulled one down and lifted off its cardboard lid. Inside were notebooks. Dozens of black covered notebooks bound with rubber bands. The answers that we longed for had to be here in these boxes. I watched my tears land on the journal covers. Little shiny dots magnifying the specks of history’s dust. My mom opened a box from the other side of the shelf. Clothing. A collared shirt in white and one with tight navy blue stripes. Maroon pants, Grey tweed vest, black tie, a newsboy like hat, and a pair of black leather boots. It looked like a costume. The rubber band from the first notebook I picked up had lost its elasticity and fell to pieces into the box below. The first four pages were scribbly diagrams and a lot of formulas.

I read the fifth and sixth pages.

“The herd I have discovered seems to be desperate to find food beneath the newly fallen snow. They use their tusks like snow plows to find vegetation. Remarkable! They don’t seem cold, which is more than I can say for myself. I was not prepared to land here during winter. I find myself longing for the mammoth’s hearty fur coats. We’ll have to make some adjustments to ensure my target time period is more accurate. I seem to be drifting beyond our intended settings.”

A collection of three photographs slid out from between pages six and seven. Photographs of a woolly mammoth herd my father took... dated nineteen thousand years ago.

What? What???

I read aloud the entry to my mom. I handed her the pictures. The idea took a moment to settle as our rational minds batted away the thought that… I mean, this is not something that one can handle in a solitary fashion. My mother and I locked eyes as the truth wedged its way into our reality. She dissolved into my arms as our disbelief gave way to heaving sobs.

My father was a time traveler.

Now, that statement alone is utterly surreal… but there are no words that appropriately describe the following truths we discovered in the days to come after reading and exploring the room.

Truth number one: the designer of the time machine wasn’t my father. It was me. It makes more sense to say… it will be me. In ten years from now, I will use my time machine to extract my father from 1974.

Truth number two: We will spend years taking turns exploring time’s exotic destinations. We buy this very house in the early 1900s to use as a way-stop through time and build the room mom and I found. We will share half a lifetime of adventure and I will have all the time I ever wanted to tell him how much I love him. But our journeys will be plagued with technical difficulties. Time travel requires a team of at least two… a traveler who travels and an operator. An operator. During one excursion to 1751, my father didn’t come back. Mom stepped in as the operator to send me back to find him. From there, details dry up. Years go by. The past catches up… and here I am having realized...

Truth number three: a few weeks ago, I found a 104 year old Robert Vincent Sebragondi standing on the sidewalk in front of our house. He was the traveler. I was the operator. My father's poor mind had been erased through natural or means otherwise.

I start each day working at Ebeneezer’s sitting with my father. Sometimes Mom stops by although she is saddened by how her love story is ending. I help him eat his eggs and drink his juice and I talk to him quietly about how I’m making progress on our time machine. I tell him that I’m working hard to find the error in the design that got us lost and deposited him here in this timeline. Maybe we'll do better next time. I move a lock of his white hair off his forehead so I can look into his eyes... “Ciao Papà. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ve got work to do.”