I've read these stories of Patti's before, and as before, it struck me again today how we have another thing in common (besides that her birthday is Aug. 16: same as Elvis; and mine is Aug. 17: same as Mae West): her father died of heart disease at the age of 53; my father died of heart disease three months shy of 53. That, however, is where the similarity in our stories about our fathers ends. From Patti's description of her father, he was kind, thoughtful ("the best breakfast cooker in the house," maker of monogrammed pancakes) and had a "pixie sense of humor." As far as I could tell my father had no sense of humor whatsoever.
Dad was a big man, about 6'1" tall with a barrel chest. He had played semi-pro football before he and my mother were married, a marriage for which she was always grateful (she told me so herself) since I was already on the way. My mother gave birth to five children from 1947 to 1954, and I think we were just too much for my father, who was the sole breadwinner until we were in high school. My mother didn't learn to drive until he died, so he also did the grocery shopping while she stayed home with us. His only other household duty, as I recall, was yelling a lot and smacking us regularly.
In her essay Patti ponders what her father might be like now, and wonders if she would adore him less now that she is old enough to see things about him as an adult that she wouldn't like. "Does my adoration depend on his loss?" she asks. For me, it is the opposite: I wonder if I would have loved my father more now.
One of the best memories I have of my father was Christmas 1972. I was 25 years old and had been married for nearly three years. Christmas had always been the best time to be with Dad, even when we were little (despite being yelled at and made to feel like a clumsy oaf when I dropped my best present of 1958--my very own camera--as if I didn't feel bad enough already). I like to think it was the generosity he wanted to show throughout the other 11 months of the year that was condensed into what certainly was for my sister, my three brothers and me the most wonderful time of the year.
About the year I turned 12 my mother started encouraging us to write down what we wanted for Christmas. I made it as easy as I could for Santa to bring just the right stitched-down pleated skirt and matching Villager sweater by helpfully including the page and item numbers from the Sears catalog. The list was a modest one, with perhaps a half-dozen items on it, nothing too expensive, and what do you know! On Christmas morning, everything on my list was waiting for me under the tree! My siblings were equally blessed, except for a few of the things on the bottom of my sister's rather lengthy list (the next year she put her "must-haves" at the top). It took my parents the next 11 months, or perhaps longer, to pay off the Sears bill.
In 1972 I had no list. It was enough just to be in the bosom of my family, having spent the first two Christmases of my married life without sufficient funds for two round-trip tickets from Virginia to Memphis for a not-so-white Christmas with my wacky siblings, my mother and my now-mellowing father. The highlight of the first day was evening cocktails with my parents. Mom and Dad were not drinkers while we were growing up so it was an especially rare occasion and an increasingly happy one as the evening wore on. I don't think I ever saw Dad laugh as much as he did that night. I felt all grown up, an adult at last, a peer of my father instead of the brat who couldn't seem to do anything to please him. He didn't live to enjoy Christmas 1973.
So I am left to ponder what life with father would have been like after that. My mother says my coming out as a lesbian would have been very difficult for him, so perhaps it's best that he didn't make it to 1981. He would have been 88 this past July, but I doubt he would have lasted that long. My mother battled cancer for six years and died in 1999 at a too-young 77.
I was angry with my father for many years for the way he treated me as a child, blaming him for all the qualities in myself that I abhored. But I finally gave that up in 1995 with the help of a great weekend workshop during which I wrote him a letter of forgiveness. These days I only wish he had been around long enough to see his granddaughter, who is now 31, and maybe his great-grandson, who's probably going to be a big man like my dad and my brothers. Dad would have enjoyed giving him a football for Christmas.
Happy Holidays to all from St. Augustine, Florida.
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