We remember what we lived

I was sitting at the breakfast table one Saturday morning with my mother and my brother, Freddie. I'm not sure of the year, but it would have been between 1965 and 1967. We were concerned because my father had not come home the night before.  We didn't know what to expect.

He busted in as we were eating breakfast, like a force of nature. It took my breath away. He pushed open the door and stumbled in to the kitchen, bruised and bleeding from his nose and ears.  It was quite an entrance.  My Mom took one look at him and said “I guess someone really worked you over good.”  He snarled back, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you!”  As he headed up stairs to sleep it off he ordered, “Go out and check the trunk for a body.”  

I am not kidding, this is exactly what he said.  My Mom and brother went out to check the car trunk.  There was nothing in it.  Dad had been in a barroom brawl the night before, helping the bar owner (a friend and neighbor) get rid of some thugs who were menacing the bar.  Dad suffered a concussion and had passed out in his parked car afterwards. He could not remember the outcome of the fight, but it must have been a doozy. 

No, he didn't go to the doctor.   

Life is so strange, sometimes it's best to laugh.

Can you love when you don't like?

I received the following comment on my last post: "I have no idea what the participle "loved" means in this context."  

Good question. Here's my answer:

It's love, rather than loved. I feel love for my Dad currently. He's dead, but I'm not. I put myself first. 

What is love in this context? A deep caring? An ancestral connection?  An ineffable feeling that can't be fully erased? I don't know.  

Before I forgave him I was angry, burning in Hell kind of angry. Consequently, his actions continued to hurt me. I was a victim. That made me more angry. There came a time when I understood that in order stop being a victim, I had to let go of my anger and leave him behind. It seemed like the best thing I could do for myself.  

Forgiveness doesn't mean I think he's a great guy. It doesn't mean I accept his brutality as a good thing. Forgiveness means I stepped away and left his meanness with him. Sometimes forgiveness is the meanest sucker punch of all. You know, "yeah I have some bruises, but you should see the other guy."

It wasn't being hit that messed me up. The real damage was the feeling that I was unimportant, unloved, and somehow at fault or deserving of such treatment. In fact, his actions were never about me. I was an innocent kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

Once I detached, I could see that he was a sad, pathetic person. I left him and his problems behind me. I no longer expected to have a good father. There was only ever going to be him. He had his own story, and his own father. 

It's not a happy, feel good kind of love I feel for him. I'm sad for him, but that's not it. I know his story, his own tortured childhood. I know his father once beat him so badly his mother didn't know if he'd live through the night. No hospital, no calling the police, just the resigned maternal vigil.  

Having said all this, I do believe there are some "sins of the father" that are unforgivable. Thankfully, he was no worse than mean and brutal.  

I don't like him, but that's not an absence of love.  

Oh well

When I was little I was a Daddy's girl. I adored him. Unfortunately, he changed from a loving father to a scary alcoholic when I was about 6. Yeah, it was super confusing.  

He was disabled in a motorcycle accident when I was 15. He never drank again, but that didn't make me want to spend time with him. I was too used to staying under his radar; some habits are hard to break. If I called the house to talk to my mother and he answered the phone, I hung up. If he was in the living room when I visited, I stayed in the kitchen. I avoided him as best I could. 

I do feel love for my father. I have long since forgiven him. I understood violence was his weakness, not mine. I left the sin with the sinner, but forgiveness doesn't mean we could have a relationship. Emotionally, I walked away. I never had any desire to be around him. That dog don't hunt, as the cliche goes.  

I'm not writing this for consolation. This is just the way it was. Don't worry, I've had lots of therapy.  

If Robbie had moved to South Bend in the mid-1960s

Blogger friend Roderick "Robbie" Robinson left a provocative comment on my last post. It inspired me to imagine what might have happened if he moved to South Bend, Indiana in the mid-1960's.  Instead, he spent a few of those years in Pittsburgh trying to figure out what this America thing was all about.  

South Bend was smaller, but still akin to Pittsburg then; industrial and gloriously ethnic. Had you moved to SB in the mid-1960s, Robbie, you might have hung out at bars my Dad frequented. He could be charming or he could be loutish. Totally up to you. But he would have initially tried to befriend you. And if some lunkhead made fun of you for being a "foreigner" he would have had your back. Seriously, he would have thrown the first punch.  

Dad often brought home people from other countries who had interesting accents. Sometimes he brought them home in the middle of the night. There might be singing. My personal favorite was the Irishman who told us about leprechauns. Dad would have put on music that he thought you MUST hear, like "Cleanhead's Back in Town" by Eddie Vinson. Perhaps you and he would have sang together? Unlikely, but this IS my fantasy. And if you had told him how you liked classical music, he would have listened with an ear to hear.  

He might have had you eat kielbasa with his Polish friends, or goulash with the Hungarians at the South Side Democratic Club. Certainly you and your wife would have joined my parents at a local joint for a Friday night fish fry.  

My Kentucky-born grandfather would have distrusted you, of course, but he might have taken you pistol shooting at the gravel pit. Or shown you his mermaid tattoo, or the American Eagle imprinted across his chest. He would have certainly taken you in his basement to show you how he made his own bullets, really an interesting process. Grandma would have made you Southern fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, and fried corn as the side. 

Well, that was fun. If only you hadn't moved to Pittsburgh instead.

Intersection of South Bend's Michigan and Jefferson Streets, 1968. Photo credit to Lou Szabo.

I remember turning 2

I distinctly remember turning two. My oldest sister had been preparing me for the event. She was a very earnest 7 year old, the kind of sister who took being older quite seriously. 

It was 1953. My father was sitting in his underwear at the kitchen table, as he was wont to do in the mornings. White t-shirt, white boxers, he sat enthroned wearing the working man's at-home uniform. 

Both my older sisters were in on the fun.  They guided me to his chair and pushed me forward.  My father asked me "How old are you today?" and I held up two fingers in front of my face.  I held them up like a premonition, for they were displayed like a peace sign, like bunny ears.  It wasn't the last time I made that sign for either meaning. However, it was the last time I told my father I was two years old. He laughed and told me I was a good girl.

I knew I was loved.  

This flowering bromeliad reminds me of belonging to a family

Father's Day 2019

Father's Day has come and gone. It is always a tough holiday for me. My Dad was complicated, and when I say "complicated" it's a euphemism for "What the Hell was WRONG with that guy!" Still, I don't want to wallow in my conflicted feelings for him. I adored him as a child. I feared him as a teen. I avoided him as an adult.  I was sad when he died. 

He loomed large. Sometimes it is hard to believe he is gone.

Easter 1953

Memorial Day: Honoring My Father

My Dad served in the Pacific during World War II aboard the troop supply ships U.S.S. Starlight, and the U.S.S. Wharton.  He enlisted in early 1943, and he was discharged late in 1947 after serving 4 years, 8 months, and 3 days. He was a Machinist Mate 1^st class, and he participated in the Battle for the Liberation of the Philippines in January 1945.  One of the hallmarks of this particular battle was the Japanese introduction of kamikaze pilots.  Kamikaze is a Japanese word meaning "divine wind" and these suicide pilots sank 17 U.S. ships and damaged 50 more in the battle for Luzon in the Philippines as they flew obsolete planes into American ships, hoping to do considerable damage to the U.S. fleet. 

As a machinist, Dad worked below in the ship.  He remembered hearing a kamikaze plane hit the ship next to his, which sunk as a result of the attack.   He said it was extremely loud and the ship he was on shook so much that he thought it was his ship that had been hit.  I can only imagine the claustrophobic fear he felt in those long, lonely moments thinking they were trapped in the belly of the ship.  When he realized it was another ship that was hit, he ran up 3 flights of stairs to see what was happening.  Men from the damaged ship were jumping into the water to escape the fire on board.  My father volunteered to help rescue them and spent the rest of the day pulling men both living and dead out of the Pacific.  

One rescued man was burned over 90 percent of his body.  Although he did not know the man, Dad volunteered to stay by the man’s side.  For three full days and nights he stayed with the stranger, changing his bandages and simply not leaving the man alone with horrible pain. 

After the war ended my father also volunteered to be present for the atomic bomb testing at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which began in July 1946.   When asked why he would do such a thing, he replied that it seemed like it would be an interesting experience.  He also said it was beautiful.  

He received the following medals: The Asiatic Pacific (with 4 stars); the American Area Medal; the Victory medal; the Philippine Liberation Medal (with 2 stars); and the Navy Unit Commendation Medal.

My Dad died of congestive heart failure on Veterans Day, November 11, 1996, immediately after he finished singing “It’s a Grand Old Flag” in front of his cronies at a senior citizen’s luncheon.  He finished his song, stepped down off the stage, and immediately had a fatal heart attack.  It certainly scared the other old folks, but it was the kind of death I would have wished for him – quick and painless.  Not a bad way for an old sailor to go!