The most vivid memory I have of my father is of his fist, punching through a door to gain entry into our house. But I never actually saw this. It was 1961, I'd just turned 5, and my parents were in the first stormy throes of their divorce. Earlier in the day, my oldest brother had accidentally broken one of the glass panes in our kitchen door, which my mother had temporarily patched with a flap from a cardboard box. That night my father came to the house to serve my mother legal papers. Discovering he was locked out, he socked through the makeshift windowpane, let himself into the kitchen, then charged up the stairs and into my mom's room. Their ensuing confrontation was heated and behind closed doors.
The fact that I never really witnessed this incident—I was already in bed—yet to this day can easily summon up a mental picture of it has always bewildered me. What kind of yearning compels a little boy, and then a man, to conjure images of domestic havoc he was lucky to escape in the first place? Why not leave well enough alone?
Perhaps it's because traditional mementos of childhood tend to be empty. Scrapbooks selectively browse through the past, cherry-picking its proudest moments. Home movies teem with vacant smiles. By comparison, my invented memory of that night in the kitchen is exciting and disturbing and passionate. It's something worth hanging onto.
I suppose the other reason I cling to the picture of my father's late-night break-in is because it's one of the few memories in which I don't have to share him. Within two years, my parents would be divorced, and dad would sulk off to another city to begin a new family, one that my brothers and I were forbidden to meet for the next 30 years.
"That and ten cents will get you on the subway."
According to family lore, these were the words that my father's father, David, spoke to him on the day he graduated from business school in 1954. My grandfather, a self-made tycoon who had once enjoyed a bit of fame for loaning Israel a million dollars, had just liquidated the family business—this at the very moment my father, diploma in hand, was expecting to join it. Although my grandfather's decision probably made some sort of business sense, it stunned my dad, shattering any dreams he may have harbored about someday succeeding his father as the family patriarch.
In my more charitable moments, I can forgive my grandfather his selfishness. His awkward chilliness toward his son was not uncommon in an era in which men concentrated on commanding households as opposed to living in them. Yet other times I can't help but wonder how my own life would have been different had this man been as creative a grandfather as he was a businessman.
For example, the only thing I remember my grandfather giving me as a child was a reel-to-reel Wollensak tape recorder for my Bar Mitzvah. I loved it, of course, and used it for years. But it wasn't until I was a father myself that I became aware of the other gifts my grandfather could have bestowed.
His cavernous apartment, for instance, overlooked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade route. Imagine the raw adoration and wonder he could have engendered in four small boys—ages 5, 6, 7 and 9—by hoisting them onto a window seat to watch a giant Mighty Mouse float by. Wouldn't I still be replaying those memories today? But we were never invited into my grandfather's home. He was worried we'd make a mess.
I never liked my "Poppa" David, but I don't want to forget him. As an adult, I remain mindful of his example, just as a driver keeps the side of the road in his peripheral vision—conscious of its presence, careful to steer clear. David died in 1989, and I don't remember what happened to the Wollensak.
It was one of those moments I actually caught on film.
Walking into my apartment to meet my new baby girl—his first grandchild—in 1995, my father-in-law, Terry, headed straight for the cradle.
Lifting Bridgette out and holding her up in front of him, like an art curator inspecting a precious vase, Terry smiled wistfully. I quickly snapped a photo of this first encounter, but it wasn't until the film came back that I noticed the softness in his eyes. I had never seen this type of gentleness on a man's face, and it left me breathless.
As he does with his own three daughters, Terry expresses real interest in almost everything about me—from my work to my passion for baseball. And yet I have always had trouble accepting his kindness. Having never experienced this sort of affection from a man, I reflexively distrust it, convinced it will evaporate if I reach out to it. My relationship with my own father, after all, had always been one of longing, not love. All of this was new to me.
I'll never forget the vacation to the Outer Banks I once took with my in-laws. I broke my leg in a jet-ski accident, and shortly afterward Terry sank into a funk. Worried, I asked my wife if he was angry with me. "No," said Alene, "he's mad at himself for not protecting you." I didn't understand. Such a concept—fatherly love without a price—simply didn't register.
All of which left me wondering: How common were men like Terry when I was a child? Moreover, would my own father be a different kind of dad if he were my age today?
This, I suppose, is the practical joke of contemporary parenting for many of us. We try to give to our own children that which we were never given in the first place. We hold fast to our commitment to be better dads than our own. Yet all too often, we feel our grip slip beneath the tug of self-doubt.
Tags:
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family,
family lore,
fatherhood,
fathers,
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flap,
glass panes,
havoc,
late night,
mementos,
memories,
mental picture,
parenting,
relationships,
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throes,
tycoon,
vivid memory,
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