Those Precious Few Fatherly Moments

On occasion, I could see why my mother was attracted to my father.  He was a brilliant man, highly educated, and ambitious.  He was very handsome, too, and charismatic.  I’m certain she had no idea that the man for whom she left college to  marry and bare three children in quick succession would turn out to be a man who would only grace his children with precious few moments of real  fatherhood.  My father died when I was 29, a month following a stoke he suffered while working in his office on Mother’s Day in 1989.  That day also happened to be my mother’s birthday, May 13th.  This wasn’t his first brush with death and I wasn’t convinced at the time that this would be his last either.  I’m sure my brothers might have made that same calculation when they refused to accompany my mother and me to visit him in the hospital.  They had good reasons for being estranged from our father and so did I.

Despite being brilliant and educated and handsome and charismatic, our father was an alcoholic with violent tendencies.  He made our childhoods a living hell coupled with moments of heaven.  The same man who would bring us an array of candy bars just for fun after work, would play board games with us, and would take us to great restaurants and fun outings was the same man who might kick the door down in the middle of the night and mistreat our mother.

Before I was aware of what was happening, my parents separated and my mother remarried when I was five.  But this was a man who, instead of mistreating her, seemed to take pleasure in beating my brothers.  He never laid a hand on me and in fact I had a princess bedroom and great toys and a wonderful birthday party during that short year.  I seemed to have two dads who doted on me.  But then, the following summer I was sent to Detroit and when I returned, he was gone and my father had moved us into a nice house in a new neighborhood.  I’ve never learned the details of what exactly happened that summer I was sent away, and that man’s name was only  mentioned briefly when I inquired about him in my early twenties.  I received no real answers and understood that it was better to leave the topic alone.

By age nine or ten, my parents were together again.  And shortly thereafter, I found myself standing between them one night, pleading with my father to put away the gun with which he was determined to kill her.  I was convinced that it was his love for me that saved her life that night.  Thereafter, I spent many nights standing between his fist and her face.  To this day, I bear the scars of cuts resulting from being tossed across the room trying to protect her.  I quickly learned that calling the police, which I did several times, was of no good use.  Apparently, men had a right in those days to “discipline” their wives and they would only encourage my drunken father to sleep it off or spend the night in jail.  I stopped calling.

I slept when he was sober and laid awake most nights when he wasn’t in case I needed to intervene.  The violence got so bad. that if she had warning, we would escape out the back door when he came in and sleep in the car at a drive-in movie until mom was certain he was asleep and we could return to our beds.  Eventually, with the help of my mother’s parents, we left permanently, living with my aunt,  living in a motel, and then moving miles away to a nice home in a new neighborhood, far from the city and my father. They did get back together for a brief try when we kids were teenagers.  But by then, none of us kids were going to live obediently with the violence.  He the house, but not my life for good.

Despite all the trauma, turmoil, and all the heartache he caused, I still loved my father.  I hated many of the things he did and I thought I actually hated him, too.  But in the end, I couldn’t fight the hardwiring in my brain that made me love him.  He was both good and bad (as all of us are to some degree).  There were moments when he provided me with really good life advice that I continue to rely on today.  I still remember his warm embraces and kisses.  I recall feeling cherished as a daughter.  My self-esteem is tied up in his love and acceptance of me.  Those  precious and too few moments of true fatherhood shaped, sustain, and strengthen me.  Those moments of sheer terror, also shaped and strengthen me, but in a very different way that I will share in my post next week.