He took me
and my younger brother to feed the ducks at a pond on base.
When I was 6
and 7, but not so much when I was 8, I would walk the three blocks to the
corner near the mailbox where the bus would drop him off after a day’s work at
the Pentagon.
Why not so
much when I was 8? By then, I would ride my bike to meet him and there was this
one time when my mom pulled up in the Woody station wagon with my four siblings
and said, “Let’s go to McDonald’s.” But there was my spanking new banana bike
that I had received for my 8th birthday. “Just leave it,” he said.
But I couldn’t. So the six of them drove off and I returned home to an empty
and quickly darkening house. That might very well have been the last time I
went to meet him at the mailbox.
He was
harsh. Four out of five of us feared him mightily. One stood his ground each
and every time. So my brother took the brunt of his force – after my mother, of
course – and at least I didn’t get the worst of it. Third worst. Right in the
middle. Just like birth order.
I recall
violent episodes, but not too many. I think my sister recalls far more. I have
blocked it (mostly) out, preferring to remember almost nothing of my childhood
rather than recall the bad.
But if you
thought childhood was gingerly walking around my father, the teen years were
far worse. That’s when my mom asked for
the divorce. And that’s when it all fell apart for my dad. No details
necessary, really, on this, what would have been his 83rd birthday. Would have been had he not died, with us
reunited for several years, when he was 56.
I loved him
then. I loved him through it all. And I’m heartened, now, as I near the age of
his death, that imperfect parenting can be forgiven, and love remains.
Happy
birthday, Dad!
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