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January 6th was the 105th anniversary of my father's birth. I neglected to mention it here because we were a bit busy having an insurrection going on that day. Plus, having no personal memories of the original occasion, I wouldn't have had much to say about that anyway.
Now fast forward 70 years, or rewind from today half of that. March 26, 2021 marks 35 years since the old man died. I wasn't there for that moment, either. It was not quite two years after me graduating from law school, and I was just past a year into being a RealBoyLawyer in faraway Rochester, under the mentorage of a nationally recognized bankruptcy expert who would himself die, much younger and suddener from a heart attack, two months later. If there was a time of in extemis for my father, I either couldn't go, or was told not to bother.
Dad had had a non-fatal heart attack in the middle of my freshman year of college, which brought about his early retirement at 62, the age I will turn this November. He immediately stopped his lifetime habit of smoking (though Mom never did), managed the condition through medication, but the years of emphysema finally caught up with him those eight years later and it was the lungs that failed in the end.
I think I flew down for the service. We got to the funeral home across the street from the church, to realize that we had very little to say about who he was or what he meant to us. The minister, who hadn't been there long and barely knew him (and me not at all), struggled to come up with words for a service.
There's a scene in one of the first Wandavision episodes where the black-and-white Paul Bettany goes off to work and asks his co-workers what, exactly, it is that they DO at this job. That was the reanimation of the trope of many 50s and 60s series where nobody in the sitcom really knew what the Father (who Knows Best, or was a Bachelor, or whatever) did for a living. I had two university degrees by then and fuckall if I knew. It was one of the many things we never bonded over. Granted, some of his work may have been defense related- I did know his company worked on the early development of radar in the 40s, bouncing signals from their Garden City plant onto the Empire State Building 30 miles away- but the only "classified" information he likely ever would have had in his briefcase would have been in the want ads from the afternoon paper.
He's also been on my mind of late as we try to make improvements around this house, ones not required by the refi but certainly inspired by the shitshow of an appraisal we got. It's clearer than ever that Eleanor got to learn from a father in ways I never did. I can barely work a screwdriver, while she's able to install electrical boxes in the bathroom. It's not that my father was unskilled in these areas- our cellar had the toolboxes and workbench that were standard 60s issue for any working man in the suburbs- but if he ever had any interest or ability in teaching me those skills, he totally abandoned the effort before my teens, when our oldest sister got married and brought him the spatially talented son he'd never had. Jean-Pierre became his go-to for helping out around the house. I would only get in the way. Any time he did deign to show me something, it would be with a minimum of instruction and an even lesser portion of patience. See how easy it is?, he'd say while showing me something the first time. There was rarely a second, and the count never got to the opposite hand.
Mom hung on in our childhood home for five years after that, with no car (his eventually went to one of Sandy's kids, since Mom was never allowed to learn to drive), limited support from friends and church, but some joy from seeing grandkids come and grow from a distance. I began dating Eleanor a couple of months after he passed; it took years of understanding and some of therapy for me to understand this rocky upbringing as well as I now do.
Father's Day is always rough. I try to focus on the father-ing of the observance rather than the father-ed memories, since I think I did better by our daughter than our father did by any of us. But even Emily has to acknowledge that her mom taught her more things about life and practical skills than I ever did or could.
But he was "a good provider." That's another of those 60s tropes that excused abusers of all shapes and methods. Nobody can deny that I've become a "good provider" a generation later, without the abuse- but I still feel I'm both missing, and missing out, on account of what I never got.
Now fast forward 70 years, or rewind from today half of that. March 26, 2021 marks 35 years since the old man died. I wasn't there for that moment, either. It was not quite two years after me graduating from law school, and I was just past a year into being a Real
Dad had had a non-fatal heart attack in the middle of my freshman year of college, which brought about his early retirement at 62, the age I will turn this November. He immediately stopped his lifetime habit of smoking (though Mom never did), managed the condition through medication, but the years of emphysema finally caught up with him those eight years later and it was the lungs that failed in the end.
I think I flew down for the service. We got to the funeral home across the street from the church, to realize that we had very little to say about who he was or what he meant to us. The minister, who hadn't been there long and barely knew him (and me not at all), struggled to come up with words for a service.
There's a scene in one of the first Wandavision episodes where the black-and-white Paul Bettany goes off to work and asks his co-workers what, exactly, it is that they DO at this job. That was the reanimation of the trope of many 50s and 60s series where nobody in the sitcom really knew what the Father (who Knows Best, or was a Bachelor, or whatever) did for a living. I had two university degrees by then and fuckall if I knew. It was one of the many things we never bonded over. Granted, some of his work may have been defense related- I did know his company worked on the early development of radar in the 40s, bouncing signals from their Garden City plant onto the Empire State Building 30 miles away- but the only "classified" information he likely ever would have had in his briefcase would have been in the want ads from the afternoon paper.
He's also been on my mind of late as we try to make improvements around this house, ones not required by the refi but certainly inspired by the shitshow of an appraisal we got. It's clearer than ever that Eleanor got to learn from a father in ways I never did. I can barely work a screwdriver, while she's able to install electrical boxes in the bathroom. It's not that my father was unskilled in these areas- our cellar had the toolboxes and workbench that were standard 60s issue for any working man in the suburbs- but if he ever had any interest or ability in teaching me those skills, he totally abandoned the effort before my teens, when our oldest sister got married and brought him the spatially talented son he'd never had. Jean-Pierre became his go-to for helping out around the house. I would only get in the way. Any time he did deign to show me something, it would be with a minimum of instruction and an even lesser portion of patience. See how easy it is?, he'd say while showing me something the first time. There was rarely a second, and the count never got to the opposite hand.
Mom hung on in our childhood home for five years after that, with no car (his eventually went to one of Sandy's kids, since Mom was never allowed to learn to drive), limited support from friends and church, but some joy from seeing grandkids come and grow from a distance. I began dating Eleanor a couple of months after he passed; it took years of understanding and some of therapy for me to understand this rocky upbringing as well as I now do.
Father's Day is always rough. I try to focus on the father-ing of the observance rather than the father-ed memories, since I think I did better by our daughter than our father did by any of us. But even Emily has to acknowledge that her mom taught her more things about life and practical skills than I ever did or could.
But he was "a good provider." That's another of those 60s tropes that excused abusers of all shapes and methods. Nobody can deny that I've become a "good provider" a generation later, without the abuse- but I still feel I'm both missing, and missing out, on account of what I never got.