By Boyd Lemon / Guest contributor
Half of the time my father worked nights, so he had more leisure time during the day than most fathers. He spent much of that time with me. We went to baseball games and horse races and got ice cream cones together — chocolate, of course. He shared more of his time with his son than most fathers in the 1940s and ’50s. He spent countless hours playing with me from age 4 to 12, the years before TV consumed some of our evening time. We played dice. I could add numbers between one and six with ease before any of my peers. I learned the same thing counting spots on dominos and adding the numbers on playing cards.
We played poker, rummy and other card games. I learned about probability from these games. He taught me subtraction by lining up cards and picking some of them up, showing me how many he held in his hand, and how many were left in the line.
He often read to me, not children’s books, but what he was reading — sports, politics and world affairs. He played catch with me. He was the catcher with a catcher’s mitt, and I was the pitcher with the pitcher’s mitt. He wore his usual blue dress shirt, suit pants and neatly tied maroon tie. I wore jeans with holes in the knees and a yellow t-shirt that sagged at the neck. I never saw my father without a blue dress shirt and tie, except the summer when he painted the house. He was tieless. I threw a fastball right over the imaginary home plate. “Strike,” he called. Crouching down like a catcher he gave me the signal for a changeup — two fingers pointed down. I wound up and threw the changeup. High and inside. “Ball,” he muttered.
It was rare for me to be left with a babysitter. On some level, even as a young child, I knew I was the center of the lives of both my parents, especially Daddy. He stood high on a white pedestal.
Two things about my father began to gnaw at me as I approached 15. He insisted that he determine my career, and I began to realize I did not want to be an electrical engineer. And he had very strong opinions and would not tolerate any disagreement. One who disagreed with him was, in his view, either stupid or the enemy, or both, depending on the issue and the circumstances.
As I was exposed to people with different backgrounds, experience and cultures, I began to view my father’s narrow-mindedness with disrespect. He had told me that Mexicans and Negroes were lazy and didn’t deserve to live in this great country. He often referred to them by the derogatory names that were popular with the bigots of the time. He also denigrated Italians (the Scalese’s, our next door neighbors, were loud and emotional, according to him), Germans (too aggressive), Irish (drunks) and Eastern Europeans (I don’t know why). Even the Scottish — they were cheap. Catholics were crazy, he said. And, Jews were obnoxious, cheap and dishonest. “Queets” were perverts.
By the time I was 16 I realized my father’s views were wrong and cruel. A schism between us developed, and I rebelled. By the time I graduated from high school we were barely speaking to each other. My father had a heart attack and died when I was 23.
For much of the next 33 years I helped raise my own four children. I congratulated myself that I was not treating my children the way he treated me. I gave them the space and freedom to be themselves. It never occurred to me that in doing so, I might have restrained the expression of love and caring that my father had expressed for me. Occasionally, a swelling of guilt would arise from somewhere within when I thought about him, but I mostly repressed those thoughts and the tears that would have flowed if I had allowed them to surface.
I met my 24 year old son at Harbor Restaurant in Santa Barbara in 1996. After some catching up chat, I asked him what I thought was just a question to make conversation, since he and I had difficulty discussing things that really mattered to us. “How’s your mom?” I asked.
“That’s a sore subject,” he said, grimacing. “She drove her third husband nuts and left him a few months ago. She got fired from her job. She’s strung out on prescription drugs. And she’s so irrational and obnoxious I can’t stand being around her. I’ve had it. I don’t ever want to see her again. As far as I’m concerned I don’t have a mother.”
“I had no idea she was so bad,” I said, and we sat in silence for a while. Memories of my father crept slowly into my mind.
“Son,” I said, “you do have a mother, however flawed she may be. She will always be your mother. Your denial can’t change that. You may need to create a little distance between her and you right now, but don’t write her off. Don’t throw her completely out of your life. Show her whatever love you can. She needs it more than ever now. She’s your mother, and she raised you the best way she knew how, and with love, as best she could love. I guarantee you if you write her off, you’ll live to regret it deeply. I know.”
“I feel like I’m better off without her in my life, dad.”
“Let me tell you about my dad.” And I told him what I have written here. My eyes filled with tears. “And I’ve had to live with the guilt ever since,” I said, not able to articulate the last three words through my sobs. We cried together.
Finally, he said, “Thanks, Dad. I’ll go see her next weekend.”
My talk with my son finally brought to the surface my paradoxical passion of love and hate for my father and the profound guilt I felt. I thought a lot about those feelings during the next few months — driving, sitting in my recliner at home, walking on the beach and during my personal version of prayer. I realized that my father, like all of us, was flawed, that he loved me deeply in the way he could love, that he did the best he could to be a good parent. And in many ways he was an exceptionally good parent. I realized that I have a lot of his characteristics. Many of them I carry with pride. I also have some of his faults, but like him, I do the best I can. One of those faults was not to forgive him while he was still alive. Like him, I just couldn’t do it. I finally realized I loved him. I forgave him. But I also forgave myself, because I too am a flawed human.
— Boyd Lemon is a retired lawyer, who re-invented himself as a writer, living in Ventura. He recently returned from a year in France and Italy. His memoir, “Digging Deep: A Writer Uncovers His Marriages,” has just been published. It is about his journey to understand his role in the destruction of his three marriages. He believes it will help others to deal with their own relationship issues. Excerpts are on his website, http://www.BoydLemon-Writer.com