Pop 1960
FATHER WAS
Father was digging post holes
and barbecuing,
Killing snails and painting
cabinets.
Father was taking the hook
out of your jacket, and unsnapping
your line.
Father was building doghouses,
and letting you drink a little beer
while Mama wasn't looking.
Father was the guy that put up
pickles and slipped you some gum
on the side.
Father was forgetting to pick
you up at the party, and buying
you a sucker on the way home.
Father was planting potatoes
and letting you put the eyes in
the holes.
Father was who you asked
first if you wanted to go
grasshopper hunting, because you
knew Mama was scared of snakes.
Father was Superman until
you were thirteen, when he instantly
became Moses.
--Michael Babel, ARENA 1977
I have nothing but sympathy for my father now, when I more fully realize that he was trying to do a rather difficult job under trying circumstances with very little experience or example. He became a husband and father at the then rather late age of 34. Up until then he had been rather a wild man; in our earlier years he was still in the process of being domesticated. He had to deal with a wildly differentiated brood or 'pack' as we kids were often referred to; kids very different from him in personality, growing up in a world and social setting that were very different from his own upbringing. He kind of settled into being a dad as time went on, so that his relationships grew warmer the farther on down the line we were born, going from what could charitably called 'fraught' with Mike, the eldest, down to indulgent with Susan, who was not only the youngest but a girl to boot. Finally he became a rather good grandfather, which was perhaps his last best destiny as far as fatherly relationships went.
Did I love Pop? Did Pop love me? I was an odd duck, moody, fantastical, socially awkward, everything that Pop was not. Mike was seen as 'Pop's kid,' being the first; I was 'Mom's kid,' the surprise consolation prize following closely on Mike's heels. Mike got to be the trailblazer, the ice-breaker, the first experiment conducted with the most flaws; he garnered the most expectation and hence the most disappointment. We first three kids (me, Mike, and John) had to do a lot of self-parenting; by the time Kenny and Susan came along we were shouldering many aspects of the parenting (especially with Mom's health problems taking her increasingly out of the game), leaving the younger to benefit from the easier emotional atmosphere that remained, a condition that T. H. White might refer to as 'having white mice for pets, but having nanny to feed and clean them.'
In the end, as Mom's kid, I had to shoulder a lot of her duties, including taking care of Pop in his last years after she passed away. By then we really needed each other: me to have a place to live and he to have someone to care for him. During that time I drew closer to Pop than we ever had been before. We were alone for the first time ... ever. We shared mutual affections, like the grandkids and watching Perry Mason. But .. "Love? His affections do not tend that way." At least in no way that he ever expressed emotionally. Although he did leave me the house. Perhaps men of his generation didn't find it easy to express any feelings toward sons, at least in words. In actions, perhaps, or inactions, never expressing "by a sign or a word/ the disgust that appeared in his face."
But in the end I have to give the old man a pass, a solid C+ at least. Once again, difficult job, trying circumstances. And he meant well, I think, and at last 'settled into the traces' of fatherhood. I can even say I love him, but perhaps it will always be *love with an asterisk. Happy Father's Day, Pop.
