CSI Daddy
Linda Ignarro
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| Linda Ignarro is a graduate of Mount St. Mary's College (Class of 2007). Having roots in Texas, she's lived a number of years in California, and now works for the legendary Producer Norman Lear. Her father knows all about this essay. |
Three days after my thirteenth birthday
my father walked through the front door and said to me, "I have to go to Bosnia. I'll be back in a year." In my seventh grade mind, he turned around, walked out that same door, and returned right before I started high school. I can't count the number of times he had to leave on missions like this - "missions," that's what the military called them - he was a C.I.D. Special Agent for the United States Army.
We have the C.I.A. and F.B.I.; the U.S. Military has the C.I.D., or Criminal Investigation Division. Police officers investigate crimes that civilians commit, while the C.I.D. investigates felony crimes committed against the Army or by Army personnel. They have worldwide jurisdiction, even against expatriates - U.S. citizens who choose to live outside our borders.
A C.I.D. Agent recruited my father, and did so quickly. He tossed the application papers at Dad, and expected them to be filled out by the end of the week. No doubt the Agent knew about my father's work as a cop with the NYPD.
Dad was accepted into the Apprentice Special Agent Training Program. My family lived in Germany at the time, but Dad had to travel back to the United States for three months of training. After completing the program, they took photos at a ceremony. The picture above the computer desk in our house shows my father being handed his framed certificate for induction. A second photo shows my mother and father kissing, followed by a third shot of my mother holding the certificate for my father. When I was in elementary school, I saw these framed photos and declared, "Mommy got an award for kissing Daddy!"
I learned my father's world of titles and acronyms: Property Crimes Team. Persons Crime Team. He was selected for Protective Service Missions (guarding individuals who were under high risk for attack, or who represented the United States while they were overseas - he even guarded the Secretary of Defense). He was the primary Crime Scene Investigator, and in his own words, "All the neat stuff you see on C.S.I.? I did just about all of it."
During one of his long missions to Korea, the Army informed us that they planned thirty-second spots on television that showed selected soldiers saying hello to their families. My father was chosen to be one of those men. It was much later than our bedtime, but we stayed up that night until 11:00 to see Dad on television. The commercial came, and for that thirty seconds my father, outfitted in camouflage gear, talked to the camera, waving hello to Louis, Linda, and Jennifer, and telling his wife, our mother Randi, how much he missed her. He was thousands of miles away, but for that moment he was right there at home with us.
As a child, all I knew was that it was his job to keep people safe, and that often meant him being on another continent. What I didn't know at the time was that my father accepted certain missions so that his family could keep living on the same base that we were currently in. It was a trade of sorts that he made with the military. The life of a Military Brat can mean constant moving, from one base to another - Dad didn't want this for us. He wanted us to be as stabilized as possible. I never knew this about his decisions until recently - that, while keeping a part of the world safe (and putting his own self at risk), he was also working to keep his family in one place, rather than living somewhere for a couple of months like most other Army families did.
As far as I remember, my brother, sister, and I handled the separation well. The three of us never saw the distance as a problem. It was Daddy's job, something he had to do; he couldn't refuse orders. Whenever he would get home from traveling to a new far-off place, he would bring us all pretty jewelry and other fun gifts - trust me, we didn't mind. He said he loved seeing us kids "light up" when he brought home his little treasures. He did surprise us, though, with a great gift one time - himself. I was taking out the trash one afternoon and just as I shut the lid to the garbage can outside I saw my dad standing in our driveway holding a suitcase. He had to testify in a court martial in the United States, so he got to come home for a few days - none of which we knew about. I ran down the driveway as my dad dropped his suitcase to scoop me up. Then, when I took off into the house screaming, "Daddy's in the driveway! Daddy's in the driveway!" everyone just sat there, looking at me like I was hallucinating. When I wouldn't stop saying it, my mother leapt off her chair to run outside. We crowded around him, shrieking as we wrapped him up with us.
My mother never seemed sad. At least, she never showed it. When they were in the same country the two of them laughed and acted cute in front of us kids, but at night after we went to sleep we'd be woken by the yelling. My sister and I shared a room. She pushed a pillow over her head. So did I. My brother had his own room. When the yelling started, I don't know what he did.
I was in eighth grade when my father was due to come home from Bosnia. Mom sat us down and told us that she was leaving my father. But she wasn't going to wait until he got home to go through the divorce process - she was leaving, now. Place a letter on his pillow and fly away to New York.
On the morning of his arrival, she took us to a friend's house so that they could drive us to school. She said that she was worried he'd take his anger out on us kids - something that made no sense to me. I still have no idea what she was thinking about that morning.
On the ride to school I stared out the window and looked up at the sky at all the planes flying overhead. Dad was in one of them. An exhausted man. He's about to come home expecting a warm hug from his wife, and what he will find will be a piece of paper. That will be the sum total of my parents' relationship. No, I didn't want that, the image of him sad crushed down on me. Then the other images of this man who was, to me, simply the smiling guy who hoisted you onto his shoulders, or laughed as he twirled you around in the air, or who let you stand on his feet when you danced - all those images crushed me.
My brother drove his own car back to our house. He was already there when my father came home, suitcases overflowing, excited to see his family. I was sitting in class, staring out more windows, wondering what the end of the day would bring. My father was confused that only my brother was there to meet him. He walked into his room, saw the white envelope at the head of the bed, and sat gingerly down. The envelope was bare except for the name "Lou" written on it. He knew what was inside. These used to be called "Dear John" letters, but he didn't expect a "dear" to be anywhere on it. It wasn't sealed shut; he slid the paper out and unfolded it. My brother stood outside the doorway, looking at the floor rather than at the man sitting on the edge of the bed. As my father read the words, his face showed nothing. No tears, no shouting, no crumpling of the letter. He only nodded, then re-folded the paper and slipped it back inside its envelope. He looked up at my brother leaning against the doorframe. "You've gotten tall."
When the final bell rang that day at school, I rushed outside. My sister Jennifer and I were so excited about Dad's arrival, but knew this return would not be the same. We didn't go back to our family friends' house, but rather climbed aboard our own bus that took us home. On the ride we didn't say a word to each other. As we stepped off the bus, though, the questions came pouring out of our mouths: Is he okay? What did he do? Louis went back home, I wonder what happened.
We crossed the lawn. Jennifer and I were almost in tears at the mere thought of what we would see inside the house. A broken man crying, our father an absolute wreck. Instead, we opened the door and heard my dad call out, "Is that Linda and Jennifer?" A cheerful voice laid those words, and that was more startling than a harsh entrance would have been. He bounded down the hallway, all smiles, and his face lit up when he saw us. If anyone else had been here, they would not have suspected that this was a man whose wife just left him. "You girls have gotten so tall! You and your brother - what did they put in the water?" He laughed and laughed and hugged us. I couldn't tell if he was being a good father, a good Agent, or both. When we didn't reply to anything he said, he looked at our faces. We were in more shock than he was. He knew what wasn't being said, and shrugged his shoulders. "So your mom left. Can't say I'm surprised. Oh well, she's gone."
There: That was the Agent. The Agent who helped the father through this moment. He was not going to break down in front of us, not now.
He had a month off from work. We could see the change - sad, and perhaps a little overwhelmed. Dad's job was indeed dangerous, but dodging mine fields, walking around with bulletproof body armor, flying out to missions that I know nothing about - none of it seemed as hard to him as having this personal tragedy at home.
Yet he never "took it out" on us, as my mother had feared; he never stopped being a great dad. In fact, he took over all the duties my mother once had, and he braved through them all - even that certain emotional mine field of consoling a daughter whose boyfriend has broken it off... It's not protecting the Secretary of Defense, but it's still damn precarious.
Which is why I see him as a regular dad. Children of rock stars grow up thinking there's nothing strange about their father's job or how they live or all those weird groupies outside the front door. Children of ambassadors grow up thinking there's nothing different about their mother's job of helping keep friendly relations between two countries. That's how I think. James Bond - he's just my dad.