Profile Essay
Angela Fields
Profile Essay
10/28/2016
English
2280
As we sat around playing hearts, the queen of spades is laid over a stack of two clubs seemingly absently by a man trying to have his turn squeak by unnoticed, as the conversation about politics keeps most of the other players’ attention. The last player finishing her comment about Trump, slides her low club towards the other cards, indicating hers to be the lowest of all. Jamie, my boyfriend, still laughing about what his mother had said, cuts the laugh short, when he realizes he is the victor of the trick and sees it contains the highest cost card.
“Who laid the queen!?” he exclaims, and the man brings up his hand laying his thumb to the tip of his nose and wiggling his fingers back, making a sputtering trumpet sound. “Well, I guess I had that coming,” Jamie concedes, knowing he had done the very same thing to the man just a few games earlier.
The man’s name is Clive Oliver, a British/Canadian/American. He is somewhat tall and lanky that even when his mustache has been trimmed off, you can get the impression it is still there, with its ghost whiskers shimmying to and fro or forward as he expresses himself nearly entirely with this mouth. Higher on his aged face of 71, rests large glasses, that give his eyes the bugged-out appearance you see in a stamp-collector or model builder behind a magnifying glass. Normally clad in a long-sleeved collared shirt, belted jeans, a sun or western style hat if outdoors (depending on the occasion), and dark colored sneakers. He was born in Birmingham, England and remained there through college at the University of Manchester graduating with a degree in BS, which he says sounds great but is now known as a BSC or bachelor of chemical science. After graduating he “migrated” to Canada to work for Dow Chemical and later, Chevron, after getting a masters, sometime in between at the University of Missouri in Engineering Management. While working for Chevron he was asked to go on loan assignment in Saudi Arabia for Aramco. You see, Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are the second largest in the world. However, they didn’t have the ability to refine it until about the 20 to 30s when they began to bring in outside scientists and engineers, like Clive which was in the 70s, that they then developed the means to make that their main export, making them the largest exporter of petroleum in the world. But what fascinates me about Clive is the various places he has both lived and traveled. When I asked him to write down a list it covered 16 states and 37 countries and that's just what he could list off the top of his head.
Earlier, when I arrived for dinner, I asked his grandchildren a few questions about Clive. The first was Jasmine, an anime enthusiast after my own heart, on this occasion sporting a t-shirt of the many we both enjoy. She has large eyes and sketched features making her almost appear as the animated characters we both adore, which may be why I like her so much. She paused a moment when I asked her for her fondest memory of Clive responding,
“Once when I called and Grandpa answered, he pretended to be Misha (the family dog),” she giggles at the thought and goes to help Norma, Clive's wife, Jamie’s mother set the table for dinner. We sit around to enjoy the grilled chicken, potatoes and broccoli, occasionally hearing Clive's hearing aid squeak with every chew.
I then ask Ky the youngest of the three grandchildren, only 8 years old, what he enjoys doing most with Clive and he says, playing games. I ask him what they play and he tells me Sheriff and Simpsons Monopoly. This leads me to ask him what piece Clive likes to use when playing Monopoly, because it is in my experience, the piece selected tells a lot about a person. Ky responds, after a moment thinking, that Clive likes to play with the mailman or sometimes the 3-eyed fish. And somehow, I correlate this answer to knowing him as being a big mystery book reader and watcher. It all makes perfect sense to me. At another point, I recalled talking to Jamie about the games he had played with Clive and he recounted an instance of playing Monopoly, as well, back when Clive had been much more competitive. When they had played, Jamie remembered him splatter his fake money all over the board after landing on Jamie’s Park place with a hotel build on it. I later asked Jamie what piece Clive would insist on, in the original Monopoly game and he told me, the race car, again making perfect sense when I thought about Clive’s beautiful yellow Corvette.
During the game of hearts, I asked Clive and Norma when they had gotten married and he told me without hesitation, which I knew scored him bookoo points, March 26, 1987. They told me they had been married twice, the first time in Bahrain and then again in Silverthorne, Colorado where he says they, “swore at each other.” Clive had met Norma through one of the daughters he had with his first wife, Jill, and Jamie’s sister Julia, both had been best friends and happen to live on the “American colony” as I am calling it. Norma had decided to divorce Jamie’s father, CJ and in a muddle of houses, visas, and childhood interactions they had been wed. At one point Chevron merged with other companies causing all loan assignments to take a decrease in pay by 30%, Clive's fell under this list. This fact and the one that the children had grown to an age which made going to school on the compound an impossibility, the now joined families decided it time to settle back in the states. It just so happened to be here, in Utah, where both Jamie and Julia went to college and Julia having their only grandchildren.
Though you don't need to talk to the pair long, to see that they are still very much in love, it is evident everywhere from the regularly used camper that sits outside, just big enough for the two of them, to the way they prepare and clean up dinner. You can find Clive downstairs napping in the rec room, while the house fills with smells from the meals Norma prepares, coming up on time, almost if a bell had rung when it was time to eat. After the meal reduces in portion and appearance without a word of complaint Clive will rinse and wash the dishes, putting the kitchen back in order. Like ying and yang they complement each other perfectly. I likewise asked Norma her fondest memory of Clive and even after 29 years, her response was right out of a fairy tale; their first kiss. Though she did note that had Clive had his “foliage,” as he calls it (his mustache), she is unsure that would have been the memory she would answer with. Clive would puff out a revealing scuff of air, showing off again his phantom whiskers, where even in its absence you can make out the thick British accent.
Through games and dinners do not only show how this man is first and foremost a family man, it is shown in the words that his family uses to describe him, if each is only given one: Generous, Sensitive, Silly, Dedicated, and Old (of course this last one came from the 8-year-old who justified it by saying he is older that his mom, which by him is 34 [she is 43]). He would leave blankets at the end of the children's beds and make them the best frozen peas and fish sticks he could manage if the misses were away when they were hungry. He will play you an invisible violin whenever you are in need to hear one and build you a home, from the ground up, with only moderate grumbles to go with the difficult work.
Though Clive is highly intelligent, Jamie recalls a time that he had gotten him a large model airplane, that took years to assemble. I wasn’t able to gather if this was because the master engineer struggled with it or because he frequently lost interest but I found either idea amusing, since when asked what other career choice Clive would have pursued, his answer was a pilot. Due to his poor eyesight, it had never been a viable option though and I have to wonder what other crooked or destined path around the globe that would have taken him. Though neither he nor I, will ever know the answer to that one, I am as sure as I know he is, that he couldn’t be happier anywhere else.