If my father looked down on me yesterday, Father’s Day 2014, I think he may have had a few chuckles as he savored the irony of the situation.
Back about this time in 1954, when I was seven, my father and I observed our last celebration of Father’s Day. It happened shortly after my mother walked out on him. We lived in Denville, NJ – a rural suburb of New York City where he owned a printing business. He had left me with my aunt, my mother’s sister, until I was finished with the second grade.
Dad and I in Riverside Park near where we lived when I was a baby. I suppose both of us were quite happy, if not downright joyful, that day.
I vividly remember him showing up in the early evening with a string of cherry lolly pops for me, wishing me a happy father’s day. It was the day before I was about to leave for summer camp. Being seven, I didn’t understand a lot of the things he said that night, but I do know my aunt was furious. I was caught between the two, wanting to please my aunt and also wanting to see my dad because I hadn’t seen him in a while. He may have been drunk. What I do remember about that time was walking out of school the Friday before and wondering what was going to happen to me? The next day, I learned about camp. No one I was related to would be watching me and I was nervous. But by the time Sunday rolled around, I wasn’t in very good shape at all and the obvious tension left me quite sleepless that night. The next day, I left for camp, beginning a five-year journey of a vagabond existence with many schools, many summer camps and even more homes that nearly destroyed me.
From that point on, I do not remember observing Father’s Day with my Dad. I surely must have been with him on many of those days. He saw me every other week. Even as an adult, I didn’t even consider Father’s Day. It had little meaning for me.
And so last Sunday morning, I woke up from a dream from my own fatherhood. I had returned with the boys from a camping trip and they were sunburned and there was hell to pay.
I have no idea why that dream came about but as I woke up I realized it was father’s day. And any celebration would be minimal. When I was married, we went through the ritual of observing the day; usually lunch at a Greek restaurant after church. But it had become mechanical. And after my wife and I separated a few months before Father’s (and Mother’s) day in 2010, it too almost ceased to exist. That year neither son bothered to call me. The youngest wrote something terribly hurtful on his Facebook page. I realized it was in anger about the recent split. But to some degree, it still hurts.
The older son, perhaps realizing what the day meant through the raising of his own child, did give me a call every Father’s Day after that, though sometimes I missed his call and he left me a message on the phone. The younger, was just like me. I suppose he was unaware of the day, or only gave it a passing thought.
I did get a nice call from the oldest and his daughter. And I decided to do something about the youngest, texting him and asking him to call me. He did, and I feel much better about the relationship. We talked about a few things that needed to be said and he agreed to come to my wedding in December. And so I ended the day not nearly as depressed as it began, but also thinking how ironic it was.
I started to think about my father. During his semi-monthly visits, he always endeavored to give me a new experience. We would go to different parks and amusement parks. Places that no longer exist in New Jersey still exist in my heart because of him. Once he hired a pilot to take me up in a small aircraft. It was the first time I flew. In the summer of 1961, he took me to several games at Yankee Stadium. That was the year that Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle put on that incredible home run race and my memories of those days remain vivid. He wanted to buy the “good” seats, but I insisted on sitting in the right-field bleachers so I could be near Maris, my idol. It meant a lot to me. A few years ago, I even bought a Jersey with his number on it. It is both a tribute to my boyhood hero and to the man that helped me live that part of history.
He also took me with him to the civil rights march on Washington. I was 11, and much of what I remember was sitting on a charted bus with his fellow union members. The day was hot and long. I found the speeches boring and by the time Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech, I was beginning to nod. But I did understand that the lives of many minorities were very unfair.
His idea of church was to go out fishing in the ocean. And as I reached my high school years, we shared many a day there. The night before we would roast a chicken to take with us, always with stuffing which I loved. We would play cards the night before and on the boat, I loved to share those moments with him as he told stories of his father, “Pops” who I hardly knew. Pops was senile and died when I was six. It happened just before my parents separated and I wonder if that was a factor. Pops was the only grandparent I ever knew as the others had died before my birth.
Dad was a taxi driver sometime during the depression and was in a horrible accident. His lost part of his left forearm and it was fused into a permanent position where he was able to wear a sling. Yet with me, that didn’t stop us having a game of catch. He would block the ball with the glove in his left hand, then pick it up with his good arm and throw it back. We sometimes went to the lake and skipped stones during difficult times and simply talked about what was going on.
Once, we went for a walk in the woods and he told me that when I couldn’t do something for myself, to find a tool. It was something I never forgot. He also talked about not being able to see the forest for the trees.
There was a time when I was about 17 and working weekends as an usher at the local move theater. He suddenly showed up, paying for admission, to talk to me about an argument I had with my mother. I think it was about me telling school officials she drank too much. It was a long trip, taking the subway, tubes and train from Manhattan where he lived. It was something I needed, not because the problem with my mother was anything I couldn’t handle, but because I knew he loved me and cared about me.
As an alcoholic, he developed liver disease. It killed him after about 8 years. One weekend when I was visiting him, I had food poisoning. He was throwing up green bile. We teased each other saying I was puking out my butt and he was shitting out of his face.
I was in the Army when he died. I came home for the final days and visited him several times. He was senile and didn’t recognize me. And I felt a sadness that I would learn no more from this wonderful teacher.
My thoughts about him could be summed up by the fact that he did much with what little he had. I hope someday my kids will feel the same way about me.
