dad's day

I adore my father. He's a lot of fun to be around. He charms nearly everyone he meets. I've only heard him say a negative thing about one person in my whole life, and that was someone who had been horribly irresponsible toward a cat. He used to pick up hitchhikers and adopted some into his inner circle. He was once taking a walk, noticed a stranger moving into an apartment, offered a hand, and was best friends with the man and his wife for decades.

And yet... he and my mother broke up when I was three. He was violent toward my mother. With his next wife, things got so bad that he sent her children to live with their father when he realized how inappropriately the two grownups were behaving. And that was in the 60s when such things were Not Done, when children were not raised by men, unless those men were widowers.

He'd say he was coming to visit me and wouldn't, often enough that my mother stopped telling me of impending visits. The first time I got married, he told me that he almost killed himself (he was having a rough time) but decided to come see me get married instead -- the two choices were about equivalent in his mind. His own family was awful to him (the other side of the "rough time" got to his family first and he was too much of a gentleman to contradict her).

He used to call me around my birthday, but when I once teased him about mixing my birthday up with my sister's, three days apart from mine, he never called again, not even not on my birthday.

With all this conflict, I didn't send father's day cards until my aunt told me how hurt my father was not to receive one from me. So I started.

But how do you choose a card for someone who was never there ("Oh Dad, you were always there for me."), who didn't help raise me ("You always knew just what to say." "I've learned so much from you"), and who doesn't play golf ("take this day for yourself and go hit a few balls around"). How about a man who never yelled at me for having a messy room, whom I never talked back to, and whose last reprimand that I can remember was "Yes, It is too early to get up. Now go back to sleep!" when I was two.

How do you buy a card for someone whose longest and happiest relationship continues long after some of his four marriages have been forgotten ("You and mom were always so perfect for each other"). And who doesn't fit the profile of any of the dads in the cards that I've seen -- he likes cats, not dogs, plays chess (and has been known to read chess manuals in the original Russian) and bridge, travels widely, reads broadly, and has an affinity for crazy people. Who once went to a rent party in New York and heard Billie Holliday sing? Who dressed as a color television for a late-50s or early-60s Halloween party.

I guess the answer is carefully. Most years, I buy a blank card. This year, I bought a card with geometric illustrations, rather than representational ones, and a simple message. The struggle and confusion continue.