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.
This is one of the most moving parent/child histories that I have ever read. I am indescribably happy for you. I wish ... I wish I had the words to express how deeply your post today has touched me. Instead I'll just write a bit in turn about what this day means to me today.
Today for me is a mixed bag - my own father has been gone since 1997, unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm at the age of 62, but we were told it would've been quick and at worst he might have had an intense headache. The police found him seemingly asleep in his car in the parking lot at his office, so thankfully it didn't happen while he was driving home. We were estranged for over 10 years but that June I had decided to see him on Father's Day, bringing his first grandchild to visit. I will be forever grateful that I forced that time with him. Little did I know he would pass away a month later.
In the meantime, my FIL became like a father to me after my parents disowned me, and over the years he would joke that if I ever divorced his son, he would adopt me. My in-laws were like the parents I never had. My mother is still alive at 96 but has never been a part of my life; my choice after I left home at 21 because I was tired of being beaten regularly, clinched by her lawyer's letter to me after my father died that I was being intentionally excluded from her will. I used to think that "the wrong one died" but I've come to realize that actually, she is in her own living hell these past decades, being completely dependent on her other children and coping with various mobility and dementia issues.
I digress - so my FIL passed away this year from issues relating to a series of strokes, and this is my first Father's Day without him. My husband is the oldest son and they worked together in the same real estate office for almost 20 years. Our 3 kids were trying to do something for today for him but his heart is not in it and I know they can't relate, because until you lose a parent, you CANNOT understand the complicated grief and regrets and the depth of loss.
I know we will eventually move forward through our grief but I also know that despite my love for my FIL, the pain I feel is not the same as the pain my husband is feeling. I still miss my dad and wish he had known my kids. My second child, a son, is named after both him and my FIL. We seem to have managed a better relationship with our son and two daughters than my parents did with five children, but maybe it's just a generational thing and back then it was acceptable to verbally abuse your kids and physically beat them as well. My husband and I have done neither.
Anyway, this is way more than I had planned to write. Today is more complicated and painful than past Father's Days have been.
God be praised (if She exists) for allowing you and your Dad the time and grace to connect. It's an inspiring story for the many of us for whom time ran out too early. I was 17, my rother Paul 18, my brother Dan 12 when my father's childhood poverty and bad genetics killed him at 52. We were only beginning to have really grown up talks. But here is one clear lesson he shared when, at 14, I objected to the Catholic Church's prohibition on contraceptives -- a theoretical position for me because of worries about overpopulation. I talked with priests, read Aquinas, nada. "Just remember this, Nancy: if God gave you a mind, He intends for you to use it." And I have tried to. Happy Father's Day to all!
I had the same problem with the Catholic Church probably by the time I was 11 or 12--but I was a Jewish atheist, so the situation was less fraught than yours. I had learned about overpopulation at age 9, when I asked my father why there was a push to put a road through our rather countrified neighborhood. I grasped the problem immediately--and have always wondered these last 60 years since--how people can fail to understand that overpopulation is a major problem. (In 1975, I had John Holdren--later Pres O's Science Advisor--for a class at UC Berkeley that grounded me in environmental science, and where I first learned about global warming, and he and I would frequently discuss overpopulation.)
I did give my first public speech, at age 11, at the LDS church where my older brother and I were in boy scouts, and despite their own desire to bear lots of children, they gave me a certificate on which one of them had written "excellent". (My brother's best friend was a Mormon and I was friends with his younger brother.)
Your father, Nancy, sounds like a clear-headed man who valued you. I'm sorry he departed so early in your life. Happy father's day to you and everyone else reading this!
at what age did it kick in? it's sorta funny that I just read your post because half an hour or so ago, I was trying to establish a surface in my filthy kitchen and found myself trying to locate just when my own "conversion" (or is "de-conversion" more appropriate?) happened. but I couldn't. the more I thought about it, the more it became pretty clear that I was pretty much born an atheist. this is probably because my father was an atheist, although (true to his beautiful nature), he NEVER said it. I was almost forty when he finally said that yes, he'd always been agnostic. he meant atheist.
when he grew up in the East Bronx (not far from the zoo...and I have a recurring dream that his old apartment is a secret property I own and, in the worst-case scenario, I can always go back there) Jews were either pretty observant or they were "socialists," and my grandparents were definitely the latter, although my father and uncle both had bar mitzvahs. despite this pedigree, my grandparents were nevertheless a little bit turned off by pork, but they had a very flexible definition of pork; they were always crazy about bacon.
my mother grew up in Monroe, Louisiana, which meant that she actually went to religious services and was confirmed, etc. because, down South, Jews stick together. but my mother never had any use for actual religious practice. the ironic thing is that in my neighborhood (Kew Gardens Hills, considered a significant step up from Boro Park or the Lower East Side, is now so orthodox that the parking rules observe Shabbos), I ended up having my own bar mitzvah in a little orthodox shul two blocks away, in which services were held in the rabbi's basement (he delivered his sermon in Yiddish). we did this to save money because I was a Hebrew School dropout and knew I wouldn't ever voluntarily attend services after the Big Party. the Big Party was notable mainly for the fact that I smoked my first cigarette there and became the most avid smoker anybody knew. I loved every cigarette I ever smoked and smoked every day (even during Scarlet Fever and Mononucleosis) for exactly thirty-three years (actually, about four days shy of that number). what I got out of it was two cases of lung cancer and a third scare (whew) a few months ago.
where was I? oh yeah, the Jewish atheist thing. those two words can get me to talk a LOT. that last sentence was for anyone who hadn't noticed.
a weird thing about my own Jewish atheism is the fact that it allows me the freedom to have real conversations with believers in other faiths, especially (I'm not sure why) Catholics. having said that, I'm now not sure it's entirely true. I don't think I could have a serious conversation about religion with...y'know, the right-wing evangelicals who say that TFF was ordained by god with all the horrifying beliefs that accompany that insane bullshit. but this point is entirely moot, since I have no occasion to encounter those folks. the friends I have who have "returned" to Jewish practice ("Baal teshuva" is the formal Hebrew term for this phenomenon, which is very big in NYC) seem to be almost phobic about discussing religion with Christians of any variety...
I do envy your Berkeley class which seems to have grounded you early on about environmental issues. in my own case, these days I feel my own lack of disciplined understanding about this stuff makes me feel like I'm always trying to "catch up."
jeez...I just checked the time and if I'm going to have any kind of Monday, I need to force myself to lie down.
I was 9. I'd had a couple of friends who believed that hellfire and damnation was the reward for sins, and a lot of these sins were quite minor. But the fact was that I really just didn't believe when it came right down to it. I was in a Mormon boy scout troop (my older brother's best friend was a Mormon. The Mormons have a powerful sense of community, which was very attractive to me, and a couple of fellow scouts tried to convert me (they weren't at all pushy about it). And I tried to find belief within myself, but it wasn't there.
I am an avid espresso drinker. Here's my smoking story
Dear Tom, your mother's day story brought me to you; your father's day story brought me closer; it is how we come to respect one another and are bonded by knowing our stories.
I have thought for a while of buying one of the planes that you have modeled. Please choose one for me, and name the price, even though what you do is beyond payment.
a lovely piece, Tom. and there are actually a lot of parallels with my father, although my father sounds like a very different kind of guy. when he started writing his many YA biographies, he told me that we were going into the city to do research at the big library (where I'd never been) because he needed me to help with the research. I was already an old hand at libraries because the local Queens libraries were where I could actually have fun, being very diffident about relying entirely on the vexed relationships I had with the other kids on my block, who were capable of all sorts of chronic bullying (I always blamed my stutter, but I now realize that there was also a general asshole component going on). so we went to the big main reading room (with the huge main card catalog) at 42nd Street (now it's an exhibition space) and I'd look up the books about whatever the subject was, bring them to the librarians and pick them up when they'd arrive from the stacks. this whole process taught me to think of liraries and research as very exciting.
I've thought about this "ploy" of his very often, and it strikes me as brilliant. how did he know to do that?
he also loved typewriters, and I obviously inherited that as well. he wrote all his books (and many hundreds of free-lance magazine assignments) on a big-ass 1919 Woodstock he'd paid five bucks for in a pawnshop when he was still attending DeWitt Clinton with guys like James Baldwin and his old neighbor (and junior high school friend), Paddy Chayefsky.
my father was (and this is something everybody who knew him would say as soon as his name was mentioned) the sweetest person I've ever met.
the week he passed, I spoke with a bunch of his oldest friends, all of whom said that into his seventies, he was no different from the guy he was in high school or college. I've met at least half a dozen people who found it impossible to believe that he'd ever dropped bombs on ANYTHING.
Fathers' Day is irrelevant to me because I think about my dad every day. my only complaint about him (and I said this to him many, many times) was that he set the bar for good human behavior at an intimidatingly high bar. as I've said very recently, today's wretched excuse for "politics" is something he would have found inconceivable.
I suppose I've left out my years of boorish behavior and the embarrassing instances of my horrifying public drunkenness, etc. and that's as much as I'll say about that now.
Uncle Tom, I’m gonna keep this short and sweet. Thanks for being like a dad to me. I am thinking about you on this day as I celebrate being a dad myself. We both have done such a great job breaking the Cleaver Family Dysfunction. Thank you for being there with me and nurturing me during my tough times and good times.
What a gift after all those hard years to finally hear him apologize AND to have the relationship finally that should have been there from the beginning.
I was so so lucky to have the dad I did - still miss him.
I’ve never met a son who didn’t have a fraught relationship with his father. You’re so fortunate that yours had the good sense to see through his own history and confess. Good for both souls.
Thank you Tom for sharing your beautiful story about your relationship with your father. Mine is not so good. I wrote some of this on your Mother’s Day post. Because of my dad’s complete lack of caring and support, my mother made up for it with her love and dedication. My dad left my mom with four small children ages 1 through 8. I was 4. I won’t go into all of the details, but he had a pregnant girlfriend. We were living in Southern California and he sent us back to Illinois on the train to my mom’s parents. Long story short, he divorced my mom and married his girlfriend. But the worst of it was he didn’t help support us financially and was absent emotionally. We moved back to San Jose CA where he was living when I was 8. It was his request so we could be closer to him. But it made no difference. He was only critical of us and I never felt any approval or love from him. My mom worked two jobs to support us as he always had an excuse for not paying child support. My mom should have seen an attorney but for her own reasons didn’t. Nothing really changed with our relationship through the years although I tried to open up some honest communication through a letter I sent him and he never responded. My half sisters told me after he died that he had read it and it upset him so much they were mad at me for sending it to him. His health started failing about 5 years ago and he began reaching out to us. He told me he loved me and I sensed a lot of guilt in his voice. I think it was the closest he could come to an apology. Then he was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer and he was put on hospice. He was living near Sacramento with one of my half sisters, coincidentally also a nurse. My dad and I spoke on the phone several times and I felt we made peace the best that we could. But I still feel something missing.
Thank you so much David. I appreciate your very kind words about me, and about the nursing profession. We certainly have not always received the respect, or the understanding of the scope of our practice. And I do know what you mean. If I feel the need to say “god bless you”, I say “Dog bless you” instead. Somebody was dyslexic, because if there is a supreme being , it’s a dog.
it's sad that your father wasn't able to being what you needed to that particular table. but look at what you've accomplished. you have a terribly difficult job dealing with patients (remember I was one of them quite recently) who are, very likely, pretty fucking scared most of the time. and it's obvious to me (and a lot of other people here) that you do it very, very well.
I've been very gratified that there's so much attention being focused on nursing these days. it's a profession in which you can make or break somebody's day when that somebody is in a very fragile state. I'd say "god bless you," but after my long atheist screed, that'd just be dumb. it doesn't matter, though; you know perfectly well what I mean.
if I gave the impression that my relationship with my dad didn't have its fraught periods, I'd be lying. but the biggest part of that stuff was me posturing. the cause was probably that high bar he represented. and remember, he was an administrator at the famously leftie college I attended. I avoided getting into any campus trouble for that reason, but could also be pretty disagreeable. thank god I couldn't really take the Far Left split that occurred with the folding of SDS at all seriously.
a few years back, an old girlfriend who was there the whole time (the Marxist/Zionist I've mentioned before) sent me a lovely message talking about the extraordinary grace my father exhibited when the '60s hit the campus and, like most of the other key administrators, he had cause to be very confused, disoriented and very often hostile.
we built models together, but he was only marginally less sloppy than I was. his gifts lay elsewhere. in college, a lot of friends of mine had jibs in his office, and one of them worked with him on various trade publications after he retired from CCNY in '77. they all said he was the best boss they ever had...he had a gift for breaking tasks down and demonstrating how to do them in a way that once you caught on, you'd never forget it.
I could go on about him forever. I miss him terribly, but in his last half year, there were a few moments when I felt like some dementia might be imminent. if that was the case, his aortic aneurysm might have been a blessing in disguise. he was a guy who was all about communication and the prospect of watching him lose his ability to communicate was too horrifying to contemplate.
Dear Karen, at this moment, after reading your post, I reach out to you with warmth. I admire the work you have done to understand as much as you can about your father's weaknesses, in addition to your mother's strength and devotion. You chose a noble profession, and I have noted your caring generosity to the rest of us. Thank you.
Oh Tom, what a beautiful recounting. How wonderful to have had him by your side for so long at the end, and your beginning. Thank you so much for this post, it had me in tears. Happy Remember Your Father Day. ❤️
How lucky you are, what a gift he gave you. Just the fact that he knew exactly what to apologize for must have meant so much. Was your mother kind to him despite her problems in the ‘mother’ department? Their relationship must have been interesting…
When I worked in public schools, I decided that parenthood was just a form of temporary insanity. Of course, I would never behave like some of the insanity I saw. But I did. Not years of trauma but one big mistake that caused my daughter much grief. And I should have known better; I did know better. Except for that moment of temporary insanity.
He and she got along. In his case, I think it was from his sense of duty and familial responsibility; he was very big on the fact that in all the generations of his family, there had never been a divorce (which means there probably should have been). When I was younger, he would disappear down to his workshop while she was "on a tear." I told him that was the one thing I had difficulty forgiving him for, and he agreed he had made a mistake there.
Sounds like a friend who was adored by her father and the target of her alcoholic mother. When she sang his praises, I said he didn’t really intervene with your mother’s treatment, did he. She said, No, he went to his room, and avoided any conflict. Sad
That you two reconciled for those last years of his life warmed my heart, Tom. Thank you for sharing such deeply personal information with us. I send you a hug.
Parenting wasn't really "a thing" until Dr. Spock came along, just as teenagers weren't a thing until the '50's. People just grew up, got together, had kids and struggled to make their ways in an often hostile world. Enlightenment seemed to come in the second half of the last century, which may explain your father's insights coming late. The blessing is, as you reported, that he acknowledged mistakes and shortcomings in a relationship that gave him most of the power.
I lucked out in the crapshoot of life by landing with great parents. The darkest cloud in our family life was the inherited overlay of a nonsensical religion. I am grateful on Father's Day that my dad was the antidote to a fear-based religion and that he actually liked kids because there were eight of us..
That was certainly the most moving father's Day story I've ever heard! What a blessing for your father to have opened up like that!
My problems with my father were a milder version of yours, as his apology was a mild version of your father's, but welcome, and he became a better human being in his old age.
My mother was the more interesting parent. She was the Denver Hornbein (via her mother). (There are also St. Louis Hornbeins, and one of them, Tom, recently deceased, was the most interesting of the lot, and there are at least ten obits circulating from his death in early may, including one in the WaPo.)
My mother was the one who diagnosed me with what would be called Asperger's today, back probably in 1956, when I was 2 and 3, when no-one in the US had heard anything of "the spectrum" or anything on it, except for someone who I believe was in the psych dept at University of Washington when my mother was a grad student there. My mother never told me, for reasons I can well imagine, that I consider reasonable, but she told a family friend in 1964, who told her daughter (who is a family friend), who told me after reading a story I wrote a few years ago of a walk my mother and I took when I was not quite three, and how my mother irritated the crap out of me by walking backwards! When I told her to walk normally, she suggested that I try walking backwards!
I fantasize that my mother somehow knew that her words would be repeated to me at such time as it would be helpful--and who knows, maybe she did. All these years later it has given me a sense of relief and understanding.
This is one of the most moving parent/child histories that I have ever read. I am indescribably happy for you. I wish ... I wish I had the words to express how deeply your post today has touched me. Instead I'll just write a bit in turn about what this day means to me today.
Today for me is a mixed bag - my own father has been gone since 1997, unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm at the age of 62, but we were told it would've been quick and at worst he might have had an intense headache. The police found him seemingly asleep in his car in the parking lot at his office, so thankfully it didn't happen while he was driving home. We were estranged for over 10 years but that June I had decided to see him on Father's Day, bringing his first grandchild to visit. I will be forever grateful that I forced that time with him. Little did I know he would pass away a month later.
In the meantime, my FIL became like a father to me after my parents disowned me, and over the years he would joke that if I ever divorced his son, he would adopt me. My in-laws were like the parents I never had. My mother is still alive at 96 but has never been a part of my life; my choice after I left home at 21 because I was tired of being beaten regularly, clinched by her lawyer's letter to me after my father died that I was being intentionally excluded from her will. I used to think that "the wrong one died" but I've come to realize that actually, she is in her own living hell these past decades, being completely dependent on her other children and coping with various mobility and dementia issues.
I digress - so my FIL passed away this year from issues relating to a series of strokes, and this is my first Father's Day without him. My husband is the oldest son and they worked together in the same real estate office for almost 20 years. Our 3 kids were trying to do something for today for him but his heart is not in it and I know they can't relate, because until you lose a parent, you CANNOT understand the complicated grief and regrets and the depth of loss.
I know we will eventually move forward through our grief but I also know that despite my love for my FIL, the pain I feel is not the same as the pain my husband is feeling. I still miss my dad and wish he had known my kids. My second child, a son, is named after both him and my FIL. We seem to have managed a better relationship with our son and two daughters than my parents did with five children, but maybe it's just a generational thing and back then it was acceptable to verbally abuse your kids and physically beat them as well. My husband and I have done neither.
Anyway, this is way more than I had planned to write. Today is more complicated and painful than past Father's Days have been.
Please don't delete, Janice. This is wonderful.
God be praised (if She exists) for allowing you and your Dad the time and grace to connect. It's an inspiring story for the many of us for whom time ran out too early. I was 17, my rother Paul 18, my brother Dan 12 when my father's childhood poverty and bad genetics killed him at 52. We were only beginning to have really grown up talks. But here is one clear lesson he shared when, at 14, I objected to the Catholic Church's prohibition on contraceptives -- a theoretical position for me because of worries about overpopulation. I talked with priests, read Aquinas, nada. "Just remember this, Nancy: if God gave you a mind, He intends for you to use it." And I have tried to. Happy Father's Day to all!
I had the same problem with the Catholic Church probably by the time I was 11 or 12--but I was a Jewish atheist, so the situation was less fraught than yours. I had learned about overpopulation at age 9, when I asked my father why there was a push to put a road through our rather countrified neighborhood. I grasped the problem immediately--and have always wondered these last 60 years since--how people can fail to understand that overpopulation is a major problem. (In 1975, I had John Holdren--later Pres O's Science Advisor--for a class at UC Berkeley that grounded me in environmental science, and where I first learned about global warming, and he and I would frequently discuss overpopulation.)
I did give my first public speech, at age 11, at the LDS church where my older brother and I were in boy scouts, and despite their own desire to bear lots of children, they gave me a certificate on which one of them had written "excellent". (My brother's best friend was a Mormon and I was friends with his younger brother.)
Your father, Nancy, sounds like a clear-headed man who valued you. I'm sorry he departed so early in your life. Happy father's day to you and everyone else reading this!
another Jewish atheist...why am I not surprised?
at what age did it kick in? it's sorta funny that I just read your post because half an hour or so ago, I was trying to establish a surface in my filthy kitchen and found myself trying to locate just when my own "conversion" (or is "de-conversion" more appropriate?) happened. but I couldn't. the more I thought about it, the more it became pretty clear that I was pretty much born an atheist. this is probably because my father was an atheist, although (true to his beautiful nature), he NEVER said it. I was almost forty when he finally said that yes, he'd always been agnostic. he meant atheist.
when he grew up in the East Bronx (not far from the zoo...and I have a recurring dream that his old apartment is a secret property I own and, in the worst-case scenario, I can always go back there) Jews were either pretty observant or they were "socialists," and my grandparents were definitely the latter, although my father and uncle both had bar mitzvahs. despite this pedigree, my grandparents were nevertheless a little bit turned off by pork, but they had a very flexible definition of pork; they were always crazy about bacon.
my mother grew up in Monroe, Louisiana, which meant that she actually went to religious services and was confirmed, etc. because, down South, Jews stick together. but my mother never had any use for actual religious practice. the ironic thing is that in my neighborhood (Kew Gardens Hills, considered a significant step up from Boro Park or the Lower East Side, is now so orthodox that the parking rules observe Shabbos), I ended up having my own bar mitzvah in a little orthodox shul two blocks away, in which services were held in the rabbi's basement (he delivered his sermon in Yiddish). we did this to save money because I was a Hebrew School dropout and knew I wouldn't ever voluntarily attend services after the Big Party. the Big Party was notable mainly for the fact that I smoked my first cigarette there and became the most avid smoker anybody knew. I loved every cigarette I ever smoked and smoked every day (even during Scarlet Fever and Mononucleosis) for exactly thirty-three years (actually, about four days shy of that number). what I got out of it was two cases of lung cancer and a third scare (whew) a few months ago.
where was I? oh yeah, the Jewish atheist thing. those two words can get me to talk a LOT. that last sentence was for anyone who hadn't noticed.
a weird thing about my own Jewish atheism is the fact that it allows me the freedom to have real conversations with believers in other faiths, especially (I'm not sure why) Catholics. having said that, I'm now not sure it's entirely true. I don't think I could have a serious conversation about religion with...y'know, the right-wing evangelicals who say that TFF was ordained by god with all the horrifying beliefs that accompany that insane bullshit. but this point is entirely moot, since I have no occasion to encounter those folks. the friends I have who have "returned" to Jewish practice ("Baal teshuva" is the formal Hebrew term for this phenomenon, which is very big in NYC) seem to be almost phobic about discussing religion with Christians of any variety...
I do envy your Berkeley class which seems to have grounded you early on about environmental issues. in my own case, these days I feel my own lack of disciplined understanding about this stuff makes me feel like I'm always trying to "catch up."
jeez...I just checked the time and if I'm going to have any kind of Monday, I need to force myself to lie down.
I was 9. I'd had a couple of friends who believed that hellfire and damnation was the reward for sins, and a lot of these sins were quite minor. But the fact was that I really just didn't believe when it came right down to it. I was in a Mormon boy scout troop (my older brother's best friend was a Mormon. The Mormons have a powerful sense of community, which was very attractive to me, and a couple of fellow scouts tried to convert me (they weren't at all pushy about it). And I tried to find belief within myself, but it wasn't there.
I am an avid espresso drinker. Here's my smoking story
https://www.wbur.org/news/2015/09/25/seduced-by-cigarettes
Dear Tom, your mother's day story brought me to you; your father's day story brought me closer; it is how we come to respect one another and are bonded by knowing our stories.
I have thought for a while of buying one of the planes that you have modeled. Please choose one for me, and name the price, even though what you do is beyond payment.
Shalom Aleichem,
Fern
Your wish is my command. :-)
Gigantic smile for you on this father's day : - )
a lovely piece, Tom. and there are actually a lot of parallels with my father, although my father sounds like a very different kind of guy. when he started writing his many YA biographies, he told me that we were going into the city to do research at the big library (where I'd never been) because he needed me to help with the research. I was already an old hand at libraries because the local Queens libraries were where I could actually have fun, being very diffident about relying entirely on the vexed relationships I had with the other kids on my block, who were capable of all sorts of chronic bullying (I always blamed my stutter, but I now realize that there was also a general asshole component going on). so we went to the big main reading room (with the huge main card catalog) at 42nd Street (now it's an exhibition space) and I'd look up the books about whatever the subject was, bring them to the librarians and pick them up when they'd arrive from the stacks. this whole process taught me to think of liraries and research as very exciting.
I've thought about this "ploy" of his very often, and it strikes me as brilliant. how did he know to do that?
he also loved typewriters, and I obviously inherited that as well. he wrote all his books (and many hundreds of free-lance magazine assignments) on a big-ass 1919 Woodstock he'd paid five bucks for in a pawnshop when he was still attending DeWitt Clinton with guys like James Baldwin and his old neighbor (and junior high school friend), Paddy Chayefsky.
my father was (and this is something everybody who knew him would say as soon as his name was mentioned) the sweetest person I've ever met.
the week he passed, I spoke with a bunch of his oldest friends, all of whom said that into his seventies, he was no different from the guy he was in high school or college. I've met at least half a dozen people who found it impossible to believe that he'd ever dropped bombs on ANYTHING.
Fathers' Day is irrelevant to me because I think about my dad every day. my only complaint about him (and I said this to him many, many times) was that he set the bar for good human behavior at an intimidatingly high bar. as I've said very recently, today's wretched excuse for "politics" is something he would have found inconceivable.
I suppose I've left out my years of boorish behavior and the embarrassing instances of my horrifying public drunkenness, etc. and that's as much as I'll say about that now.
now THAT felt GOOD...
Uncle Tom, I’m gonna keep this short and sweet. Thanks for being like a dad to me. I am thinking about you on this day as I celebrate being a dad myself. We both have done such a great job breaking the Cleaver Family Dysfunction. Thank you for being there with me and nurturing me during my tough times and good times.
Always and forever, favorite nephew.
What a gift after all those hard years to finally hear him apologize AND to have the relationship finally that should have been there from the beginning.
I was so so lucky to have the dad I did - still miss him.
I’ve never met a son who didn’t have a fraught relationship with his father. You’re so fortunate that yours had the good sense to see through his own history and confess. Good for both souls.
I thank God that I had daughters.
Thank you Tom for sharing your beautiful story about your relationship with your father. Mine is not so good. I wrote some of this on your Mother’s Day post. Because of my dad’s complete lack of caring and support, my mother made up for it with her love and dedication. My dad left my mom with four small children ages 1 through 8. I was 4. I won’t go into all of the details, but he had a pregnant girlfriend. We were living in Southern California and he sent us back to Illinois on the train to my mom’s parents. Long story short, he divorced my mom and married his girlfriend. But the worst of it was he didn’t help support us financially and was absent emotionally. We moved back to San Jose CA where he was living when I was 8. It was his request so we could be closer to him. But it made no difference. He was only critical of us and I never felt any approval or love from him. My mom worked two jobs to support us as he always had an excuse for not paying child support. My mom should have seen an attorney but for her own reasons didn’t. Nothing really changed with our relationship through the years although I tried to open up some honest communication through a letter I sent him and he never responded. My half sisters told me after he died that he had read it and it upset him so much they were mad at me for sending it to him. His health started failing about 5 years ago and he began reaching out to us. He told me he loved me and I sensed a lot of guilt in his voice. I think it was the closest he could come to an apology. Then he was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer and he was put on hospice. He was living near Sacramento with one of my half sisters, coincidentally also a nurse. My dad and I spoke on the phone several times and I felt we made peace the best that we could. But I still feel something missing.
Because something is missing - he never brought his half to the conversations. Owned his own shit.
You’re right Tom. That’s exactly what is missing.
Thank you so much David. I appreciate your very kind words about me, and about the nursing profession. We certainly have not always received the respect, or the understanding of the scope of our practice. And I do know what you mean. If I feel the need to say “god bless you”, I say “Dog bless you” instead. Somebody was dyslexic, because if there is a supreme being , it’s a dog.
And a cat.
it's sad that your father wasn't able to being what you needed to that particular table. but look at what you've accomplished. you have a terribly difficult job dealing with patients (remember I was one of them quite recently) who are, very likely, pretty fucking scared most of the time. and it's obvious to me (and a lot of other people here) that you do it very, very well.
I've been very gratified that there's so much attention being focused on nursing these days. it's a profession in which you can make or break somebody's day when that somebody is in a very fragile state. I'd say "god bless you," but after my long atheist screed, that'd just be dumb. it doesn't matter, though; you know perfectly well what I mean.
and I'm changing my avatar tomorrow...
if I gave the impression that my relationship with my dad didn't have its fraught periods, I'd be lying. but the biggest part of that stuff was me posturing. the cause was probably that high bar he represented. and remember, he was an administrator at the famously leftie college I attended. I avoided getting into any campus trouble for that reason, but could also be pretty disagreeable. thank god I couldn't really take the Far Left split that occurred with the folding of SDS at all seriously.
a few years back, an old girlfriend who was there the whole time (the Marxist/Zionist I've mentioned before) sent me a lovely message talking about the extraordinary grace my father exhibited when the '60s hit the campus and, like most of the other key administrators, he had cause to be very confused, disoriented and very often hostile.
we built models together, but he was only marginally less sloppy than I was. his gifts lay elsewhere. in college, a lot of friends of mine had jibs in his office, and one of them worked with him on various trade publications after he retired from CCNY in '77. they all said he was the best boss they ever had...he had a gift for breaking tasks down and demonstrating how to do them in a way that once you caught on, you'd never forget it.
I could go on about him forever. I miss him terribly, but in his last half year, there were a few moments when I felt like some dementia might be imminent. if that was the case, his aortic aneurysm might have been a blessing in disguise. he was a guy who was all about communication and the prospect of watching him lose his ability to communicate was too horrifying to contemplate.
Dear Karen, at this moment, after reading your post, I reach out to you with warmth. I admire the work you have done to understand as much as you can about your father's weaknesses, in addition to your mother's strength and devotion. You chose a noble profession, and I have noted your caring generosity to the rest of us. Thank you.
Thank you Fern.
Salud, Karen. It was good of you to share with us today,.
Oh Tom, what a beautiful recounting. How wonderful to have had him by your side for so long at the end, and your beginning. Thank you so much for this post, it had me in tears. Happy Remember Your Father Day. ❤️
How lucky you are, what a gift he gave you. Just the fact that he knew exactly what to apologize for must have meant so much. Was your mother kind to him despite her problems in the ‘mother’ department? Their relationship must have been interesting…
When I worked in public schools, I decided that parenthood was just a form of temporary insanity. Of course, I would never behave like some of the insanity I saw. But I did. Not years of trauma but one big mistake that caused my daughter much grief. And I should have known better; I did know better. Except for that moment of temporary insanity.
He and she got along. In his case, I think it was from his sense of duty and familial responsibility; he was very big on the fact that in all the generations of his family, there had never been a divorce (which means there probably should have been). When I was younger, he would disappear down to his workshop while she was "on a tear." I told him that was the one thing I had difficulty forgiving him for, and he agreed he had made a mistake there.
Sounds like a friend who was adored by her father and the target of her alcoholic mother. When she sang his praises, I said he didn’t really intervene with your mother’s treatment, did he. She said, No, he went to his room, and avoided any conflict. Sad
That you two reconciled for those last years of his life warmed my heart, Tom. Thank you for sharing such deeply personal information with us. I send you a hug.
Thank you for this moving history of you and your father--it brought tears to my eyes, but what a beautiful ending😌
Parenting wasn't really "a thing" until Dr. Spock came along, just as teenagers weren't a thing until the '50's. People just grew up, got together, had kids and struggled to make their ways in an often hostile world. Enlightenment seemed to come in the second half of the last century, which may explain your father's insights coming late. The blessing is, as you reported, that he acknowledged mistakes and shortcomings in a relationship that gave him most of the power.
I lucked out in the crapshoot of life by landing with great parents. The darkest cloud in our family life was the inherited overlay of a nonsensical religion. I am grateful on Father's Day that my dad was the antidote to a fear-based religion and that he actually liked kids because there were eight of us..
That was certainly the most moving father's Day story I've ever heard! What a blessing for your father to have opened up like that!
My problems with my father were a milder version of yours, as his apology was a mild version of your father's, but welcome, and he became a better human being in his old age.
My mother was the more interesting parent. She was the Denver Hornbein (via her mother). (There are also St. Louis Hornbeins, and one of them, Tom, recently deceased, was the most interesting of the lot, and there are at least ten obits circulating from his death in early may, including one in the WaPo.)
My mother was the one who diagnosed me with what would be called Asperger's today, back probably in 1956, when I was 2 and 3, when no-one in the US had heard anything of "the spectrum" or anything on it, except for someone who I believe was in the psych dept at University of Washington when my mother was a grad student there. My mother never told me, for reasons I can well imagine, that I consider reasonable, but she told a family friend in 1964, who told her daughter (who is a family friend), who told me after reading a story I wrote a few years ago of a walk my mother and I took when I was not quite three, and how my mother irritated the crap out of me by walking backwards! When I told her to walk normally, she suggested that I try walking backwards!
I fantasize that my mother somehow knew that her words would be repeated to me at such time as it would be helpful--and who knows, maybe she did. All these years later it has given me a sense of relief and understanding.
A beautiful story. You are so fortunate you got to meet and have a loving relationship with your true dad.
Well done Tom.