Father's Day

June 18 - Father's Day- 2000

My father's father was a journeyman printer who met a girl in Penn Yan, New York, and persuaded her to come away with him. In Sioux Falls, SD, she had four children in about six years, and died of consumption, so the old clipping says. That girl's grandmother adopted my father and took him back to New York State. It's not hard to imagine the grandmother's opinion of her son-in-law, so my father grew up not only fatherless but with a low opinion of his father, and apparently a determination to have the perfect life for his own new family.

I have been listening to a radio program about the terrible effects on girls of growing up fatherless. Having a devoted father is not the answer to all of life's problems either. My father made it clear that I was a musical failure because I could not play by ear for party sing-alongs. He was puzzled by the conflict between his conviction that a girl's job was to be a docile and well cared for wife and mother and the fact that his particular girl had inherited at least some of his brain power, might want to do something besides keep house, and was not very docile. I was very much aware of not living up to his expectations. There was no question at our house of getting dollars for A's, as many of our friends did. A's were the only grade expected at our house. I got a B once, when the superiority of being a High School Senior interfered with work. The other scratch on the escutcheon was that I was unable to pass Palmer Penmanship, leading to a question about getting out of sixth grade. My teacher and I worked out a solution to this and I was not excommunicated at home.

Family life centered on Father. In the morning my brother and I knew that Daddy had to shave, no matter who wanted the bathroom, Daddy had to catch the train at 8:20. If we happened to be ready we could ride along and mother would take us to school after we caught the train. We watched Daddy swing up onto the train after it was moving, a lot of days. We rode on a crazy short trip to catch the train at the next station, some days. As far as I can remember there was never a day when he really missed the train and went to work late. He believed in being late, to meals, to trains, to airplanes, to parties. There was always one more thing he had to do first. He even found a way to try to be late to mother's funeral. Whatever deep psychological problem lay behind this trait we never learned.

He came home on the 6:20. I never wondered until this minute how my mother managed to meet him at the station and have dinner ready as soon as we got home. She probably had 15 minutes while he changed into work clothes. "Work" was what he did at home, always fixing or building something. One day only I saw him in his office, when we joined him for some big city adventure. His secretary brought in a handful of letters for him to sign, and for years I thought signing letters was what he did all day.
What he really did was design his share of a lot of major projects at the Bell Lab on 463 West St. Once in a while we would go to Hoboken to meet him coming off the Christopher Street Ferry. He stood out, to me, from those hundreds of men all dressed alike, all about the same size, but only one looking for us and smiling, just as delighted to see us as we were to see him.

He directed the family recreation department. On hot nights we went to the lake as soon he had time to change, and ate later. He taught me to swim by stationing a neighbor five feet away and saying "Come on, swim." This is great for learning confidence and the dog paddle. I learned proper strokes long after. He worked five and a half days a week until the Depression, so we had Saturday afternoons together. On Sundays he might wake us up early and holler "Let's go to the shore". Mother must have learned to predict when this was coming and could pack fried chicken and potato salad in a flash. In spite of the sunburn and sand in the sandwiches and the traffic jams coming home, every trip to the shore was wonderful. Years later I tried taking my three to the shore to relive this pleasure, and was seriously disappointed that they found the ocean frightening. Then it dawned on me that I had always had Daddy holding me safe against the breakers until I was big enough to jump waves alone.

I am still questioning the theory that says girls subconsciously look for husbands in the image of their fathers. My father was a fine tenor. My husband is a bass who can't carry a tune. My father played Lackawanna Bridge with no rules. My husband played Bridge following every rule in the book. My father put the family before everything else. My husband followed his father's precept of trusting his wife to raise the children. On one of our first dates I sat in the car while my husband to be changed a flat tire in the rain with exactly one word of dismay. My father would have been swearing for half an hour. If they are similar, my subconscious has continued to hide the similarities from me.

I do not question the theory that one's marriage is affected by one's experience with one's father. I assumed that all fathers got up before the family to turn up the furnace (or stoke it, in the days before thermostats), that all fathers carried out the trash, (or burned it or buried it), played with their kids, kept the same job for life, took an interest details around the house. It was a long time before I learned that my disappointments and anger based on unreal expectations were a major source of what you might euphemistically call a lack of harmony.

There are several father statements that stay clear in my mind's ear.
My father, when my brother had done something unacceptable: "You kids are what I live for."
Our county probation officer, when our son joined some friends in stupid vandalism, major then, minor by today's standards: "Every boy I've had has had a father who was drunk, dead, or didn't care."
Our son, at 14, when asked what probation had taught him: " All I know is if I have a family I'm going to be with them."
My husband, forty years later, speaking after a long, long silence: " My son is a good father, and I wasn't."

The Middleman stuck to his decision to be with the family, being a partner but not a dictator in raising a crew of five stepchildren, two more, and four grandchildren so far. Sometimes I have thought his twenty years in the USAF were about as good prep for parenthood as one could have. He hands out a fine mixture of love and unconditional orders for behavior.

And here we are in the 21st century with our newest great-grandson being raised by a full time dad and a mother who works long hours and comes home to a spotless house and a happy family, not to mention a spotless barn and a coddled horse.

As the probation officer said to our son, talking about the other boys in the escapade," But you were lucky. You had someone who loved you." We come from a long line of Scots and Englishmen who don't hug easily or express emotion gracefully, or hand out praise freely, but no matter what kind of fathers we've had , love has been there somewhere. It may have been sort of hidden in our baggage, but we're conscious that it's there. Maybe Father's Day serves as a push to make us dig it out, dust it off, and wave it around a little.