Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 22:39:01 -0800 (PST) From: G G Subject: Dad Ah, dad. Time and age alone allow me to see you for what you were, to recognize your value to me. You are gone now, and I am myself an old man with children of my own. But you live on in me and in my sons, not just in our flesh and blood but in our way of speaking, our jokes, our beliefs and values. We assume you; you are with us, with the world, until the last of your line is gone. He was . . . handsome, yes, doubtless. Although he was in his early forties when I came to recognize this, age had done that trick on him that it does on a few fortunate men (and unfortunately far fewer women). Granted if a man be unattractive at twenty or twenty-five, it is highly unlikely, almost unimaginable, that he will be attractive at forty or forty-five. And even if he be attractive at that younger age, there is no guarantee that it will remain. There are too many temptations, too many worries, too many days in the sun and nights in the street between twenty and forty that work damage to the blush and the sinew and the finely growing hair. But if he be lucky, if he be smiled on by Eros or his volatile mistress, then the passage of time will be marked on him like it is on a great tree that grows and expands and, although showing its age, shows none of the weakness of age, rather strength born of seasons passing beneath and between and above his boughs. He was handsome. He was tall, like I am, and his face even when sleeping showed all of the emotion he had felt in his life. The creases between his brow from upset or consternation. The creases in his forehead from surprise. The starbursts called crows' feet radiating from eyes. Lines from dimples and a smile that appeared not too often but often enough to let you know he was paying attention and that he had a sense of humor on top of everything else. All of this, mapped out for the observer, almost in order that the observer should know what to expect when he, when my father awoke. He was tall, like I am. Six foot, two inches, same as I am, same as he was when we put him in the ground. He never lost the composure that he taught me, that he demanded of me. "Sit up straight, Paul!" He would demand, at the dinner table, at church. I could not understand why he was so insistent on that. Now I do. It sounds simplistic in writing, but the truth of the matter is that posture recapitulates attitude, and attitude is everything. Striding into the world, shoulders back, chin forward, stomach tight - what can you not accomplish? What cannot be yours for the asking? Six foot, two inches, like I am, and built like I am, with a strong neck, broad shoulders and a broad, square chest. A (mostly) flat stomach, not entirely a gift of nature, not entirely a grant of perpetuity. I learned to eat from my father, what to eat. I learned to exercise, to feel yourself in your body, to recognize that exercise is anything that allows you to really feel yourself in your body - walking, running, weights, stretching, sex, dancing. He taught me that if you come to enjoy the way it feels to be inside your body, then the desire to keep it healthy and in "good working order" will come second-nature. He was tall, like I am, with strong legs and big feet and hands. Brown eyes and hair, hair on his forearms, as on mine, on his chest, less so on mine, and hair on his legs, which looked so much like mine. Strong features, like mine, straight nose, deep set eyes, set to narrow when staking out the territory or against the sun, at the beach, as he watched me play in the water, then at baseball games, as I wandered in the outfield, aimless, waiting, but still he kept his eyes on me. Why? Ah, Dad. I remember being in the shower with you. I remember the day at the beach that proceeded it. It was the first that season, the first of many days on the beach that summer. And I guess something had happened to me over the colder months; a change had come over me because now I saw you in your bathing suit, and I saw you stretching your legs out onto the sand, and I saw your shoulder curving around as you reached for the Frisbee and then threw it to me, and I saw that lump there, and I knew what it was because, as anyone who has one can tell, that lump was the focus of all my alone time attention at that age. And so it came to be that we shared a shower that afternoon. How old was I? How old could I have been? Twelve, I think, because it was the house on the beach, not near the beach, and we had driven there in the convertible. And so it came to be that we were at the house on the beach, driven there in the convertible, and I was scared and you were just . . . tired and complaining maybe of a little bit of sunburn and maybe a little buzzed from the beer that you would enjoy once in a while, especially on those weekends on the beach. And so it came to be that we were in the bathroom together and you had stepped out of your bathing suit, the blue one with that funny little silver tab at the hip. You had stepped out of your bathing suit, and then I knew that a change had come over me over those colder months because I saw it there, your dick, as you called it informally, as you called bad drivers and the man who told me to watch the Frisbee that had errantly wound up on HIS family's blanket and who you told me did not have a house on the beach anyway and had a fat wife and then you felt bad for saying that and apologized, but not to him, just to me. And so it was. I, twelve, driven to the house on the beach in the convertible, I, the twelve year old version of you, and you, the forty year old version of you, driving the convertible and keeping the house there on the beach, we were together and you were naked and I was scared and you stepped into the shower and shivered at the change of temperature on your already darkening skin and said, "Paul, come in. Get clean." And so it came to be that you and I were under the shower together. And it was not the first time, but it was for me like the first time. And I was scared still because my "dick" could not tell a lie at that age and was in fact quite fond of telling the truth whenever it could. And I wanted it to shut up so badly right there and then, but there was a truth that needed to be told and so it came to be that the truth was told and the truth made you laugh. And so it was that you laughed at my "dick" and I did not laugh and I was horrified and knew that the laughter that would make the lines like a roadmap through your soul would soon enough be followed by some kind of punishment or banishment or even a strike across my face, even though you had never done such a thing in my life and I could not imagine to where I would be banished and the punishments at all had come so few and far between, especially out there, on the beach in those summer months. And so it was that you laughed at my truth telling "dick" and said "Christ, Paul, watch that thing will you? You'll put somebody's eye out." And I remained horrified but could tell, as you bent your head back and wet your hair and continued to laugh, that there would be no punishment, no banishment to some other family, to some other house. And so it was that as you wet your hair and complained of the sting of the water on your sunburned back I looked at your "dick." And you looked at mine, still telling the truth, still telling what it felt needed to be told. And you said, "You get 'em a lot nowadays, eh, Paul?" And you smiled at me with your dimples and the secret of the lines in your face to come, your truth-telling lines. And I did not know what to say. I wanted to slide down the drain with the water and the sand and the sweat running off our bodies. "It's okay, buddy. It's your body at work. Be worried when it stops happening. See, look, even your old man gets 'em." And you chuckled and the movie camera of my brain and the lens of my eyes panned from your face to your "dick," which started itself to tell the truth, a truth, some truth that still I cannot from the distance of so many years ascertain. And you said nothing thereafter. And I said nothing in response. Perhaps my mouth was open a bit, watching this piece of fleshy machinery at work, amazed at is metamorphosis. And so it was that a moment passed between you and me, and something was passed between you and me. You stood there, with your hands on the back of your neck, looking down at me, while I looked at your "dick," which stood out from your body completely now and from which hung the things that you had never named for me but that the other boys called balls. And my young mind could not begin to understand the import of the situation, the slowness of time at that moment, the eternity in what was surely just four seconds, four ticks on the big waterproof watch on your arm that you gave me when you went into the hospital for the last time and that I wear even now. Then it was gone, the moment. Eternity passed in four seconds. You turned your back to me and continued to wash away the beach and the day. Then you stepped out of the shower and left me there alone. And the rest of the weekend passed in twenty-four hours, then we drove back to the real world, back to the world of pavement and not sand, and pigeons instead of seagulls. Ah, dad. What did you recognize in me that day? In yourself? Am I just like you, years spent now wondering and dreaming. Not fantasizing, not daydreaming, but dreaming in my sleep, in your sleep, dreaming of a hand on my hand, a hand on my head, the rough skin and rough touch, touching my skin. Only to awake to the realness of life, to the beautiful, agonizing quickness of life that does not allow you to stop the running water going down the drain, taking with it sand and sweat and innocence and most of all time. Did you have these dreams, too, dad? You're in the ground now, and I will be soon in time. What did you think in that last hour? When the candle inside you flickered out. Was there a realization of all that had not come to pass? A final realization that the things that you had promised to do would never be done. I would ask you, dad, if you remembered that shower. And I would ask you, dad, what was the truth that needed told, and what was the truth you heard from me. What was the truth that made you look down at me, at my truth telling - one one-thousand two one-thousand three one-thousand four one-thousand - and then turn away to finish washing off the beach and the day. Ah, dad. You remain. And I see you in my sons and in the sons that they will have. And the truths that I have told and have not told my sons are the truths of fathers and sons, whether told or untold. And all your untold truths are mixing with the earth. And perhaps when I am in the earth I will hear them at last, and you will whisper them to me in your sleep.