My Dad

Do we ever really know our parents as individuals, not as Mom and Dad?

My father was the eldest of seven brothers. His father was a career military man who spent time (for fighting) in the brig at Alcatraz when it was a military prison. His father, my grandfather, whom I never met, chased Pancho Villa all over Mexico with the U.S. army. The other thing my grandfather did was kick my father out of the house because he refused to join the military. My father was not a man who liked to march to the beat of someone else’s drum. He was so enraged he changed his last name.

In the midst of the Depression my father accumulated a suit, a car, and $200.00 and met my mother. He was four years younger than she was, a fact she took to the grave without knowing. As a child I was interested in the fact that he kissed her a lot, in a way that he didn’t kiss me.

My mother was a stern taskmaster, brooking no nonsense. I was a timid fearful little girl. My dad handled most of the unpleasantries: pulling my teeth (pliers), ridding me of Rocky Mountain ticks (lighted cigarette or red hot needle). When we got lost in the woods on a fishing trip he carried me on his back. When we hiked up to a cave and I refused to go in he didn’t mock me. He took me to “shoot ‘em up’ movies. My mom liked musicals. He taught me long division.

When I was in high school we drove Route 66 to Flagstaff, Arizona during the time of an Indian Powwow. All the way home he delivered Indian chants, pretty good ones, actually. He could also drive the car in time to The Isle of Capri, and sing all the verses to Ivan Skavensky Skavar. How cool is that?

My folks retired to Phoenix where my Dad gardened, fed the birds and was president of the condo association. He always met us at Sky Harbor, the airport, always late at night in the big terminal with the Indian rugs hanging on the walls. He stood waiting like a sentry. When he was gone and I flew into Phoenix alone at night, I always expected to find him there. It didn’t seem possible that he wasn’t.

He liked to drive big American cars, and his Cadillac was his pride and joy. After he left home he never went back. Ever. One of his brothers finally found him and told him the parents were dead. He was his mother’s favorite and he never went back.

Do we ever really know our parents?