Dad and me at my 49th Birthday. Dad was 71.
Me and My Dad in 1947. He was 26, I was 3.I woke up thinking about Dad’s today. There aren’t many Dads in my life anymore. My Dad died in 2001 and my husband’s Dad died in 2005, and my third husband isn’t the father of any of my children. The only Dad in my life is my son.
I had a love/hate relationship with my Dad. I think that’s true for lots of people. I heard someone on the radio say it just this morning. As I look back on all I learned from him, the influences he had on me, I can see that our relationship was more positive than negative and this may be the first day in my 64 years that I’ve realized that. For most of my adult life I couldn’t see past the rages that scared and angered me. It is true that my Dad was a moody person and that rage was his weapon of choice. There was no telling what mood he would appear in when coming home from work. We kids learned to assess his mood before we would say or do anything, just in case. If the mood was bad, we would walk on egg shells, if good we could be more carefree.
Dinner was always a place to be on our best behavior as it often turned into a battlefield, especially between my Dad and my brother. My brother was picky about his food and stubborn—two qualities my Dad had little patience for. I, on the other hand, learned to clean my plate and, when not chewing, to keep my mouth shut. Actually, one major rule was to eat with your mouth closed, not an unusual rule in American households. Other rules were: Don’t sing at the table. Don’t whistle at the table. Clean your plate. No dessert without cleaning your plate. No elbows on the table. Most of these rules were common to most households in the fifties, but the consequences of breaking them may not have been as common. I recall one long night when my brother sat at the table well into the night, a victim of his stubbornness and my Dad’s conviction that his son must finish his dinner before he was allowed to leave the table. I couldn’t understand why my brother didn’t just eat the food. It didn’t occur to me that my Dad could have relented. He never, never did. I think on this night my Mother intervened. Somehow, my brother was allowed to go to bed.
There were many, many rules in our lives and many times when I was frightened of my Father and his Temper. He didn’t hit us or my Mother, though he did believe in spanking. He didn’t use a belt or a wooden spoon or any other implement other than his hand and, since it was the Fifties, my Mother used the “wait until your father gets home” threat on us. She was small and didn’t know the first thing about disciplining children. He was big, strong and knew how to spank. I wonder how many times the spankings my Mother asked him to perform were hard for him to do. I’ll never know. I wish I’d asked him when I became an adult.
Dad’s most effective weapon was his anger. It could be huge, overpowering, thunderous. As a child and young person I was frightened of him, as an adult his rages angered me. One evening, as my husband and my two little daughters visited my Dad and Mom, Dad went into a rage for a reason I’ve forgotten and picked up a dining room chair and threw it across the room. I became extremely angry and told him, as we were leaving, that we would never visit again. I believe my ultimatum had an effect on him. I don’t recall a scene like that one ever happening again. Of course, he asked for my forgiveness and I forgave him. I didn’t want to stop visiting.
And finally, somewhere in my Dad’s later years, he relaxed. He stopped being frightening, he laughed more, he showed affection more. As I think back, I believe it was around the time he retired. Could it have been that after he retired the pressure was gone? Was he one of those people who handled stress with anger? Whatever the reason, his last 20 years of life were easier for all of us.
I began by saying that my Dad’s positive influences outweighed the negative ones. For some reason I decided to emulate him. I might have chosen him, rather than my Mother, because he “put her down” often. She was an artist/singer and didn’t have the common sense that he esteemed. (I’m sure that’s exactly why he chose her. She was beautiful and vibrant and lively.) I wanted to win his admiration (and not get insulted or spanked) and so I became the good daughter, the girl who got good grades and had good sense. No matter why I chose this path, it has helped me get where I am. Perhaps I was hard-wired to be responsible, to be a leader, who knows? They say ¼ of your character is in your genes, the rest a product of your environment. If so, then my choosing to be more like Dad than Mom was important in how I turned out.
Even during the raging years my Dad was a funny and silly man. He used to come out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and his dark, wavy hair combed up into some crazy “do”, which made us all laugh. He used to imitate Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks and Milton Berle. He told jokes constantly, some that wouldn’t be politically correct these days, but were still corny and funny. He was good at it and could ALWAYS remember the punch line. He loved to fish and to bowl and to golf. He was what was called A Man’s Man. He watched football, baseball and basketball and the Friday Night Fights and I watched all of them with him, learning all the rules, because he was happy to share them with me. He tied flies for his fishing trips and let me watch and explained why he was putting this blue feather, in addition to this little red one, on this small hook. I still have some of the silver reflectors he used when he fished for salmon. One year he made my brother and me a sled; on it he had painted in script: Chris and Dan. He liked to take my Mom and us kids to the drive-in theater in the summer and made a game out of it. “Get in the back seat and close your eyes and don’t open them until we get there”, he’d say. He’d have to carry our limp, pj-clad, sleeping bodies into bed when we got home.
He wasn’t the conventional Dad of the Father’s Day cards, or at least I didn’t think of him in that way. I always had a hard time finding a Father’s Day card that fit his and my rocky relationship. He would try to do the right things, try to teach us how to fly a kite, but then get mad at the kite or us. He’d try to play board games with us and then get upset because we hadn’t “told him ALL the rules”. He took me fishing once and I caught a fish, but he never took me again. He tried to teach me to drive, but I nearly hit a stop sign and he didn’t take me out again. He did not have the patience of what we would consider a “good” Dad. But nearly everything I learned as I grew to be an adult, I learned from him and apparently, it wasn’t all bad. I say “apparently” because I have made a modest success of my life. I have had children and kept jobs for long periods of time and have many friends. People seem to like and respect me. You could say that is a testament, at least in part, to the parent I decided to emulate.
I got my wit and love of comedy and joking from him. I am tidy like he was and love organization. He was a fastidious dresser; I try to be that way, too. He sang and played the saxophone. I am musical, too. Anyone who knows my Mother will ask, “Didn’t you get your musical ability and love of music from her?” I will answer, yes, probably, but it didn’t hurt that my Dad revered those things, too. I used to have good penmanship (before arthritis), copying my Dad’s beautiful handwriting. I believe my Dad was helpful in leading me on the path of being a life-long reader of classic literature. I will never forget the thrill I experienced when he gave me his Robert Benchley book to read. I was 12, I think, and already read lots of books, but his sharing a book he loved with me, meant everything to me. Robert Benchley was a British humorist; my Dad loved humor. My Mom loved movie magazines and mysteries, but I chose to go a more serious route.
As I said, Dad tried. He especially loved mathematics and so when I struggled with a math homework problem, he would help me. The problem was that he always went on too long with his help. I felt later that he might have enjoyed being a teacher, but the temper would have gotten in his way. I love Math, too, and was always good at it. Another positive Dad-gift.
I wish I could write about my family like Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris. They make it all seem so wonderfully funny. I’m sure my childhood was funny, too, if only I could get that perspective. It wasn’t tragic, it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t sad; it was a childhood with all the emotions that entails. Yes, I was scared of this big Dad, but I loved him and I wanted to be like him in lots of ways. I hope I managed to distill the good bits, even as I absorbed some of the bad bits, too.
Okay....so....If I was going to make a Father's Day Card for my Dad right now, what would it say?
I had a love/hate relationship with my Dad. I think that’s true for lots of people. I heard someone on the radio say it just this morning. As I look back on all I learned from him, the influences he had on me, I can see that our relationship was more positive than negative and this may be the first day in my 64 years that I’ve realized that. For most of my adult life I couldn’t see past the rages that scared and angered me. It is true that my Dad was a moody person and that rage was his weapon of choice. There was no telling what mood he would appear in when coming home from work. We kids learned to assess his mood before we would say or do anything, just in case. If the mood was bad, we would walk on egg shells, if good we could be more carefree.
Dinner was always a place to be on our best behavior as it often turned into a battlefield, especially between my Dad and my brother. My brother was picky about his food and stubborn—two qualities my Dad had little patience for. I, on the other hand, learned to clean my plate and, when not chewing, to keep my mouth shut. Actually, one major rule was to eat with your mouth closed, not an unusual rule in American households. Other rules were: Don’t sing at the table. Don’t whistle at the table. Clean your plate. No dessert without cleaning your plate. No elbows on the table. Most of these rules were common to most households in the fifties, but the consequences of breaking them may not have been as common. I recall one long night when my brother sat at the table well into the night, a victim of his stubbornness and my Dad’s conviction that his son must finish his dinner before he was allowed to leave the table. I couldn’t understand why my brother didn’t just eat the food. It didn’t occur to me that my Dad could have relented. He never, never did. I think on this night my Mother intervened. Somehow, my brother was allowed to go to bed.
There were many, many rules in our lives and many times when I was frightened of my Father and his Temper. He didn’t hit us or my Mother, though he did believe in spanking. He didn’t use a belt or a wooden spoon or any other implement other than his hand and, since it was the Fifties, my Mother used the “wait until your father gets home” threat on us. She was small and didn’t know the first thing about disciplining children. He was big, strong and knew how to spank. I wonder how many times the spankings my Mother asked him to perform were hard for him to do. I’ll never know. I wish I’d asked him when I became an adult.
Dad’s most effective weapon was his anger. It could be huge, overpowering, thunderous. As a child and young person I was frightened of him, as an adult his rages angered me. One evening, as my husband and my two little daughters visited my Dad and Mom, Dad went into a rage for a reason I’ve forgotten and picked up a dining room chair and threw it across the room. I became extremely angry and told him, as we were leaving, that we would never visit again. I believe my ultimatum had an effect on him. I don’t recall a scene like that one ever happening again. Of course, he asked for my forgiveness and I forgave him. I didn’t want to stop visiting.
And finally, somewhere in my Dad’s later years, he relaxed. He stopped being frightening, he laughed more, he showed affection more. As I think back, I believe it was around the time he retired. Could it have been that after he retired the pressure was gone? Was he one of those people who handled stress with anger? Whatever the reason, his last 20 years of life were easier for all of us.
I began by saying that my Dad’s positive influences outweighed the negative ones. For some reason I decided to emulate him. I might have chosen him, rather than my Mother, because he “put her down” often. She was an artist/singer and didn’t have the common sense that he esteemed. (I’m sure that’s exactly why he chose her. She was beautiful and vibrant and lively.) I wanted to win his admiration (and not get insulted or spanked) and so I became the good daughter, the girl who got good grades and had good sense. No matter why I chose this path, it has helped me get where I am. Perhaps I was hard-wired to be responsible, to be a leader, who knows? They say ¼ of your character is in your genes, the rest a product of your environment. If so, then my choosing to be more like Dad than Mom was important in how I turned out.
Even during the raging years my Dad was a funny and silly man. He used to come out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and his dark, wavy hair combed up into some crazy “do”, which made us all laugh. He used to imitate Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks and Milton Berle. He told jokes constantly, some that wouldn’t be politically correct these days, but were still corny and funny. He was good at it and could ALWAYS remember the punch line. He loved to fish and to bowl and to golf. He was what was called A Man’s Man. He watched football, baseball and basketball and the Friday Night Fights and I watched all of them with him, learning all the rules, because he was happy to share them with me. He tied flies for his fishing trips and let me watch and explained why he was putting this blue feather, in addition to this little red one, on this small hook. I still have some of the silver reflectors he used when he fished for salmon. One year he made my brother and me a sled; on it he had painted in script: Chris and Dan. He liked to take my Mom and us kids to the drive-in theater in the summer and made a game out of it. “Get in the back seat and close your eyes and don’t open them until we get there”, he’d say. He’d have to carry our limp, pj-clad, sleeping bodies into bed when we got home.
He wasn’t the conventional Dad of the Father’s Day cards, or at least I didn’t think of him in that way. I always had a hard time finding a Father’s Day card that fit his and my rocky relationship. He would try to do the right things, try to teach us how to fly a kite, but then get mad at the kite or us. He’d try to play board games with us and then get upset because we hadn’t “told him ALL the rules”. He took me fishing once and I caught a fish, but he never took me again. He tried to teach me to drive, but I nearly hit a stop sign and he didn’t take me out again. He did not have the patience of what we would consider a “good” Dad. But nearly everything I learned as I grew to be an adult, I learned from him and apparently, it wasn’t all bad. I say “apparently” because I have made a modest success of my life. I have had children and kept jobs for long periods of time and have many friends. People seem to like and respect me. You could say that is a testament, at least in part, to the parent I decided to emulate.
I got my wit and love of comedy and joking from him. I am tidy like he was and love organization. He was a fastidious dresser; I try to be that way, too. He sang and played the saxophone. I am musical, too. Anyone who knows my Mother will ask, “Didn’t you get your musical ability and love of music from her?” I will answer, yes, probably, but it didn’t hurt that my Dad revered those things, too. I used to have good penmanship (before arthritis), copying my Dad’s beautiful handwriting. I believe my Dad was helpful in leading me on the path of being a life-long reader of classic literature. I will never forget the thrill I experienced when he gave me his Robert Benchley book to read. I was 12, I think, and already read lots of books, but his sharing a book he loved with me, meant everything to me. Robert Benchley was a British humorist; my Dad loved humor. My Mom loved movie magazines and mysteries, but I chose to go a more serious route.
As I said, Dad tried. He especially loved mathematics and so when I struggled with a math homework problem, he would help me. The problem was that he always went on too long with his help. I felt later that he might have enjoyed being a teacher, but the temper would have gotten in his way. I love Math, too, and was always good at it. Another positive Dad-gift.
I wish I could write about my family like Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris. They make it all seem so wonderfully funny. I’m sure my childhood was funny, too, if only I could get that perspective. It wasn’t tragic, it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t sad; it was a childhood with all the emotions that entails. Yes, I was scared of this big Dad, but I loved him and I wanted to be like him in lots of ways. I hope I managed to distill the good bits, even as I absorbed some of the bad bits, too.
Okay....so....If I was going to make a Father's Day Card for my Dad right now, what would it say?
To My Dad
You are dead now
and way too late,
I realize that you gave me so many gifts
I can barely count them.
Thanks, Dad. I love you. I hope you knew that.
Love Always, Your Daughter
2 comments:
Wow. It took me multiple trips to your blog to read this whole post - kids you know. I liked it very much.
I have a strange relationship with my dad too and had to just let go of the bad stuff in order to move on with my adult relationship with him. I will say this, he is a fantastic grandfather and I LOVE that about him.
I originally was going to write an open letter to Christopher about how to be the best Dad to daughters, but I realized I didn't really know how to express those thoughts...
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