What is something you and your father did together?
Curiously enough this question came to me in a dream last night, it was supposed to be something innocuous an older family member of my friend family asked me while we had a moment together waiting for this party to begin.
My first defensive reaction was:
"Not a god-damned thing, he's been dead over thirty years!"
Of late in my writing I have been basking a bit much in my anger towards my dad for being an overall disappointment. The one thing about exploring a specific time period is that it begins to jog memories loose, and also adjusts you're perceptions of the past. It wasn't always like that, as a small child I adored my father.
I wanted to emulate him in every way, so much so my mom would say, 'everytime you come back from your father I have to deprogram you.'
At the time I didn't really understand what she meant, as a full-ass adult now I do. But the idea of being programmed made me sound like a robot, and I adored all things robot-related. #Low-keyProud
My father enjoyed chewing sticks, which I picked up myself to see If I could get into them, I still have nearly a full bag in my cabinet, maybe two. As a kid I would put other things in the side of my mouth to emulate his stick, sometimes he would give me one and I felt like the most important person in the world.
He had a very low register to his way of speaking, once again I attempted to lower my child-like squeak to that of a grown ass man, obviously with mixed results. I even thought the way he moved through the world was amazing, and mirrored his gait look very foolish with my too short legs trying to do his pimp bop.
"We read comic books together."
This was factual, this was true, this was a piece of him that I still held on to. I in fact still have some of the earliest comic books he gave me, some as old as forty-five years and obviously in taters. In other instances I sought to replace books I remember he had given me, like the spoof of Batman and Robin by Howard the Duck. I can recall so clearly being mesmerized by the cover details, the colors, the fact that Howard was wearing black and white Chuck Taylors as opposed to boots, re-gendering Robin as a foxy red-headed lady, it was all so titillating. Also the photo-realistic qualities of the artwork made it feel like this was not an illustration but a photo of something that had really happened. Its important to remember that as children the boundary between reality and fantasy is very thin and it made me think this world existed somewhere.
I found myself on eBae looking for a very specific edition of Aesop's Fables with an orange cover and black and white illustrations all throughout, because I had recalled clearly my father reading this book to me as a child. Now he also said he read Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book when I was a baby, I have no recollection of that and ergo not as clear an attachment. The book I do in fact remember he not only read to me, but encouraged my critical thinking by talking about what we just read.
"We played handball together."
Mind you even though I think I was just shy of becoming a teen I was no where near as good as him, he having played in championship tournaments around the city. We used a court that was only a few dozen feet from his parent's home. He taught me handball and we played, but I hadn't even begin to hit puberty and my soft palms never adjusted to the sting of the little blue ball. I never cried out, but I would never become a fan like he was.
"We took the subway together."
Now this shouldn't be all that special, but for a rusty-dusty kid from a city that could really be a town, riding any train was a treat for my car-adjusted existence. He would pick me up on the Metro North, which was clean and had a smooth ride, but with him living primarily around Harlem we would change to the subway and back in the day they weren't the pristine things they are now. They were soiled, smelly and graffiti-strewn in essence they were the highest form of the New York experience.
He took me from Harlem, to the Bronx where his parents lived and I am sure sometimes even the far off place called Brooklyn. I was like the kids I notice today highly entertained not only by looking out the window of the filthy contrivances but staring at all the queer characters that used this vehicle as a means of transport. Bump Barnum and Bailey's, the train was where the three-ring circus really was.
"We played board games together."
In my young head this was monumental, because my mom never actually played with us ever. She seemed to always be perpetually tired even on her days off, so my brothers and I usually played amongst ourselves. But playing a board game with an adult was the pinnacle of childhood, but like I do myself now with my niblings, nieces and nephews there was some education behind his choice in games.
It was called Senet, based on an ancient Egyptian board game. It involved these wooden sticks a rectangular board, other wooden pieces and hieroglyphic-like markings. I could never recall the actual name of the game but I did remember the design elements, and working closely with Google found it, then pursued acquiring one for myself which I did on eBae.
I still love board games I love the competition, the back-stabbing the adventure, more importantly its something that you can play amongst close friends or family and can occupy you for hours. I of course also played Monopoly with my dad, that is a staple everywhere. But it was Senet that stuck with me decades later and I was so happy to play it with the kids, passing this tradition on to another generation.
Relationships with parents on a good day can be complicated, I think this natural friction is multiplied with their absence. The deficiency leads to the creation of characters that may or may not reflect the actual people. I remember the first time I felt it was actually okay to be angry with my mom, it felt impossible because I had deified her, putting her on a pedestal so high the luster of the polish would never crack. I realized that she too was human, and had failed me in other ways then just not being here anymore, and it was okay for me to have less than pleasant feelings about her and some of her decisions.
On the other hand my father was condemned from jump, to be fair he had earned his position when he had attempted to murder me as a young teen. But no one should ever be solely defined by their worst day, and I had never given him the benefit of the doubt that up to that point he had never laid a hand on me. To be clear I am in no way justifying his actions or his mother's inactions to call the police and have him arrested, but I think giving him broader context is important to understanding who he really was.
He was a tortured, highly intelligent, very literate man in constant pain from his exposure to Agent Orange during the war. He was an advocate for Black rights and autonomy, a wizard and friend to all children, a poet using his words to express his love for his family and his outrage about a society that was never here for him. He was an educator, giving his second born a very African-influenced name so that he could always hold his head high, a philosopher questioning our existence and wondering how we as a human race could be better and do better. He was a low-key nerd having a voracious appetite for science-fiction, fantasy and comic books which paired nicely with his love for jazz, blues and other contemporary rhythm and blues music.
He was a dichotomy, having married a woman only thirteen years younger than his mom, and three years younger than his aunt. He was complicated, being his parents oldest child and unlike his special needs brother ended up being more disappointing and needy. He was haunted by a war he should have never been in and being a parent to children he would never actually raise. He was a study in contrast, having been born to upper middle-class parents he had so much potential but spent his entire adult life on some kind of state or government support.
At the end of the day he was my dad, an honorific I usually never use for him because he never let me call him that. I think in some ways he was surprised he was a parent, I feel like he may have been developmentally arrested around his late teens right after when he registered to join the Marines and he never found his way back to who he really was.
The least I can do to honor him is to recognize him for not only his failings but for his successes, I think its what anyone would want of any one else. And unlike so many invisible fathers everywhere there were memories of things that we did together and in those things we shared our happiness.
[Photos by Brown Estate, Subway photo by Christopher Morris all rights reserved.]
A lot of who I am today stems from experiences with my parents. With my father, I learned the magic of laughter and happiness in the home (my dad was always laughing and smiling), how to focus and have fun at anything I do, and the power of believing in someone and my own self. And now, as a parent today, I’m seeing these same experiences and bonds forming with my…
