Father's Day

Today is Father's Day, which is always an odd day for me. My father died when I was seven - in 1975 - and that event is probably the single biggest of my life, realistically. His death changed and shaped almost everything from that time forward. I bear only a passing resemblance in a lot of ways to my three siblings, the youngest of which is still 10 years older than me, primarily because of the difference in the amount of time that we had a father.

I don't drink more than socially because of him. I don't say goodbye to people because of his death. I spent most of my life afraid that I was going to die in my early-40's the way that he did. I almost didn't have children because of my fears that any child might have to experience what I did. And, my development as a person has always been a little off due to not having had a father.

My father was colorful. A star high school basketball player, instead of college, he chose to marry my mother and become a bookie. I don't know that he chose to be an alcoholic. In piecing together stories, I'm not entirely sure that he wasn't already an alcoholic by the time that he was making those decisions in his late teens.

He was also big...6-foot-6 and at his heaviest around 300 pounds. Into my 20's when I would go back to my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, I would still be introduced to certain groups of people as "Big Paul's youngest." I would then be greeted with stories, memories of me as a toddler at either a bar or a racetrack. The local horse racing establishment, Delaware Park, was an unintentional playground for me. To this day, I remember the smell of the stale beer, the cigar smoke and the old men that would greet my father as he walked through the concourse. I still have memories of the early-70's decor of the offices, where I was left sometimes with a secretary so that my father could tend to business. Ironically, when I tried to take my own son to the park to watch some early morning training sessions on a trip, I was banned from walking with him through the same building, since it's now a casino.

My father died when I was young enough that I have really only fleeting memories of him. I remember more of my early childhood than most people...things that I committed to my a section of my consciousness right after he died in an effort to remember. But those memories are through the prism of a child. They're not firm. They don't have any frame of reference.

I remember the good. The time that he bought me chicks at Easter even though we lived in an apartment. The Christmas that he hit a big bet - in addition to making book, he turned too much of the profit around on bets of his own - and I awoke to a living room full of unwrapped toys, bought on a Christmas Eve shopping spree.

He loved movies, one of the things that were imparted on me, and he was fairly indiscriminate in what he exposed me to. I saw "The Godfather" during its original run, which would have made me 4-years-old. I remember going to see Bond movies with him and, infamously, to see Ralph Bakshi's X-rated animated film "Fritz the Cat."

He also exposed me to live theater, taking me to my first full-length production, "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Of course, I also remember the bad. The fact that my piggy-bank never seemed to actually hold any of the money I was given at birthdays. The fights with my mother, the later ones that frequently resulted in my dad going to live with my grandmother. 

Waking up to use the bathroom when I was first sleeping in a bed to find a kitchen full of men playing cards, the boisterous nature of which caused some nightmares that I can still recall. The times that I was still at a bar past midnight when I was 4 and 5-years-old. The depression that one time led him to tear apart his own mother's place in search of a gun. And, the final stages of his life, when he was vomiting blood from perforated ulcers that were unable to heal because of his addiction to alcohol.

I remember where I was when the news came that he had died and one of the only real things that I can pinpoint about what I felt about that is that there wasn't surprise. I don't remember crying that much - although certainly I could just have pushed that aside - although I do remember stealing away from the get-together after his funeral to go cry by myself. Famously, I apparently walked into the wake for my father and exclaimed, "Well, there you are!" to the casket, starting a lifetime of using humor to try to deflect having to expose real feelings. His mother, my grandmother, who had already lost a husband and two children previously, sat at his wake loudly commenting about the people coming to show their respects. In her defense, she was hard of hearing and believed herself to be whispering. She wasn't.

For years, my father's grave was unmarked...something that my siblings and I would continually catch grief about from his extended family. My sister was the executor of his will and, being 23 at the time of his death, was a little overwhelmed. My mother, at that point mostly disabled from a car accident, was only involved to a point. And, my brothers were still teenagers. Nobody at the time knew what they were doing, and at a certain point, nobody wanted to go back and correct it.

Last year, the 35th since his death, I finally went through the process of getting a headstone for my father through the VA. It was a little more tricky since I was doing it decades later and most of his Army file was destroyed in a fire in the '70's, but eventually everything was signed that needed to be signed and I got an e-mail from the cemetery letting me know that the stone was in place.

Someday, I'll probably go see it.

My sons don't really know much about this. The man that they call Grandpa is really my best friend's father...the head of the family that I lived with during most of my teen years. They kind of know that I have siblings that aren't my best friend and his brothers, but only vaguely. When I mention my sister, most of the time they think I'm referring to my other best friend - their godmother, the woman that introduced their parents.

When the death of my father came up about a month ago, my two boys jumped up, suddenly worried that something had happened to their "Grandpa." When it was explained that the reference was to my actual father, they calmed down and went back to watching SpongeBob.

Eventually, as they get older, they'll start to catch on to the stories about their real grandfather. At some point, I'll let them hear it all. Both the good and the bad. By the time that they hear it though, hopefully the positive influences that they're getting from some of the same male role models that helped move me into manhood will already be what defines them.

Every day, though, I say a little prayer that one of the positive influences on their life is me. I learned what not to do from my father, but thankfully, many men stepped forward during my childhood to try to teach me the right way. With luck, what I pass along to my two sons will honor what they imparted on me.

And, maybe...just maybe...I can also impart a little of the good from "Big Paul."