This will be an extremely personal entry. On October 20th, 1984, I went to my psych 100 class. The TA was a nice person but a weak teacher. At the beginning of class, she gave me a note that I should call my sister at the given number. This was odd. Although Lisa and I have never been close, we were about as close at that time as we ever would be. Regardless, she had never gone out of her way to call me.
The news was obvious (I knew that phone prefix, and remember, this was nearly 20 years before cell phones were common), but I rushed to my room, called her, and found out that our father died from a heart attack that afternoon. I fell apart. of course. I am a highly emotional being. My odious room mate chose that time to come home. I’ll never forgive him for invading that moment in my life. I can go on about him for hours, as he was the Reagan administration version of a trumper. Anyway, after running around half of Allen Hall, losing my mind, I headed home on the bus. Oh my Universe, I sobbed without shame for three straight hours.
This was my first funeral for a close family member. Jewish funerals are an enormous burden for surviving loved ones. We were never devout hebes, but we did have the funeral within 24 hours, as dictated by tradition. I remained a pitiful mess that whole time. His boss, Tony, delivered a powerful eulogy, which I still occasionally read over.
After 36 years, I think I can accurately say that no event has had a more profound impact on my life. I let it fester at times, behaving self-indulgently. I was already on my way to a drinking problem, but I let that grow and grow. The event influenced lots of later decisions, such as enlisting in the service, public service as a profession (I was never going to be a physician like him, but he was greatly driven by service to humanity), a desire to write, keeping my narcissistic, odious biological father out of my life, trying (not always succeeding) to be what I could only guess would be a proper son to him. Three decades later, I have no idea if he would have been proud or scornful of me for my mediocrity or my (ahem) baser tendencies. I remember taking a girlfriend to see Amadeus a few months after his death. Maestro Saliere’s fixation on his own non-success stuck with me a life long fear of failure.
The most important way it affected me was in my role as a father. Without reservation, what I am most proud of is being my daughter’s father. My father’s persona was always present (he truly was bigger than life in his personality and accomplishments). He was, however, seldom available for Dad/Son time. He was a member of the WWII generation, and although he was an affectionate father, he had work and ceded much of the job of parenting to my Mother.
This was not going to be the case with my daughter A. No matter how long my days as an AP were, for example, I was always home to make dinner, give her a bath, and read to her before tucking her in. We regularly went for walks, rides, watched airplanes land at O’Hare, shopped, played miniature golf, etc, and talked.
She’s now thirteen. Yes, I am biased. But seriously, she has about 50 IQ points on me, scored higher on the verbal portions of the ACT in 7th grade than I hit my Junior year of high school, is more funny than I am, and has insights that often dwarf my own. She is also deeply caring, profoundly sensitive and so…….for want of a better word, GOOD. If I would have realized 30 years ago that I was going to love fatherhood so much, I would have made a herd o’ babies. Oh well, once time has passed, it is gone. No do-overs or times-out.
This all has stayed with me throughout my illness two years ago, which really almost killed me. The cardiac surgeon who went into my chest to fit me with a new mitral valve told my wife I had a 50-50 chance of survival. I later was enormously relieved that I was in a coma at the time. To be polite, if I was awake and knew that my life was about to be decided by a coin flip, my wife and daughter would have seen what Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once called, “a very human performance.”
This is why Covid has concerned me so much. After 13 years of being a Dad, I am not ready to check out until my Creature is fully grown. I have to be frank with myself. I’m kind of a nobody. But A’s happiness, astounding maturity, and genuine cleverness make me so very happy for my pointless little life.
Out here.
Bittersweet Abattoir 