The Farthest Thing From Father's Day

If November is the cruelest month, June 20 takes the cake for the most crushing day.

Much less litmus and much more Rorschach. That is, certain holidays, full as they are of sense memories and nostalgic recall of everything no one necessarily needed to have to remember, come locked and loaded. For good or ill.

Which means the world is divided into two groups: those that love holiday music all year around and those that hate it, especially on holidays. But when Johnny Mathis sings Billy Gilman’s “Sleigh Ride” and hits the line, “There’s a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy”, italics mine, I am transported. Chestnuts, snow, moonlight in Vermont, all of it is part of a mythos that introduced me to a world that was fundamentally not at war with itself.

But, of course, the world is at war with itself so these are, at the very least, reminders of when the people who loved you, if you were lucky enough to have some of those around, tricked you into thinking otherwise. At least for a few days.

Which is why Father’s Day has always been such a hard sell.

Any dumbass with a dick can be a dad, small D. But to get to big D Dad? Not that easy.

Let’s start with the fact that post-World War 2, it’s been a rough ride for a generation of men who did not have the luxury of having whatever they had after that War called PTSD. It was called “get the fuck over it,” and while I am generalizing, I am not generalizing that in close parallel to this, men had become punchlines.

Ralph Kramden, his cartoon corollary Fred Flintstone, Ricky Ricardo, pretty much every TV Dad outside of Ward Cleaver and Andy Griffith, were feckless figures of fun played for laughs. This devolved into “he just doesn’t GET it” memes and a dramatic shorthand that uncomfortably elided a much more readily apparent truth that Dad reality versus Dad fiction was dark. And dangerous. And closely mirrored very male lives lived around us.

William Faulkner’s daughter was pleading with her father to not get drunk, again, at her birthday party. His response? … “NO one remembers Shakespeare’s daughter.” She was nine.

And not just in the big ways — abandonment, abuse — but in killing small ways. As the story goes William Faulkner’s daughter was pleading with her father to not get drunk, again, at her birthday party.

His response? Purportedly it was “NO one remembers Shakespeare’s daughter.” She was nine.

So while it seems that bad mothers make men hate women, and women hate themselves, bad fathers make everyone hate the world.

Which is strange since it really is such an easy job: Be nice to Mom, stick around, don’t complain. Extra points for actually talking to your kids. But that’s it. IF you have a father you generally feel good about? He probably did all of those things.

But if you have a father you generally, or quite specifically, don’t feel good about? He probably did none of those things.

So Father’s Day divides.

It should be said that I am the father of four daughters. I am also the indifferent son of a father who hated his father. Indifferent because my father has spoken to me only once since I turned 19 for reasons written about in other places. But his hatred for his father? An enduring mystery that finally gave way when I tracked down his mother, my grandmother.

She was in her 80s and sharp. As a tack. And the story, pieced together as it is, was a doozy.

Her father had been having an affair with a woman who called him one day and said something to the effect of “if you ever want to see your daughter again, you’ll leave your wife and join us.”

Did she remember her real mother?

She was young enough that “this was the only mother I remember.” But this mother, the kidnapper, was evil stepmother personified. She farmed my grandmother out to a childless white couple as a servant. And these were the years she described as “the best years of my life.”

She was a servant but they treated her more like a daughter than anyone previously had and taught her how to read, write, and educated her in a move that would serve her well later in life when she ended up working at the U.S. State Department.

My grandfather? A career criminal…he and his brothers were organized, and Mafia-like in their determination to run an established criminal enterprise.

The evil stepmother lurked though, and called the couple when my grandmother had turned 13 years old. The evil stepmom had started a halfway house. And needed her “daughter” back. Because she needed someone to work the halfway house. Because, of course, 13-year-olds are designed to thrive in halfway houses.

My grandfather? A career criminal. Not a smash and grab small timer kind of guy, he and his brothers were organized, and Mafia-like in their determination to run an established criminal enterprise. A necessary part of which was, it seems, being incarcerated.

Later at my mother and father’s wedding he showed up, a small dapper man who , at least in photos, recalled a mix of David Niven and Cab Calloway, and tried to seduce one of the bridesmaids by blowing cigarette smoke through a crack in her hotel room door from the hallway. It didn’t work and an argument over what I suspect was his drinking led to an early exit for him that night, the story goes.

“Today they would call it rape.”

My grandmother was now pregnant at 13. The evil stepmother was angry. At my grandmother. My grandfather did what was called back then “the right thing” and acknowledged paternity. He already had two other kids. With his wife.

To escape the clutches of just about everyone she eventually got married to someone else as soon as she could, and she had either eight or 10 kids with him, I’m fuzzy on those details. Her husband, unlike my grandfather who died before I was born, I met. He was a big man. I didn’t like him. And when I asked her about him, Sam was his name, she cleared her throat.

“I didn’t like him.” She neither smiled nor laughed when she said this.

But he died as well and she lived out her dotage in a house full of memory, the good kind it seems, jogged to keep in shape, and showed me pictures of handfuls of people who looked like me.

“You ever hear from your father?” And I sat there, now hyperconscious, that she was looking into the face of the son of the son she had when she was raped by his father.

“No. He’s spoken to me once since I turned 19.”

Her face was not an easy read. Watchful. A little wary. I asked her if she heard from him.

“No. He stopped talking to me when I refused to say that his second wife had a drinking problem…so he could take the kids away.” My father had two daughters with his second wife. Then: the steel. “But she wasn’t and so I didn’t.”

He succeeded in taking the kids away anyway. I suspect it was because he threatened to tell the court that she was bisexual. This was the ‘70s and that kind of shit probably worked back then. Probably still works.

I said I would be leaving and hugged her goodbye. I knew I’d never be seeing her again. Nor would she ever meet my daughters. My daughters who I love more dearly than almost anything on Earth.

Two are in their 20s, one is in her late teens, and one is almost 11 months old. They’re texting me now, as I write this, the ones with phones, about them taking me to dinner tonight.

Goddamnit I love Father’s Day.