For dad, a life marked by absences
He kept a calendar on his desk and pasted big stars on the days I called. My calling was that important to him.
He e-mailed me monthly reports. “Hi Daughter,’’ he wrote in big, bold type. “I counted the stars this month and you missed three days. I know you are busy, but you have only one father and I have only one daughter. A call every day would be nice.’’
I’d call while doing dishes or folding clothes. I’d tuck the phone under my chin and drag my father with me wherever I went. He hated this.
“I hear clinking,’’ he’d say. Or, “You’re doing laundry, aren’t you?’’ How could he know this? How could he possible hear me folding? “Can’t you just sit still?’’ he’d say. “Can’t you stop for five minutes?’’
“Can’t you pay attention to me?’’ is what he was really asking.
In the best of times, he was the best of fathers, a hands-on dad when dads weren’t hands-on. I was his only child, and we played games: War, bowling, Monopoly, and Sorry, every game I ever got that required two or more players. It was never “I’ll play later,’’ or “I don’t have time.’’ He always had time for me.
He took me to Paragon Park. He took my friends and me to the movies. He drove us to school, to dances, to parties. He taught me to ride a two-wheeler, running behind me up and down Davis Road, his hand on the seat steadying the bike, steadying me. He taught me to drive, do a three-point turn and to parallel park.
And then I grew up and left him.
I didn’t see it this way. I grew up, married, and moved to the next town. Not far. But it was a different galaxy to him. He thought I didn’t need him anymore. He gave the bride away, and he took this literally.
He was for 40 years a visitor in my house. He never opened a kitchen cabinet or the refrigerator door or poured himself a drink. He couldn’t relax. “It’s too noisy here. There are too many people. You come visit me,’’ he said so many times.
Four years ago, in the months before his death, I visited him almost every day. If he had still been pasting stars, I would have earned dozens.
They were hard days. But there were good moments, because he talked and talked. He told me when to go home, when I was tired, and I didn’t argue. I kissed him goodbye and returned the next day.
I learned a lot about my father then. I learned he was amazingly brave. But it wasn’t until months after his death that I began to understand him. It was as if his life had been written in ink that became visible to me only when he was gone.
For all of my adult life, I had tried to change him. I tried to get him to like holidays at my house with people coming and going. I tried to make him understand that I couldn’t drop everything every time he called. I tried to explain that I had a family who needed me.
What I didn’t know is that what my father wanted, I couldn’t give him. He wanted me to be eight again. He wanted me to be back at the kitchen table playing War with him. He wanted to be bringing home, at the end of a summer day, a pint of Harlequin ice cream, which he would cut into thirds, a prince in my mother’s and my life.
My father’s favorite book was “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.’’ He read it until it was dog-eared. He had whole passages underlined and memorized. “Relax.’’ “Count to 10.’’ “Ask yourself the question, ‘Will this matter a year from now?’ ’’
But it wasn’t the small stuff that undid him. It was the big stuff. He missed the life he’d had. Before, he had been in combat, and before that his father walked out. After? I was gone and then an accident took my mother away. The years of my childhood were the best years of my father’s life.
He loved his wife, Louise, and he loved their granddaughter, Brittany. But he always ached for a past that was far too brief.
“Love, love, love,’’ is how he signed his card to me the Christmas before he died. He didn’t come for dinner, though. Too many people, he said.
Canton resident Beverly Beckham can be reached at bevbeckham@aol.com. 