My Father's Heart

May 20 1972

Ultimately it was my father’s heart that betrayed him, one spring Saturday morning, there in southern California, in a house under the walnut trees. He’d spent part of the morning mowing what he called “the back forty” with our balky self propelled reel power mower, laying grass into windrows and dodging the piles of “donations” from our two large dogs. For a lawn that was never fertilized, it grew surprisingly well, especially over the septic field that was none too compliant with code and from time to time, especially after a heavy rain, treated the lawn to a good dose of organically sourced nitrogen. It also grew well in some spots that the dogs had treated though their treatments were just as likely to kill the lawn and freckle it with dead spots as to make it grow more abundantly.

The yard was large, by southern California standards, where water was relatively scarce and we soaked the grass anyway with a flip-flop sprinkler that sometimes ran until we went to bed. You couldn’t really call it a lawn. It grew a variety of crab grass, Bermuda grass, dandelions, chick weed, purslane and something with thick saw like edges and, here and there, the southern California delicacy- dichondra. Mostly it was weeds that we kept green and trimmed and raked and it passed for a lawn in our middle class neighborhood, perched high above the Ventura river, which most time of the year, was just boulders sand and dust.

But the lawn. Our duplex, shared by 6 children and parents on one side, and my grandparents on the other, sat on a third of an acre or so, with a towering poplar, a deodar pine that was a weed itself. A dozen walnut trees, remnants of an orchard that grew before the houses were built. A stand of box elders, a hedge of bamboo and a row of sturdy prolific roses, that were first my grandfather’s joy, and then mine. And one single nectarine tree that grew the most wonderful heavenly sweet fruit imaginable in this world or the next.

So it was my father’s heart that betrayed him. He mowed the back forty, came in for a break, snapped on the television to catch “War Zone” a Saturday movie that featured, well, war movies and headed for his favorite chair, a scratchy well worn platform rocker. He never made it to the rocker. His last words to no one in particular, but maybe to Ruth my second sister were, “Your thespian brother can mow the rest when he gets up.”

And then his heart betrayed him. And stopped cold. And never started again. He collapsed all in a heap, knocking his rocker against the wall and startling Ruth, who was dusting the maroon Japanese lacquer dish that Mom and Dad brought back from Japan. The family memories go fuzzy here and there. Ruth remembers calling Mom, and ran to get Richard up. At first Richard was confused and thinking Dad was ill, brought water and then seeing him, sprawled on the parquet floor, called the fire department. Janet flew next door and got Kenny, a robust oil field worker.

Kenny and Mom tried to revive him, as did the firemen when they arrived. But the ambulance crew recognized his demise and called it thus. So Dad never made it to his rocker.

Dad had experienced his share of trauma, serving in the Korean War in a MASH unit, keeping the field hospital running in some capacity. Losing his parents at a relatively young age. Being ill and losing a job in his late forties and being on welfare to keep his family in one piece. Getting serious depression and not getting effective treatment for it. Pondering whether one or both of his elder sons would be drafted and shipped out to Viet Nam. Then watching one son enlist while the other became a draft resister (and later failed the pre-induction physical much to his great relief).

I didn’t know my father. I was familiar with him, and loved him and saw bits and pieces of him here and there. But did I know him? Hardly. I mean, there was that time of growing up with him and doing father-son stuff like fishing and playing catch and the time we watched a monster thunderstorm roll over our little part of Baltimore from the safety of our porch. Rites of passage-he was there-when I joined the Boy Scouts and took my oath. And when I swam on the swim team he was hanging on the chain link fence, watching. He was there when I graduated from high school. And when I dropped out of college.

And we tried on some words for size in my teen years but mostly it was awkwardness and misunderstanding and little losses and small grievances that passed without mention. There was that time, in my early twenties when I went to see a mildly risqué movie and ran into him in the lobby. If I could have shrunk down to nothing and run out the door that would have been better than the deep embarrassment we both felt. Instead of running we sat together and after he gave me a ride home. We never mentioned it, just like the silent-but-deadly that no one will own up to, we let it sit there, a small moment, a splinter under the skin of our relationship. They were just there like oxygen, those fragile innocent incidents that were as much a part of growing up and away, as the tie-that-binds in the father and son rituals of the 50’s and 60’s.

Let’s wax the car together. Or Dad would pass wrenches while I fiddled with the 1960 VW bug. He didn’t care that he couldn’t tell a coil from a condenser. And neither did I. We were spending time together. Fishing in the Chesapeake and catching only blue crabs with our bamboo poles when I was oh-so-much younger. But really it was the all rituals that pulled us closer and not just the ones that strike us as being the obvious ones exclusive to the male domain.

On Sunday mornings as all 8 of us got ready for church, he tied my tie. “Chin up son.” And I raised my chin while he fiddled with my collar and got the tie just so. So perfect that after church I often slipped the tie off over my head, still knotted, and hung it on the tie rack for next Sunday. Slipped my cuff links through the cuffs. A little gentleman, that was me. He slicked down my hair and when it rebelled, he pretended to spit on it and comb it through. I was supposed to be grossed out but really I thought it was funny.

Like when he’d toot at the dinner table and all six kids were stifling laughter while Mom chastised him gently, “Bob.” but then he’d say, “Tickles when you do it in the bathtub,” and no one could stop the gales of guffaws that circled over the meatloaf and lima beans and mashed potatoes. And he would pretend to be chagrined, but not really.

Not really, because one memorable day he took John and I aside and told us a couple of mildly off color jokes. Potty humor. Both jokes featured the English and today, it’s as if he were standing in front of us, miming a cockney accent all the way to the ribald punch line. I remember every word of every line of those two jokes. And so does John, my elder brother.

Not even showers were safe haven from his sense of humor. A glass of cold water tossed over the curtain elicited shocked cries and “Daa-aad.”

Though sometimes he could not say it, he loved us. There was no doubt in my mind, even when a deep silence stretched between us, like an unbridged chasm, when I decided to move out on my own. For three days, he said not one word to me, even though I was going only a few miles away. Mom cooled him off with one of their late night bedroom conversations. I could hear murmurs through the wall of the room I shared with John and Richard, though just then John was in the Air Force. Mom’s quiet assurance, Dad’s uncalculated questioning. And then she warmed him up and we began talking again.

Still the awkward silences, the ‘what do we talk about now’ kind of empty spots as a young man begins to assert himself and make his way in the world and the father, longing for the companionship of the boy, must reconcile his love for the child, now grown, startlingly fast, into and through adolescence into manhood. The young man no longer depends on the father and it’s the father’s loss of his sense of self with the changing of the rules and the roles. The days of playing catch yield to a game of chess which yields to wrenching on a car and later still talks about jazz and Wagner and Schumann’s works for solo piano.

In the back of his mind, as it is in mine now, thinking of my 16 year old daughter, he still saw a tow headed, sparkly eyed mischievous boy who swam and biked all day and played outside until the streetlights came on. And he had to juxtapose that with a man his own height, with curling hair and a serious girlfriend. And accept them both. As now I accept my daughter’s phases as being all part of the same woman-child that I treasure.

It was in those days of first making my way that we began tentative overtures into our changing roles. I acquired an old mower and began mowing lawns for a living. And he fed me jobs, maintaining the grass of homes that his savings and loan had repossessed. I moved into a tiny studio apartment and he would drop by just for a couple hours of conversation over tea, with my portable LP player spinning black vinyl records of his favorite music. I joined up with a tiny obscure branch of Catholicism and he came to Holy Eucharist just to marvel at this man-boy serving at the altar in a purple cassock and splendidly white surplice. He loved our music and never failed to come forward for communion, though he was as dyed in the wool a Presbyterian as anyone I’ve known down these many years.

I have strayed far afield. It is my affliction, that when I open up my memories of my father, they pour out, many unbidden, some unwelcome, all requiring my attention, now that I am 53, two years shy of his age when he died.

Dad had a job, his first civilian job out of the Army. He retired after 21 years and numerous postings and various positions. But his first job after the military was head of housekeeping for a hospital. I think it suited him and we were happy that he was happy. But then one day, he started having chest pains and a nurse recognized what was happening and got him help. Not long after that, he lost that job. I don’t know if it was mutually agreed on, but lose he did. And then passed several months of unemployment, and welfare, and my leaf raking money going into the family pot. I was just 15. And he stewed and fretted, under this invisible yoke of no job. Self image, that was it. A man is defined by what he does, at least in his own mind. The provider, bread winner, the hunter, bringer home of the bacon. To us, he was more than that, but perhaps in his mind, being a dad was just not enough. He needed to know that he could take care of us, provide us with food, clothing and shelter. As well as his love.

He got a temporary job with Manpower, something manual, and loved it. He came home beaming and eager to share his day of shifting boxes. Sure, it was a bit menial, but to him it was life with a capital L, work with a capital W.

And then he landed a job with a savings and loan. Avco. A largish institution in Ventura. He started out as a mail room clerk and quickly moved into supplies officer and building superintendent something or other. He had his own office and a circle of tellers and clerks and loan officers who seemed to really like him. One weekend, he convinced me to help with the audit. My job was to pull packages of transactions, all on paper in the basement, and take them to the auditors for review. It was not challenging at all but it was fun to be with him and watch what he did and ride to and from work for a few days. But it wasn’t me. I liked being outdoors with plants and dirt and tools. Anyway, he offered me the same job he had started out in and, when I turned it down, he took it right in stride. And then he started getting me yard care and lawn mowing jobs from his co-workers or for Avco, keeping up the yards of the repossessed houses.

My days at this age, 53, are sometimes marked with anxiety about the unknown future. After all, I share some of the same risk factors that my father had. I am too sedentary, but my blood pressure is good and I don’t smoke and my cholesterol is marginal. And I take an anti-depressant because, like Dad, life got me down too many times and this last time, it was too hard to get up. So I look into the future and wonder if my demise will be like his, so sudden and shocking, like cold water thrown over the shower curtain. Frankly, it has made me lose sleep on a few nights, lying in the silence of my out-in-the-woods apartment, feeling my heart stir and pump in my chest, some nights noting the occasional pause of an irregular beat.

I do what I can. Eat healthy. Well, usually. Try to ride my bike now and again. See my doctor regularly. Take the medicine that keeps me from slipping into a bleak sadness. I see my father’s face every day, in an old black and white studio photo that hangs in my dining area. Dad’s dressed in a suit, the remainder of his hair neatly slicked back, clean shaven, round glasses perched on his nose, his tie carefully knotted, a white handkerchief in the breast pocket of the suit coat.

It may have been his heart that betrayed him, but it was with all of his heart that he loved me. And its taken me a good 34 years since his death to see all the signs and wonders of his love. A father loves his children, unless he’s a dysfunctional monster, sometimes without knowing why or how he came to love them. It’s a great mystery, how a man grows in love toward first, the tiny squalling bundle of a new born, then the mischievous 10 year old, and still later, the querulous adolescent, fast becoming a young man. But love he does.

Daddy loved me, with all his heart, though his heart betrayed him. Sometimes I tried to ignore the gifts of his love, the things that did not say in so many words how much he loved me. Like how upset he was when I decided to move out on my own. Like the unexpected visits at my tiny apartment. Like coming to evening service at my catholic church, just to see me serve. All too self involved, I lived my own life without knowing really the depth of his care, concern.
So now at 53, I watch my daughter growing up and growing away. Days are when she prefers to be with her friends. And much as I miss and treasure her company, I have to make peace with who she is becoming, lest I fall into a trap of self pity. And maybe if I can make that peace, my heart will go on beating happily, loving her in simple ways as only a father can love.

My father’s heart may have betrayed him. But this late in life, as I stare into the mirror, one that reflects both past and future, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my father loved me.
And though he is gone these 32 years I love him too.