I tell people my father is a cyborg.
What I mean by this is, he's got a mechanical heart valve. My stepmother claims that she can hear it ticking, just barely, between his breaths in the small hours of the morning. I'm not entirely sure I believe her, but I like the idea anyway.
He used to have a pig valve, which wore out. I remember going to see him in the hospital when he got that first surgery, twenty-three years ago. I was still small enough that he seemed like a giant; the day would come wherein I would learn that my dad was not the tallest man in the world, that, really, he was on the short side of average, but then I was in awe of his size. We had brought him a stuffed Oscar the Grouch, to keep him company during his stay--again, at the time this seemed appropriate, but now I know that this surely seemed silly to him. My father is not sentimental. Or, at least, he pretends not to be.
These days I wonder more and more if he's secretly sensitive, a man who feels deeply in his quiet way.
We walked into the room, and now I'm not sure if I remember it exactly how it happened, if maybe I have reconstructed this event over the course of two decades, rebuilt it into something that bears only a passing resemblance to what my mother or sister might recall. But here it is nonetheless: We, my mother and sister and I, walked into his hospital room, and my father was standing at the window, as tall as he ever would be, back to us, hands clasped behind him, gazing out the window, but also not out the window, looking for all the world like a man who had come close to death and not blinked, dignified and proud in the understated way of someone with no interest in proving it to anyone. Hospital gown notwithstanding. Then he turned, and looked at us, and smiled.
With what was once alarming frequency, people ask me what my father does for a living. I usually tell the truth, which is that I'm honestly not sure. He explained it to me a few times when I was growing up, but he got promoted frequently enough that I could never be sure if it was still true (and what the hell does a "systems consultant" do, anyway?). I know he is employed in the tech industry, by a company that manufactures fiberchannel switching equipment, but that's as far as I get--he could be a marketer or an engineer or an accountant for all I know.
This might seem like I don't care, but that isn't true. I would love to know what my dad does to make a buck, but he doesn't tell anyone about it. He says it's boring, that nobody would be interested, then by way of proof starts talking about trunk overrun failures, and it turns out he's completely right.
Perhaps incidentally, one of his favorite movies, one of the half-dozen or so he's ever owned an actual copy of, is True Lies.
On those occasions when I don't tell the truth about my father's profession, that's what I say: He is a spy. He is paid to steal The Documents or, in this day and age, The Hard Drive. Or whatever it is that spies actually do. And you know what's crazy?
People usually believe me. Especially if they actually know him.
I don't think it's how I sell it--I'm a good liar, but I don't think I'm that good. Apparently, he just seems like the type. He is unassuming but charming, eminently competent, and possesses a skillset of almost incomprehensible breadth. He can catch, gut, and cook any fish from trout to salmon, then go and build a carport or seal a driveway or build a house, teach a child how to pass a baseball or a football or a volleyball, tear apart an engine and put it back together, set up a wireless network, or cut down a tree, and has done all of these things. I've seen the proof. He is essentially a Washington-flavored version of Hank Hill. And he can dance, and tell a joke. And at my sister's wedding, he got drunk and hit on my date, and she was flattered.
So I know, intellectually, that my dad is a white-collar schmuck working a job he likes but nobody else could ever possibly give a shit about. Except, he might not be. He might be a spy.
When I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, the right age, at any rate, to have some stupid opinions and be utterly confident in them, I had an argument with him about homosexuals. I made the assertion that gays are not born, but "made gay by gay influences."
I know now that this statement would have seemed completely repulsive to him, and with good reason, because it totally is. But his response was not to raise his voice, or judge or condemn me. Instead, he said this:
"That's really not how people work. I know it might not seem that way right now, but maybe when you're older and you've had more experience, you'll understand that."
I didn't respond. It was not his words that gave me pause, but his tone: it seemed to suggest unfathomable disappointment and sadness, and resignation that I'd arrived at a position he found disgusting. And, despite this, he still respected me enough to suggest that it didn't have to be true.
My parents divorced shortly after his heart surgery. I've never asked him about it. I wanted to ask him for a long time, to confront him, ask him why he left me, but I lived with my mother for the following ten years and came to understand exactly why he couldn't stand her anymore.
But it has come up, as things do in conversation--well after the time when all reasonable people are in bed, and we've gotten to the point in the night when we're all too drunk to play trivial pursuit anymore, and it seems like a good idea to listen to the Cowboy Junkies or Pink Floyd or anything else that is more suited to the kind of introspection you don't want to talk about the next day, music that brings out the worst in groups, that behooves everyone to fill in the pauses in conversation with all of their saddest memories--the divorce and the next ten years where I saw my dad only every other weekend, when he wasn't around even when I needed him most. These things come up.
And in these moments, when, I am certain, he thinks I am not paying attention, he gets a look on his face. It is a look that only someone from a soul-crushingly repressed family like ours could ever recognize: a look of absolute abject shame.
So I don't bring this subject up. There was a time when I might have, when I was angry and bitter and frustrated with him and everything else in my life, and I would have relished the opportunity to hurt him, taking revenge for the worst part of my childhood. But as I get older, I find it hard to blame him. He was not an absentee: he was there on every single one of his arranged weekends, even when he was ill, and when he had finals to study for, and right after he remarried, times when no-one would have blamed him for asking our mother to keep us this time, just this once, I'll get the next, no problem. And he never made other plans at the same time, never left us alone, myself and my sister, always cooked breakfast for us (something my mother never, ever did), always made us feel like we were wanted, and not just another in a growing list of obligations. I've heard about far, far worse fathers from friends who weren't from supposed broken homes. It seems to me that he did the best he could.
So I let it go. It seemed unfair to do otherwise.
My father turns fifty-four this November. I respect the everloving shit out of him and when he is gone I will weep like a child. And I thought you should know.
tell me about your pops, SE++
or your moms or your sisters or brothers
tell me about your family
or something else
what's going on
What I mean by this is, he's got a mechanical heart valve. My stepmother claims that she can hear it ticking, just barely, between his breaths in the small hours of the morning. I'm not entirely sure I believe her, but I like the idea anyway.
He used to have a pig valve, which wore out. I remember going to see him in the hospital when he got that first surgery, twenty-three years ago. I was still small enough that he seemed like a giant; the day would come wherein I would learn that my dad was not the tallest man in the world, that, really, he was on the short side of average, but then I was in awe of his size. We had brought him a stuffed Oscar the Grouch, to keep him company during his stay--again, at the time this seemed appropriate, but now I know that this surely seemed silly to him. My father is not sentimental. Or, at least, he pretends not to be.
These days I wonder more and more if he's secretly sensitive, a man who feels deeply in his quiet way.
We walked into the room, and now I'm not sure if I remember it exactly how it happened, if maybe I have reconstructed this event over the course of two decades, rebuilt it into something that bears only a passing resemblance to what my mother or sister might recall. But here it is nonetheless: We, my mother and sister and I, walked into his hospital room, and my father was standing at the window, as tall as he ever would be, back to us, hands clasped behind him, gazing out the window, but also not out the window, looking for all the world like a man who had come close to death and not blinked, dignified and proud in the understated way of someone with no interest in proving it to anyone. Hospital gown notwithstanding. Then he turned, and looked at us, and smiled.
With what was once alarming frequency, people ask me what my father does for a living. I usually tell the truth, which is that I'm honestly not sure. He explained it to me a few times when I was growing up, but he got promoted frequently enough that I could never be sure if it was still true (and what the hell does a "systems consultant" do, anyway?). I know he is employed in the tech industry, by a company that manufactures fiberchannel switching equipment, but that's as far as I get--he could be a marketer or an engineer or an accountant for all I know.
This might seem like I don't care, but that isn't true. I would love to know what my dad does to make a buck, but he doesn't tell anyone about it. He says it's boring, that nobody would be interested, then by way of proof starts talking about trunk overrun failures, and it turns out he's completely right.
Perhaps incidentally, one of his favorite movies, one of the half-dozen or so he's ever owned an actual copy of, is True Lies.
On those occasions when I don't tell the truth about my father's profession, that's what I say: He is a spy. He is paid to steal The Documents or, in this day and age, The Hard Drive. Or whatever it is that spies actually do. And you know what's crazy?
People usually believe me. Especially if they actually know him.
I don't think it's how I sell it--I'm a good liar, but I don't think I'm that good. Apparently, he just seems like the type. He is unassuming but charming, eminently competent, and possesses a skillset of almost incomprehensible breadth. He can catch, gut, and cook any fish from trout to salmon, then go and build a carport or seal a driveway or build a house, teach a child how to pass a baseball or a football or a volleyball, tear apart an engine and put it back together, set up a wireless network, or cut down a tree, and has done all of these things. I've seen the proof. He is essentially a Washington-flavored version of Hank Hill. And he can dance, and tell a joke. And at my sister's wedding, he got drunk and hit on my date, and she was flattered.
So I know, intellectually, that my dad is a white-collar schmuck working a job he likes but nobody else could ever possibly give a shit about. Except, he might not be. He might be a spy.
When I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, the right age, at any rate, to have some stupid opinions and be utterly confident in them, I had an argument with him about homosexuals. I made the assertion that gays are not born, but "made gay by gay influences."
I know now that this statement would have seemed completely repulsive to him, and with good reason, because it totally is. But his response was not to raise his voice, or judge or condemn me. Instead, he said this:
"That's really not how people work. I know it might not seem that way right now, but maybe when you're older and you've had more experience, you'll understand that."
I didn't respond. It was not his words that gave me pause, but his tone: it seemed to suggest unfathomable disappointment and sadness, and resignation that I'd arrived at a position he found disgusting. And, despite this, he still respected me enough to suggest that it didn't have to be true.
My parents divorced shortly after his heart surgery. I've never asked him about it. I wanted to ask him for a long time, to confront him, ask him why he left me, but I lived with my mother for the following ten years and came to understand exactly why he couldn't stand her anymore.
But it has come up, as things do in conversation--well after the time when all reasonable people are in bed, and we've gotten to the point in the night when we're all too drunk to play trivial pursuit anymore, and it seems like a good idea to listen to the Cowboy Junkies or Pink Floyd or anything else that is more suited to the kind of introspection you don't want to talk about the next day, music that brings out the worst in groups, that behooves everyone to fill in the pauses in conversation with all of their saddest memories--the divorce and the next ten years where I saw my dad only every other weekend, when he wasn't around even when I needed him most. These things come up.
And in these moments, when, I am certain, he thinks I am not paying attention, he gets a look on his face. It is a look that only someone from a soul-crushingly repressed family like ours could ever recognize: a look of absolute abject shame.
So I don't bring this subject up. There was a time when I might have, when I was angry and bitter and frustrated with him and everything else in my life, and I would have relished the opportunity to hurt him, taking revenge for the worst part of my childhood. But as I get older, I find it hard to blame him. He was not an absentee: he was there on every single one of his arranged weekends, even when he was ill, and when he had finals to study for, and right after he remarried, times when no-one would have blamed him for asking our mother to keep us this time, just this once, I'll get the next, no problem. And he never made other plans at the same time, never left us alone, myself and my sister, always cooked breakfast for us (something my mother never, ever did), always made us feel like we were wanted, and not just another in a growing list of obligations. I've heard about far, far worse fathers from friends who weren't from supposed broken homes. It seems to me that he did the best he could.
So I let it go. It seemed unfair to do otherwise.
My father turns fifty-four this November. I respect the everloving shit out of him and when he is gone I will weep like a child. And I thought you should know.
tell me about your pops, SE++
or your moms or your sisters or brothers
tell me about your family
or something else
what's going on