“I’m going to commit hairy-canary” — Dad
I have been thinking about my father a lot over the past few months. I don’t know how it is with everybody, but my father seemed to change a lot as I got older. It’s not that he changed, of course, but I changed in my understanding of him. It’s funny to look back to how I used to imagine him. He was an antagonist of my childhood. No, I didn’t have a bad father; he wasn’t an alcoholic, or an abuser, or a bum. But he was the one who would say “no” more often than I wanted to hear it, and the feeling of waiting for him to get home from work after mom had promised me a spanking is nothing that I would like to experience again. I remember thinking that he was insensitive, rather than understanding that, like most of us, his senses had been dulled somewhat by the cares of adult life.
Who is my father? He grew up in Connecticut, working class. His father was a lineman who served in the Korean War, and was the strongest man in his town. My father would tell me stories of how his dad would wake him up after heavy thunderstorms to go look for downed wires. My grandfather died when my father was just a child, so his memories of him are limited. We have only three pictures of him. One is of him in Korea. Tall and lanky, standing in full uniform, grinning in front of some military truck. He looked very much like the type of man who built America. In my imagination he is John Wayne, riding the streets of his New England municipality looking for downed power lines, eternally young.
My father moved to Florida when he was a teenager, just in time to become a beach bum during the peak of the hippie 70s. He spent his teenage years and early twenties smoking weed and drinking, tripping on hard drugs, sleeping on beaches, and playing in garage bands on a small Florida island. But I never got to meet that guy. Eventually, he decided that he needed to get his act together and moved back to Connecticut briefly, before making the jump to New York City. This was the pre-Giuliani New York, back when the tourists taking pictures at Times Square would get robbed at knife point, and the subways were covered in graffiti. Back when the gays ran Greenwich village, as opposed to everywhere. Anyway, that was where my father found God (because one needs God to live in New York City), and met my mother at church. And a few years after that is when my story begins.
My father eventually got a decent gig as a carpenter working for the city. It was a good job, by blue-collar standards. And he worked as a superintendent for the apartment block we lived in to shave a few dollars off the rent. That’s the guy I know. Waking up at 5:30 in the morning to go to work, Monday through Friday. Getting home late in the afternoon and tuning the radio to Sean Hannity or Mike Savage before falling asleep with loud, open-mouthed snores for an hour or so. The rest of the night he would spend reading, playing around with his guitar collection, listening to music or pestering mom about what’s for dinner. He loves jazz, which is one of the things I still don’t understand. Who loves Jazz? On the weekends he would relish his opportunity to sleep in and would do more of the aforementioned activities except for when my mother would drag him out to some social engagement. Sunday mornings were for church, and the rest of the day was for relaxing and eating. My father loves to eat.
During the COVID panic my father retired early rather than getting the jab. Now he has more time to do nothing than ever.
So why have I been thinking about my father over the past few months? I am very much like my father, and the older I get, the more I realize how like him I am. Sometimes I like that and sometimes I don’t, but on the whole I am pleased with it. I feel now an understanding of my father that I didn’t have as a child, as I see more and more of him in my adult self. Certain actions that used to confuse and anger me now make perfect sense. A few months ago I started to realize that, and I can’t stop thinking about it and seeing him in me on the day-to-day. While as a kid I sometimes hated him, now I can feel nothing but love. He’s my father, and I don’t care if he’s just another blue-collar American who raised his family paycheck to paycheck and never accomplished anything “great,” or significantly added to the GDP. My dad is a good dad and I hope he has a fantastic father’s day and eats lots of delicious food.
Memories with my father
Playing catch in the park
Listening to talk radio in the car
Touring the best pizzerias and Italian delis in the five boroughs
Waking him up on Saturday mornings with my siblings
Watching him sit on the edge of his bed and noodle with his guitars
Being dragged to basketball practice on the weekends
The pandemonium before leaving for anywhere
Visiting his job and meeting his coworkers
Watching movies together
Going to church on Sunday
Getting spanked
Late-night talks in the car
Always making sure everyone else doesn’t want the last piece of something
See? Ol’ Feraud can write something nice if he wants to! I guess I wrote this more for myself than anyone else, but if you enjoyed reading it, then I am sincerely happy. Happy Father’s Day to any dads who might be reading!