Butchblog

I’ve often referred to it as my father’s gold pocket watch. Now I’m not so sure it is gold, maybe brass instead. Maybe I wanted to make it more valuable, more precious. I wanted my dad to have given me something important, wanted to know that he was proud of me. The watch has the emblem of the Army Air Corp embossed on the back, a fierce looking eagle. I know Dad treasured it; he always kept that watch brightly polished and wound it frequently.

            My father was a very quiet, and contained guy. I respected him but was also scared of him. I sensed that his silences contained more than dignity. There was rage in there also, which occasionally burst free, and I was often the recipient of that anger because I’d been “bad” or disrespectful, or because my mother wanted me to be punished for some unclear offense. After these outbursts, explosive and frightening, Dad would act like nothing had happened and go back to reading his paper until Mom called us in for dinner. I’ve spent a good deal of the rest of my life, and a small fortune in therapy, to try to understand the impact my Dad had on my life. For a long time I assumed the gulf that grew up between us was my fault. Dad was disappointed in me. In some deep and unfixable way, I had let him down. I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, had not become a doctor like him, had moved away from Philadelphia, had married a non-Jewish woman. The list went on and on—in my head.

            I didn’t believe Dad deserved any of the blame for our fractured relationship. His endless silences allowed me to fill in the blank space with my own self-doubts and confusion. Never did it occur to me to hold him to blame for the lack of closeness or affection that plagued my childhood. Be a man, I told myself. Get over it. Move on. And I did—or tried to. Moved all that pain to some place in the back of my brain, where it silently continued to eat away at me.

Hell with it, I finally decided, I’ve got my own kids to raise now, and I’m not going to be anything like my father with them. And I wasn’t. I talked with my two daughters frequently, read to them, danced with them, and tried always to be open and honest. I for sure wasn’t a perfect father, but I know that I tried, and continue to do so well into their adulthood.

            A few years back, I returned to Philadelphia to visit relatives. My mom and dad had long since passed away. I made sure to include in the trip a visit to my one remaining aunt, the last of my mother and father’s generation. She was in her late 80’s, but her mind was clearly still sharp as a chef’s knife. In the course of our conversation, she told me, “You were a really quiet child. I always wondered why.”

            “I think I was scared to talk around the adults,” I said. “Dad didn’t like that.”

            “Yeah, your father was a piece of work. A nasty man.”

            I was stunned to hear Aunt Diana say such a thing about my dad.

            She continued. “Your father looked down on everybody. Made everybody feel like they shouldn’t open their mouth. It wasn’t just you, Butchie.”

            In a strange way, it was a relief for me to hear what she had to say. Maybe I could stop beating myself up about the relationship, stop making excuses for him. I walked out of her house, feeling different, like I could stand up straighter, think more clearly.  

            I’m not going to let go of the good memories I have with my father: the Phillies games Dad took me and my brother to, the time we dove into the surf together at the Jersey Shore, that one conversation about girls; but I’m also going to remember the other times and accept what they were. He was a conflicted and repressed man.

            It did catch up with him later in life when he suffered from a rapidly advancing form of dementia. And to my surprise, became a much gentler person, full of empathy and smiles, eager to engage in conversation with me, even though his thoughts were jumbled and endlessly repetitive. I was there when he died, held his hand as he passed, kissed his cheek.

            Maybe my father’s true self had been there all the time, I thought,  hidden from view by the demands of his notion of man-hood and a son of immigrants demand to succeed in America.

            Dad never did give me that gold pocket watch that I coveted. There wasn’t anything in the will about it. And so I claimed it, snatched the watch right off his dresser. Didn’t even ask my mother’s permission. I have it displayed now in a glass case and like to show it to people. I always tell them, though, that it was a gift. “Dad wanted me to have it,” I say.