I was mad at my dad most of my life. That’s not honorable, I know, but there it is. Not angry, ready-to-lash-out mad, just frustrated mad, hurtful mad. He had something I wanted, but he held it back, out of reach. I tugged. But he held strong.
We fought a cold war that lasted decades. I built up an arsenal of emotions, readied for when he might blink. The front he established never moved. Never wavered. I battled on, though, even through family trials and tragedies.
Mom
My mom and dad finally split after she died. I had always seen them as one and the same, inseparable. As I grew older, though, they began to separate into their own. I loved how my mom unfolded before me in my mind. Like a unique and well-crafted indie film—nothing like it before or since.
My dad continued on. Unchanging. A still target even in the storms that blew through our family. And my emotional arsenal continued to grow. A hidden bunker filled with all that he didn’t do with me, or share with me, or teach me—packed tight and high and deep and wide. I eventually began to lose track of what I’d stockpiled as it all mixed and merged and muddled together. It became a graveyard of hurt. My dad ever quiet, ever determined, eyes forward, as if no battle even existed. I didn’t understand why he chose to be so distant and uninterested.
My mom passed away a few days after her 40th birthday. After six weeks in the hospital full of seizures and strokes and drugs, she was permitted a brief trip home. They called my father with the good news.
Fifteen minutes later they called again. She was in a coma.
Unimaginable. Spirits raised high then shattered on the ground. I wasn’t there to see him standing in the corner of our old house by the glass-covered cabinets, holding that old black phone with its long curly cord dangling all the way to the floor—my mom unresponsive an hour’s drive away. I’m sure he stood there frozen. In shock. Already feeling her fall away from him.
That afternoon we all stood there, the four of us—my sister, brother, dad, and me—staring at her laying in a hospital bed in that little glass room. Motionless. Pale. Only the machine breathing. The monitor registering life where there wasn’t any.
That was the moment they began to separate. They had no choice. I didn’t either. My dad’s journey began—mourning and coping, spiraling down and up and up and down again. Grasping for a life so recently there.
My dad and I had exactly one conversation about my mom during her illness—a phone call a few days before she died. His words weakened and tortured, his strength arrested and powerless. We never had another conversation about her. It was there, but it wasn’t. It happened, but it didn’t. I wanted to know what he was thinking, what he felt, missed, regretted. That’s difficult to know without a conversation.
Baseball
The summer after my first year of college my friend Phil and I decided to go to an open tryout for the Cincinnati Reds. I was playing ball for the junior college I attended. My dad had coached me throughout most of my little league years, teaching me everything I knew about the game. On my way out the door to the tryout, my dad, sitting in that same musty, thread-barren brown chair he’d sat in for ten years, shoved a knife into me.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“With Phil, to a Reds tryout.”
He knew I loved this game. He knew how good I was. The trophies proved it, standing tall and proud on the shelf just a few feet from where he sat. My dad knew the drive I had as an athlete. We both knew I didn’t have a chance of being chosen, but I had to try. The child-like dream he helped forge in me began welling up inside. I felt his encouragement coming. “Good luck!” or “Have fun!” Or maybe “Remember to keep your glove down.”
He didn’t see it that way.
“Why don’t you just play softball.”
That was it. Nothing more. He gave his attention back to himself and the TV—not even allowing me a chance to respond. I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. After a few seconds of staring at him staring at the TV, I walked out the door.
Those were the most crushing words my dad ever said to me. If anything brought us together throughout our lives it was baseball. It now drove us apart.
I didn’t know this man. I wondered if he knew me.
The force of his words shoved me back. And us apart. The words and image of him sitting in that tattered brown chair near the front door have survived. Like a movie where a scene betrays the storyline, I wondered if this was his awkward way of protecting me, of fearing for me. Or maybe fearing for himself, not wanting to be reminded of his own failures. Or fearing I may succeed where he wasn’t able to. But of course, no conversation, just the wound.
Fishing
I tried starting the conversations, the relationship I so craved, daring to force him into being the father I needed him to be. He pushed back. “Not now, John.” “Maybe later.” Or just that stern look that he knew would turn me away.
I fished a lot growing up, even though I wasn’t very good at it. Casting for hours at a time, catching little, usually nothing. I didn’t care. And there were always friends that tagged along, biking down to the creek that ran through our town, or to one of the ponds in the city park.
On a warm Saturday afternoon, the summer before my senior year in high school, I desperately wanted to go fishing, so I asked my dad. I still feel the craving I had for him that day, to be close to him. “Not now, John.” And again. “John, no.” And again. And again. And again. I wanted to go, and I wanted him to go with me.
Somehow, I won the battle of wills that day.
I remember sitting close to him on the bank of the pond. No bites, just sitting. The water still. My dad flicking cigarette ashes onto the rocks around him, always looking the other way as if there was something more important away from us, away from me. I remember feeling sad. Hurt. I don’t remember the drive to the park, casting, catching anything, or the drive home. Just the sadness. Wondering why he didn’t want to be with me.
Raging Bull
Raging Bull hit the theaters in 1980, the year I graduated from high school. I must have asked my dad half-a-dozen times to go with me. I didn’t beg, but I was relentless. I wanted his closeness. And what better way for a father and son to connect than watching a movie about guys beating the crap out of each other. This had to work, I thought. This would change things.
It was uncomfortable, sitting in that darkened theater with just my dad. But it was kind of cool. A new experience and a chance to connect. I’m certain he was just as uncomfortable, but maybe bored as well. Maybe indifferent. We sat quietly. We did that well, especially together. I was happy, though, glad that I had persisted, but wishing I didn’t have to. I focused as much on feeling my dad next to me as I did on the movie.
Becoming
I had been, for most of my life, mad at my dad for not being the father I needed him to be, for not being the man I wanted to become. The man of few words, of even fewer conversations, allowed relationships no deeper than a nick on the back of his hand—no one any deeper. Even I had been fended off as if a brief acquaintance.
After 43 years my dad and I finally split, separated. And true to my dad, without him saying a word.
I did feel his love. I knew it was there. He never said it, only wrote it once a year on the Christmas cards he placed on the tree for each of us kids, with a few dollars tucked inside to make sure we heard him. And I saw the compassion in his eyes. I witnessed it at times, especially with those less fortunate than us, which weren’t many. Most of those moments went unnoticed—they were private, solely for him, uncomfortable with any attention that might follow.
Before he passed away, I watched my father finally enter into a joy-filled life when it seemed so late. He became fun-loving and free. I was often embarrassed by his behavior in those last years. He wasn’t. He was simply, joyfully, reaping the rewards of the life he had lived, no matter how hard, how heart-broken, how quiet it was.
There was much to admire about my dad. And, like most boys, my dad was, in fact, my hero. But at a distance. An unreachable man. He’s now back where he should be, one with my mom. Ever distant. Ever quiet.
My dad did the very best he could every moment of his life. But I was looking for something more. I was looking for perfection. And a relationship. But I missed it. Missed just being his son. Next to him. Quietly. Comfortably.
Some thirty years earlier that fishing pond reflected the lives of a father and his son. One already the man he was meant to be, the other becoming the one he was meant to be—with a lifetime of hurts and regrets and mistakes beautifully woven in. Just like his father.
What was your relationship like with your father? Did you expect perfection? Did you get it? If you were to write your own short story that reflected your relationship with your father, what stories would you tell? Does your wife understand the relationship you had with your father? If your father is still alive, have you told him what you appreciated about him, what you needed from him but maybe missed?
***
