My fathers...
Mar. 28th, 2009 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI was moving some boxes from my most recent office to my "new" (and indeed, my original) office in the basement and spied a diary of my mother's, from 1935. I knew, from reading some of my mom's other journals, that she didn't strictly follow the one-page per day format of such books, preferring to write when she had something to say, or at least so I assume. On an impulse, I decided to see if there was an entry for March 28. There was. It surprised me.
Let me start with the assertion that I was raised by four fathers.
The first, if only because he was there physically as I was growing up, was my stepdad. We were never close, or at least I didn't think of our relationship as close. But, he was there when I needed him, and I came to realize, some time after going out on my own, that his was a bringing-up that relied more on the example of deeds and actions than on words of lecture and helpful advice.
My second, though perhaps least influential, father was a crazy mix of the best of Hugh Beaumont, Fred MacMurray, William Demarest and company, who played fathers and father figures on television shows we love to malign today as being completely unrealistic. At the time, I wasn't sophisticated enough to figure out the gag, so I just put up with the stuff going on in my life, hanging on because I knew that a sane life was possible, somewhere, even if it was in the inside of a television set.
My third father was my biological father, who I remember meeting only a handful of times before he died. He was a writer and an alcoholic. Everyone I've met who ever knew him said the same thing: sober, he was an excellent person and a talented writer; drunk, something else again. I think I pursued the impulse to write as a way of connecting to him, that somehow, by experiencing the world the way he did - behind a typewriter, with a blue pencil stuck behind my ear - I might understand him better. Or perhaps I was seeking an approval I could never get, I don't know.
My fourth father was my grandfather (my mother's father). He died when I was 18 months old and throughout my childhood, the picture painted of him by my grandmother and my mother was that of a hard-working saint; a meek, gentle man who single-handedly kept the Depression from hammering his family by working two jobs - menial at first, and later, in what he was educated to do, which was engineering, allowing himself to devote his time to only one employer - and who played chess and collected stamps as hobbies. My learning to play chess and collect stamps was actually my first dalliance with the idea of doing the same kinds of things as a way to connect.
But beyond the writing and chessplaying and so on, there were times in my life when I imagined my father and grandfather looking over my shoulder, so to speak, helping me find my way over some rough ground, with me mostly asking "What would they have done?"
So I found it surprising that, on March 28, 1935, my mother wrote the following in her diary:
I should probably be a little more careful when listening to my own personal ghosts.
Cheers...
Let me start with the assertion that I was raised by four fathers.
The first, if only because he was there physically as I was growing up, was my stepdad. We were never close, or at least I didn't think of our relationship as close. But, he was there when I needed him, and I came to realize, some time after going out on my own, that his was a bringing-up that relied more on the example of deeds and actions than on words of lecture and helpful advice.
My second, though perhaps least influential, father was a crazy mix of the best of Hugh Beaumont, Fred MacMurray, William Demarest and company, who played fathers and father figures on television shows we love to malign today as being completely unrealistic. At the time, I wasn't sophisticated enough to figure out the gag, so I just put up with the stuff going on in my life, hanging on because I knew that a sane life was possible, somewhere, even if it was in the inside of a television set.
My third father was my biological father, who I remember meeting only a handful of times before he died. He was a writer and an alcoholic. Everyone I've met who ever knew him said the same thing: sober, he was an excellent person and a talented writer; drunk, something else again. I think I pursued the impulse to write as a way of connecting to him, that somehow, by experiencing the world the way he did - behind a typewriter, with a blue pencil stuck behind my ear - I might understand him better. Or perhaps I was seeking an approval I could never get, I don't know.
My fourth father was my grandfather (my mother's father). He died when I was 18 months old and throughout my childhood, the picture painted of him by my grandmother and my mother was that of a hard-working saint; a meek, gentle man who single-handedly kept the Depression from hammering his family by working two jobs - menial at first, and later, in what he was educated to do, which was engineering, allowing himself to devote his time to only one employer - and who played chess and collected stamps as hobbies. My learning to play chess and collect stamps was actually my first dalliance with the idea of doing the same kinds of things as a way to connect.
But beyond the writing and chessplaying and so on, there were times in my life when I imagined my father and grandfather looking over my shoulder, so to speak, helping me find my way over some rough ground, with me mostly asking "What would they have done?"
So I found it surprising that, on March 28, 1935, my mother wrote the following in her diary:
The pater - the pest of pests - is vociferating his apartment superiority complex. He is yelling because Mother threw away an old hat of his. He is demanding and commanding to throw everything out of the trunk and have it to keep his junk in under key. He is a nuisance of an egoist. He always wants the largest plate, the shiniest spoon, the newest knife, the softest chair, and the largest portion of any and every meal.So, while I wonder how much of this is objectively true and how much of it may be due to a bad mood (my mom shifted her fire to another subject - undesirable behavior on the part of a friend of hers - immediately after the above outburst) or simply late adolescent anger with parents, I still find it... a little world-shifting to hear him spoken about like that.
I should probably be a little more careful when listening to my own personal ghosts.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-29 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 04:23 pm (UTC)...so I just put up with the stuff going on in my life, hanging on because I knew that a sane life was possible, somewhere, even if it was in the inside of a television set.
And I can relate a bit.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-01 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-01 11:02 pm (UTC)And thank you for sharing about your fathers. On some level, I can relate - I had three of my own.