FATHER'S DAY

Having written at length last month about why Mother’s Day is the hardest day of the year for me, allow me to tell you why Father’s Day is the most meaningful day of the year to me.

Growing up, my relationship with my father, L. Thomas Cleaver, could be described in one word, and that word is “difficult.” And that is giving everything the complete and absolute and total benefit of the doubt.

There were many good things my father did for me. Three stand out for their ultimate importance.

He built model airplanes for me and let me sit and watch him do it, so I could learn to do it myself, and that’s why I am as good a modeler as I am today, with an international reputation.

He answered my questions about “What did that airplane do?” “Why did that war happen?” and all the others by taking me down to the Eugene Field Branch Library (which in those day was Field’s home, for those of you living in Denver) and helping me find books that would answer the questions. And when he tired of going to the library twice a week so I could get the three books my child’s library card allowed, he let me start using his card, so I could check out ten books at a time - then we only had to go to the library twice a month. When I was finished with the small Field library, he took me to a larger library and eventually let me take the bus downtown to the Main Branch starting when I was ten, to spend the day in the stacks.

He bought me “All The World’s Airplanes 1954,” by William Green, the first “serious book” I wanted to have, for my 9th birthday, despite the fact it cost a whole $8 dollars then, a very expensive book.

He told me about our family history.

I think you can see from the above how I became the historian I am.

He was also the terror of my life. His anger when expressed was “something to behold,” and I do not mean that as a compliment.

He could do calculus in his head and could never understand why I had to take off my shoes to count beyond ten, and he made his displeasure at my academic failure in public school known.

At the same time he was the one who went to my school at the end of fifth grade and argued them into putting me in the other fifth grad class, so that I would have Mr. Field for my home room teacher in sixth grade, where he would open the door to my life for me.

I couldn’t wait to get away from him and so of course I joined the Navy he had joined.

When I came home from the Navy and my time in Vietnam, and told him the night I returned that he didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on in the war and that - if it was a war like all the other ones he had told me my ancestors had served in, that “we would be on the other side.” That started the Seven Year’s War of the Cleavers over my activities in opposing the war.

In my time as a child around him, I learned to be wary, not knowing when something might “light the fuse.” When I came home as an adult, my temper was as well developed as his, and I had certainty on my side, so those battles in that war could be called “fair fights.”

Through it all, there were many moments where Things Could Have Been Different, moments when we were close as a father and son are supposed to be, but neither of us knew how to cross the chasm between us.

And the, Thanksgiving 1977 happened.

I was going through a divorce, and so I was down in Los Angeles on my own to spend Thanksgiving with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law.

The afternoon of Thanksgiving Day, while my sister and mother were applying their lack of domestic talent to destroying the turkey dinner in the usual manner, he asked me to go out on the patio with him.

For the next two hours, he apologized to me. And he knew Every. Single. Fucking. Thing to apologize for.

And he told me about himself, growing up an only child not by anyone’s choice but because he was the one who survived his early years (there was a sister he never told me about, who had died in the 1918 Flu Pandemic; he was 9 when that happenmed). How he grew up largely in fear of his father, who set high standards and firm rules, which made his son love and respect him more.

And he ended by telling me the story of how his father had died, and he had to give up his dreams of remaining in aviation and take a job at the Bureau of Reclamation, so he could buy a home and bring his mother out to live with him. And how he told her the first night they had dinner together in that house that “the wrong one died.” When she asked what he meant, he told her she had never loved him, that when his father took him to the train station to go back to the boarding school he was educated at, that she never kissed him good-bye or came along to see him off.

“She told me my father wouldn’t allow it, that it was time for me to grow up and become a man, and mother-son histrionics didn’t promote that.”

And then he told me that the moment she told him that, he realized he had created his life on a lie, and that “All I ever learned was to be angry about something that wasn’t what I thought it was.”

And then he apologized for that being the only thing he had taught me, and told me he was sorry.

And I got up and hugged him and the next 14 years that we had together were exactly what a father and son should have, and they made up for the previous 33.

I had known from early on when I found a box in the basement with the short story manuscripts my father had written when he was young, that he had wanted to be a writer. That wasn’t where his Asperger’s Talent lay, but it didn’t stop him dreaming of it.

And when the day came seven years later that I sent him a copy of “In The Year of the Monkey,” telling him it had been sold and that I was now “taking meetings” in Hollywood as a result, the Original Creative Genius in his field, who always only wanted to be a writer, became the biggest fan of his Son, The Writer.

I still have to deal with the aftereffects of those lessons he taught me that he didn’t want to, but I have gotten the upper hand on that in these later years.

And I start every manuscript with a page that doesn’t get sent to the publisher or the producer. On it, I write:

“For Dad.”

Thanks for everything, Dad. All of it.

The great Native American author and poet, Sherman Alexie, wrote this for Father’s Day. It’s very true:

In mirrors, I look

Like Myself

In photos, I look

Like my Father

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