-15 Degrees

January 15, 2009 was the last time I ever talked to my dad.

That day also happened to be one of the coldest days on record for the state of Iowa. Thanks to the frigid wind chills of more than -40 degrees, all metro schools canceled for the day. I was busy preparing a master work (think choir and orchestra performing together) to teach students in a short two months and was swamped lesson planning, sending emails to our hired orchestra players, and emailing back and forth with the band director as to what rehearsals would entail.

If anyone know anything about me, it's that I hate interruptions. I don't let students use the bathroom in my classes, I hate it when my office phone rings in the middle of a meeting, and when I am deep in my work, like I was that day, interruptions are possibly one of my biggest annoyances.

So when my dad called me three times that day, I ignored every one. And finally annoyed by the fact that he would not stop, answered on the fourth call.

I didn't try to mask my annoyance and my answers to his every day questions were clipped. So I didn't hide my exasperated sigh when he told me to throw a cup of hot water outside and watch it freeze in mid-air.

At the time, that was one of the dumbest, most juvenile things I had ever heard. I didn't have time to do that. I only had time to work on building a music program, and putting my name in the record books with a master work, written by Paul McCartney and never before performed in the United States no less, in my second year of teaching.

So I never threw the water to watch it freeze in mid-air. And now this "polar vortex" that will give us a high of -4 and low of -15 on Monday with wind chills in the -40s, the act of throwing a cup of hot water to watch it freeze in mid-air is staring directly into my soul.

If I do it, if I complete this "juvenile task," it will be like closing a huge chapter on my guilt that I have carried these past 5 years. But on the other hand, the second I do it, it will be like ripping open a huge wound. I cry every time I think about doing it, even when there isn't a "polar vortex" in the weather forecast. I'm crying now.

It's crazy what this weather pattern is doing to my heart, and even crazier that after 5 years, I have managed to experience just about everything without my dad. First days back to school after his death, Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, the birth of my son. But it's this, this simple two-second task that is reducing me to a puddle of conflicting emotion. At any given moment, I don't know exactly how I feel about it.

But I do know how I feel about that last conversation with my dad. When I think of my dad's death, I don't quite remember what I said to him when he was lying on the emergency room table. I don't quite remember who was at his wake. I don't quite remember whose faces I looked into while reading his eulogy. So many times I wish I could go back in time and have that conversation over again. But I can't. There is nothing I can do to change that.

Except maybe throw some hot water outside to watch it freeze in mid-air.