Father's Day. Throughout the week I've been contemplating fathers, thinking about my relationships with them, and, well, remembering. I've had three "dads."
My birth father cut a dashing figure; I have a number of photos -- some from mom's old wedding album and some with me as a child. My last childhood memory of him came at age 5, when he in a drunken rage over impending divorce smashed our furniture and beat my mother; the police took him away, the beginning of a long period of incarcerations for, among other things, domestic violence and failure to pay child support. For the next 12 years there was nary a birthday card, a Christmas gift or any sign that I or my brother were even alive.
I was 17 when I saw him again, though he didn't recognize me (or if he did, he didn't say). I paid for my purchase and left. I was 21 when he showed up at my door drunk, in the company of a drunker friend, and asked to see my daughter. I turned him away, and told his friend that I would allow it if he returned sober.
Another 1/2 dozen years passed and then I read that his sister had passed. A wealth of feelings resurface when I read his name in the obituary and deep within me I resolved to attend the funeral and see him. I went to the funeral home, sensed curious eyes on me as I paused at the casket holding my aunt/godmother (who hadn't acknowledged me since childhood). I sought a private room and after he had paid his respects, the funeral director told him "someone" wanted to see him privately.
He was smaller than I remembered; to children, adults always seem enormous. He wasn't. I had grown taller than him, and he was thinner, grayer, more wrinkled than at my last glimpse ten years before. I felt my anger, hurt and years of wondering dissipate.
After shaking hands, we sat beside each other. He fumbled with his wallet and pulled out old photos of me, along with a handful of newspaper clippings: my wedding and engagement announcements, my 4-H award notices (over 100 of them) and miscellaneous clippings about my life since I was about ten. I was shocked, surprised. And I could accept him, though without the affection that colored my other relationships.
My uncle Roger (mom's brother) was a disabled WWII vet who lived upstairs from us with grandma. Roger was always there for everything from hanging storm windows to fixing bikes -- not just ours but for very kid in the neighborhood. He drew airplanes on the insides of empty cigar cartons, moved the lawn with an old rotary mower and clipped our immense hedges with a manual hedge clipper, an all day task at best.
In Roger's company, we went to weekly fireworks shows at Mountain Park, swam almost daily at Kingsley's Beach where Roger -- an expert diver -- would dive from the third platform (the highest) and swim underwater for the length of the beach. He raked leaves from our massive maple trees, which we burn on top of foil-wrapped potatoes and feast on, along with the fresh corn on the cob mom boiled throughout August and September.
He wasn't my dad, but he took care of us as if he was years. He suffered a brain injury in a fall when I was 22. Then his post-war issues combined with the injury to rendered him ill and incompetent, I returned the care he gave us by caring for him -- physically and legally --for some 22 years. No regrets. During the seven years that my mother was completely alone, he stepped up to the plate became not just our uncle but a kind of father figure to us.
When my mom met my stepfather, who was much older than her, our lives changed. This marvelous man was not handsome in the traditional ways, but he smiled when he laughed, and he laughed often. He had already raised two daughters (both married and gone) and a nephew he had taken in (also grown and off on his own). And here we were, me at 12 and my brother at 9, about to hit the turbulent teenage years. My new "father" didn't even blink, just took us on.
He went to work every day, came home for a family super every night, had a "little Knick" (Knickerbocker Beer) after supper before the garden tending. He could grow anything, though Big Boy tomatoes were his pride and joy. He took us on vacations, took us fishing and swimming, attended our school functions, helped me get a scholarship to college, and gave me away at my wedding (which he also paid for). Not once were my brother or I treated as anything but his own. I was proud to call him dad.
When he first became ill and had to have his leg amputated, he became an example of courage, taking time to be angry before simply accepting and beginning a hefty regimen of PT that got him up, walking, gardening, fishing and working again. Much much later, a series of strokes complicated by cancer ultimately took his life. During those terrible four years, though, I returned his care by caring for him, again using my hard-earned skills to ensure that he would want for nothing.
During that time, my birth father passed away. In the chaos that surrounded his death, I learned that he had two additional families after us, one a marriage of many years that produced three other children I had never heard of, and the other a longterm relationship with a woman so much like my mother that I was staggered, rendered speechless (and that's hard to do).
I learned that my birth father had a longstanding heart condition and a drawer full of meds prescribed but never taken -- ten years worth. I found myself, as his eldest, taking charge of so many things then, including settling the negligible estate he left behind in New Jersey.
I spoke at length with the lady (not just a woman, but a true lady) he'd been living with, finding some unexpected surprises about how much she really knew him. But she had loved him for a long time, and I was comforted to know that he had finally, in the end and with her, found in his own was peace of mind, a sense of beauty, and sobriety. That was something that didn't exist in much of his earlier life. It was good to know that I had found peace with him some years before.
Each of these three men had tremendous impact on my life, teaching me a lot about strength, love, healing and forgiveness. They helped shape my life, and for that I can only thank them.
