Paternal Ponderings

Remembrances of a mixed bag...

Jun 10, 2023

My father was born on this day, 96 years ago, two months ahead of his due date. If modern psychology is correct, the trauma from that early, tumultuous birth, coupled with 40 days spent in an incubator hovering between life and death, surely imprinted him in ways he was unaware of. If run-of-the-mill births are traumatizing to an infant as various experts suggest, a premature delivery would surely be fraught with PTSD potential.

My sister recently sent me this picture of our father, taken on Thanksgiving, poised over the turkey and ready to carve. Immediately, I began to giggle. It was a stomach-tickling freeform laughing spell that elevates the soul and delights the heart. Someone had captured him the afternoon of Thanksgiving 1991 in a silly, borderline compromising pose as he hunched over the holiday bird clutching an electric knife and a throwing a look (as only he could give) of mock sternness and bemusement. When the laughter subsided, I felt the conflict from the affection the photograph dislodged as it collided with the jagged terrain of resentment and the ominous cloud of that intangible known as the unresolved.

My father was charismatic, funny, astonishingly intelligent, and one of the most self-absorbed and destructive people I’ve ever known. He did not possess the makings of a father, for a father, by definition, meets the needs of the children he’s raising. That’s not to imply my formative years with him were all bad. Life, by definition is a tapestry of experiences that leave a tapestry of imprints on the soul. If a movie were ever made about him, the only thespian who could have captured my father’s comedic mania would have been Robin Williams. My father would split our sides with laughter as easily as he ruptured our trust. Growing up under his roof (make that roofs, because we moved often), the laughter and the tumult came in uneven, successive turns.

The conflicts between my father and I stemmed from two of the most angst-inducing issues to plague the western hemisphere: fat and money. It was the 70’s and our desperate quest to look more socially acceptable involved strict diets and self-loathing. Mornings began with a single soft-boiled egg over a piece of Melba toast and devolved from there. My only refuge: cold bottles of Tab, which tasted like the elixir of the gods on days I was dieting. My father appointed himself both a prison warden and crack dealer where food was concerned, announcing that I’d be starting a 900 calorie-a-day diet with him Monday morning. By Thursday, he’d be luring me to the pantry for a clandestine potato chip binge.

He was equally capricious with money, spending it as fast as it came in (faster, actually), complaining incessantly that my three siblings and I incurred overwhelming expenses. Since there was never enough money to be had in his voracious world, he leaned on my mother, the four of us, and any acquaintance he could corner with a sob story to fill in the financial gaps. After my father mismanaged the family business into lawsuit-fueled oblivion when I was 12, the ensuing years were a blur of yearly moves, outrunning sheriff summons,’ pawned wedding rings, third mortgages, and raided college funds set up by well-meaning relatives who were taken in by the woe-is-me yarns he spun so expertly. He borrowed money from friends and acquaintances and fumed when they expected to be repaid. On those lucky occasions when he scored, the money evaporated into his appetite for luxury: cars, fine dining, and business travel, the latter of which usually involved visits to Florida and South American during winter months.

My first summer job at age 14 was a five-day-a-week babysitting gig of long hours and lousy pay (75 cents an hour, low even by 1979 standards) but eight weeks later, I’d earned enough money to buy my school wardrobe and felt proud and empowered because of it. Until he summoned me into his office to announce he would need the entire sum for household expenses. “Don’t look shocked,” he said coldly as I stood there in disbelief. “You cost me a lot of money.” This wasn’t a new move from his playbook. My mother admitted to me one afternoon while we sat in her station wagon, waiting our turn in line at the bank drive-up window, that I used to have an account there started by one of my aunts, who gifted me with a few savings bonds when I was born. “But we had to use them a few years later…when we were in a dry spell,” she explained with a smile and a peculiar lack of remorse.

With no income coming in after the family business perished, my mother went to work to support the family while father started a second career selling life insurance – from his home office – an essential ingredient for his sleep-till-10 a.m. lifestyle. Weekday mornings began groggily at 8 a.m. when my mother would perch beside him on the edge of the bed, dressed like Jane Fonda’s character in 9 to 5: attired in a neatly pressed calf-length skirt and a long-sleeved button-down blouse that was tucked in and neatly belted. She’d been up since 6 a.m., dressing for work, getting the house ready for the day, reading Bible passages. Her impeccable discipline kept the ship from sinking entirely. Silently she would administer my father’s morning back rub, preferably with a little Ben Gay, as he lay motionless on his stomach. After 20-minutes, he’d mutter a grunt of thanks and then drift back to sleep until hunger pangs or a bathroom call roused him.

Such insanity kept building for the next 20 years until the arrival of Alzheimer’s disease and its slowly drawn out reverse-life-review. Symptoms began when my father was in his early ‘70’s with episodes of forgetfulness, and they slowly snowballed into cognitive and physical decline. There were surprising upsides: he became more childlike and affectionate, and once he was stripped of his ability to use credit cards and make bank withdrawals, my mother was, at long last, able to achieve what had eluded her for so many years: financial stability. Much of the 12 years of caretaking was burdensome to us, but it was actually easier to live with than navigating the trail of landmines his former self was forever planting in our lives.

My father died a decade ago with his final years spent wordless in a nursing home bed, his eyes focused on some far-off place where his birth trauma and the crisis-filled life that ensued were no longer relevant. The walking-talking-animated father I knew had been gone so long, I had forgotten all about his mastery with the electric knife, and the way he would render a platter of uniformly thin slices of turkey breast with precision and grace. When he was focused on something he was intently interested in, the results were masterful. And he knew it – humming merrily to one of Bach’s Sonata’s playing in the background as he presented the fruits of his labor to the crowd gathered at the dining room table.

And if I’m going to give a full and proper account of our time together, I can also remember some of his better qualities. For all his instability, he was imbued with generous amounts of kindness and mirth. My friends were magnetically drawn to him, and so was I. Perhaps because he was easy to talk to, and he never judged. I could bring any topic to the table and my father would listen intently, take a deep breath, and offer his interpretation of the situation, with humor if it was called for, and on other occasions with grave seriousness. It’s one of the things I miss the most about him: being able to go to him with anything as he’d absorb every syllable and offer insightful, thoughtful feedback. It was an area in life where he gave freely, and it was an important one.

And still, gazing at the image of my father 31 Thanksgivings ago sent me into familiar territory: juggling the opposites of love and resentment like two hot potatoes. The colorful details in the 4x6 photo bring a smile to my face: the way my mother’s apron dangles over his chest like a gaudy necklace; the brandy snifter filled with Seagram’s and ice, always within easy reach of the carving station; the Dallas Cowboys playing on the tiny kitchen television as he’s about to pore all his attention into turkey-carving, but not before throwing a signature zany look to the camera.

I reprimand myself for not being free of the resentment. And then remind myself of the years spent in denial of what an asylum our home was – there was simply no space for honest assessment during the first half of my life. Perhaps that’s why I engage in it so freely now.

Faults are an inescapable part of the human experience. But at what point does the cache tilt from normal to mountainous, and how does one deal with a heaping mess of them in lieu of growing up happy and secure? I’ve had many years now to examine the fallout from being his daughter. Sometimes, my mind is worn threadbare from litigating the details on a loop in my brain. On other occasions, I simply feel raw emotion without analysis. My tears aren’t tied to specifics, but shadowy overwhelm that disappears as quickly as it can engulf me. It’s the nature of feelings, I suppose.

But ultimately, the spontaneous sight of my father in full Robin Williams-mode did me a favor. It loosened my grip on the anger. Life after a bad childhood is walking the balance between the vacant trance of denial and bearing the stigmata of bitterness. Thanks to an unexpected photographic reminder, I’m finding the task a little easier.