BRATTLEBORO — Dad was 85 and I was 59 when I lost him. Not bad as these things go.
For most folks, the condolence - delivered or un- - would be, “Well, you did have him for a good, long time.” And of course my response - delivered or un- - would be, “Yes, I did ... I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.“
I've lived with this solution to the Departed Dad Syndrome for 16 years now. I use the past tense here because that solution has outlived its usefulness.
I was dragging up the hill from Main Street to the entrance to my apartment building on High, having just reached the most severe and sudden incline of them all at the end of a long day.
As I gasped for the breath, I needed to scale that urban cliff - they don't call it High Street for nothing - a young man and a boy of about 5 or 6 approached.
I noted the adult because of his long and rather-well-kempt dreadlocked ponytail, wondering in that judgmental way I inherited from my mom (who'd've called it “having standards”) why such a nice-looking guy would do that to himself.
They'd no sooner passed me when I heard the little boy ask, “Daddy, what's this?”
I turned to see the tyke at a bright-red painted protrusion from the building, the outside connection to a water pipe or some such butch building thing.
The young man hesitated for the briefest moment and then answered in that dads-oughta-know sort of way: “Oh, I think it has something to do with a water pipe.”
“Why?” the tyke responded.
As I set foot in the cool and quiet hallway to my flat, I heard that voice in my head speak with thundering clarity.
“You never asked your father anything like that,” the voice said. “You only asked him for something. You only needed him when you needed something. Something other than a dad.”
* * *
Although I could easily have wept uncontrollably, I pulled it together enough to open the door to my Donald and our home and the evening we would create for ourselves, the lump in my throat notwithstanding.
That lump returned the following morning as I watched the coverage of the 70th anniversary of the invasion at Normandy.
There are still participant fellows around - bless them for all time. The survivors of those beach landings make their way back to France - some maybe every year but surely on these milestone anniversaries - to revisit one another and their 70-year-old memories.
Had he served and lived, my father could have been one of them. He was just beyond the age they were taking in when his draft number came up. He'd slept overnight in Grand Central Station (pre-Terminal days, remember) and under orders from President Roosevelt was sent home the next morning to my mom and me.
So Dad became a gift to our family. He lived to serve us by being what he was expected to be: a loving husband and father, a good provider, a kind and accountable man. Truly the best of his breed when one considers his own band of relative brothers whose records as husbands, fathers, and sons were not especially admirable.
* * *
The youngest of Harry and Rose Goldberg's four boys, Dad figured early on that all the extremes of bad behavior and spotty character had been taken and that what was left for him was to be the good one.
The good son to his immigrant parents. The good brother to his victimized sisters. The good husband to his trophy wife. And the good father to my brother and me.
He gave us the blessing of security. Of plenty. Of clothes on our backs and food in our stomachs and a nice home in a nice town. He gave me college and a car and part of whatever character I have.
Oh, and caring.
In 1960, when he drove me to the train that would take me off to my military service, he bade me to “stay alert.” He was frightened, I'm sure, more than I was.
I guess the very horror of what he'd been spared was conflated into his fear of impending doom for his sensitive son, his non-athletic, gentle, probably-gay son. (I must assume he'd wondered about that.)
How would I be able to land on a beach? How would I be able to scale a cliff? How would I be able to cut down a hedgerow, dig a trench, throw a grenade, shoot a rifle, rush a farmhouse, lead a platoon? How would I not be scoffed at or mistreated? How would I - his boy - survive?
Years later, much after I'd obviously succeeded at the military thing, I never asked him about that.
I'd hear him with others, other young men, asking them with true curiosity about themselves. But he never asked me about me. And I never asked him about him.
* * *
And so we near Father's Day 2014. Dad would be going on 102 now. I wish he were here for me to ask him what that darn red-painted protuberance is outside my building or why he and my mother stayed together or why he never asked me about my life. Or why the sky is blue.
I love you, Dad. Take care of Mom.