The Sunday Memory Drawer: Thinking About Dad

Today is Father's Day and the annual rotation is such that it would have provided me with a double whammy. Not only is today Paternal Recognition Day but it also would have been my dad's 90th birthday.

Here he sits for some school photo. I can't tell his age in his snapshot, but he might be younger than the fancy suit would suggest. Is it graduation? Confirmation? Who knows? There is really nobody around that I can ask.

Indeed, if Dad were around, I still might not know. Because he never did share any personal information. As were most of the people on his side of the family, silence was golden. Words were few. The showing of emotions was limited at best or worst. And, as a kid in the middle of all this, this just contributed to an ongoing confusion.

With regard to my father, I'd pick up little snippets that somehow got past the verbal censor and run with that knowledge because it was so infrequent. I remember once seeing Dad talk to a woman while he was picking me up from Sunday school. He said her name was Muriel. When I mentioned this to my mother later at home, she sneered.

"That's your father's old girlfriend."

Oh? Well, there's a little something to chew on.

When I had to learn how to type for school, my folks bought me a Smith Corona electric typewriter. Naturally, I hit a lot of speed bumps as I learned to use it. My dad slipped behind the machine and typed like a banshee. Wow. I later told my mother about Dad's typing prowess.

"Well, after the war ended, he went to school and was going to become a court stenographer."

Oh? Another little something to chew on. I asked what happened to that career choice.

"You'll have to ask him."

Of course, I didn't. Because you just didn't.

I wondered about all this pent-up emotion in my father that was destined to make him, in my mind, explode. This can't be good to hold it all in. I started to obsess that he would have a heart attack and die. Every time he was the slightest bit tardy returning from work or the store, I was convinced that he had collapsed dead in some very public place and an ominous phone call was coming momentarily.

I was a weird kid, but, then again, you can see a little bit of the reason why.

This is not to say that I didn't get the usual treatment most sons would get from their fathers. Catches in the driveway, ball games in the summer, movies in the winter. He'd take me to all the war movies. The Longest Day, Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape. I remember him taking me to see the wonderfully funny Operation Petticoat. My father was convulsed in laughter. I enjoyed watching him laugh as much as I did the film itself. You didn't see any kind of emotion often.

A year or two after he died, I had developed a communication with his late brother's former fiancee, Stella. This was the brother killed in France two weeks before WWII ended in Europe and the person I would be named after. During my dad's last years, Stella had resurfaced and spent a lot of time on the phone with him reminiscing. I kept up the dialogue until she herself passed away.

Well, at one point, Stella shared with me some details on her marriage to another guy about two years after my "uncle" was killed. Our entire family was invited and showed up en masse. Apparently, as Stella told it, my father pulled her aside for a moment. And started to sob uncontrollably.

"We're so sorry. We really wanted you in our family."

I was astounded. I didn't know the person in this tale. But, that kind of emotion was possible. Rare. But possible.

I still clamor for more stories like this. They don't come. I fret over the questions I never asked. There is one contemporary of my parents still alive. My father's cousin is still with us in her 90s. But, she no longer remembers who she is.

Some memory drawers will just never be opened again.

If you're lucky and your particular older generation is still around, ask the questions. And ask them soon.

As for me, there is today and a visitation to Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale. I'll ask again. And the silence will continue.

Happy Birthday, Dad. You were still special to me.

Dinner last night: The glorious sausage and peppers at Carlo's in Yonkers.