(OK, so it's a crappy picture. What can I say? I'm old, and this was the quality of photographs when I was a little kid. Wait & see what your iPhone photos look like compared to the holograms of the future. But I digress.)
Regardless of the picture quality (or lack thereof), it's not a very flattering photograph. It is, however, accurate. My dad? Not a "fun guy." Truth be told, he was a cranky alcoholic who was emotionally abusive to his wife (my mother) and unavailable to his children. On Christmas, he would wake up first thing in the morning and head straight for the basement where he would turn on his "Hi-Fi", open his first beer of the day and camp out. We kids opened our presents upstairs, to the talents of Benny Goodman and Les Brown creeping through the floorboards. We knew better than to go into the basement, especially on Christmas.
All of us kids knew the rules. Don't bother Dad if any of the following things are true: it's after 5pm; he's already had a beer, it's a holiday. -- The rest of the time he was a pretty swell guy, basically from 9-5 on weekends.
But here's the thing: I loved my dad. A lot. Probably a lot more than he would have deserved, if evaluated objectively on paper, if such a thing is even possible.
Beyond that, I admired him. It's not a stretch to say he was a Mentor in my life.
It has been one year since he died, of Alzheimer's disease, at the age of 92 years. (Of course, it had been quite some time before he died since he was the "Dad" I remembered, robbed of his brilliance & wit by the Alzheimer's.) As is perhaps inevitable for these sorts of morbid anniversaries, I find myself reflecting on my life with Dad. In particular, I wonder how I have come to regard him with almost mythical status and reverence, when in truth he was probably a near-total asshole to most of his friends and acquaintances for most of his life.
My sister and I (since we are the only two left) tend to blame everything on the Alcoholism, so maybe that's how I've tidied up all his negative qualities: put them in the big bag with the "A" on the front (sorry, Hester, not this time) and throw it in the closet.
Because the assembly of Dad's remaining qualities is godlike: a self-made millionaire genius who lived simply and taught his daughter to be a courteous, responsible, contributing member of society. He valued integrity, honesty, humility. He supported my athletic endeavors (which I likely pursued as much in solicitation of his favor as for their own sake), regardless of my skill level or fickle choice of sport: swimming, track, gymnastics, ... the specifics didn't matter. It was the effort that mattered. Books over TV. A walk around the block every night before turning in.
I also remember my dad as a sea of calm in my otherwise anxiety-filled world. I'll save my mother's dissection for another time, but suffice it to say that she was a very nervous person. As a married woman now myself, I look back and wonder how she ever managed to raise four children, essentially on her own, while remaining married to a man who spent at least the first ten years of their marriage insulting and belittling her, yet still expecting her to share a bed at the end of the day; it makes my skin crawl to think of myself in her shoes. Nevertheless, I recall "mother" as a shrieking bundle of nerves with a short temper.
One day when I was about 8 years old, my older sister accidentally stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake as she was pulling into the driveway, and her Camaro sheared the porch right off the side of the house. My dad & I hurried outside, and my dad just calmly laughed at the chaos (after all, no one was hurt). We were all grateful Mom wasn't home.
Another example:
When I was about 12 years old, I started getting allergy shots for my hay fever. I went to the doctor's office three times a week to get my little poke in the arm, and every time, without fail, I would have a terrible reaction to the shot: I ended up lying across the sofa in the doctor's waiting room, my head on my mother's lap, sweating and shivering and blooming with hives, as my mother fretfully wiped my brow. Finally, after about an hour, the nausea would pass and we could go home.
One day, my mother couldn't take me to get my shot, so my dad took me instead. As I walked back to the sofa after getting my shot, preparing for the onslaught of the next hour's horror, Dad stood up and said, "OK, are you ready to go home?" I was stunned into silence and, afraid to contradict my father, mutely nodded. On the walk home (Dad walked everywhere), he talked about this and that and not once did he ask me how I was feeling. I remember feeling flush and a little itchy but nothing like what I went through with my mom. When we arrived home ten minutes later, I was fine. -- This was a magic trick of the highest caliber. I got my shot, but I didn't get sick. How did he do that?
Maybe that was the day I decided to become my dad. I don't really know when it happened. But I am him, or as close to him as I can possibly be. Every day, I see something of him in my world: I regale in the glory of the human body as I run through the woods or cut through the water at the YMCA. I'd rather read a book than watch TV. I get goosebumps when I hear really good music. I can't always explain why I think a college education is important for its own sake. I get really pissed off when the tool bench is messy or my favorite hammer isn't where it belongs.
I am also the dark side of my father: I am sullen and antisocial. I am an addict. I do not suffer fools gladly. -- Of course, because I am my father's daughter, I don't really think too harshly of any of these traits.
In the harshest light of hindsight, though, I have to confess that I squandered my limited time on this earth as might have been better spent with my father. Some of that is a consequence of our age difference: by the time I was 30, he was 75. By the time I was 35 and just starting to figure out the conversations I should be having with him, the shadow of dementia was already upon him.
I have so many things I want to ask him now. So many things I want to discuss with him. I want to know what he thinks of the Lance Armstrong scandal. And the continuing crisis in Afghanistan. And whether he's proud of the life he helped me make for myself, so very far away from where I was born.
In the end, I guess I have to trust the tools he gave me to help me answer these questions for myself. And though he would chastise me for my sentimentality, I have to say, "I still miss you, Dad. And I always will."
