My dad was one of a kind, a character right out of a Damon Runyon story. He had a great and wry sense of humor, and he was a mesmerizing storyteller. Ted was also old-school, polite, courtly. Standing up or tipping his hat whenever a woman entered the room, the ladies found him charming. As for men, he loved sports and could spin a good yarn, not often profane, but certainly ribald at times. Although he had no more than an eighth-grade education, he gave nothing away when it came to brain power. He was a voracious reader and a terrific speller.
He made us laugh. He would start a joke, and we three sons would be on the floor long before he reached the punch line. We still reminisce about the weird and goofy things he said. like…
“Come into my office,” which could mean, “I have a funny story,” or it could mean, “We have something to talk about.”
“I’m gonna set fire to the seat of your pants,” which meant “Fear the paddle.”
“Try to use your head for something other than a place to hang your hat,” which is self-explanatory.
“Do you know the difference between an elephant and a loaf of bread? No? Then I’m not sending YOU to the market.”
“If it takes six yards of cheesecloth to make a cummerbund for an elephant, how long does it take a cross-eyed grasshopper with a wooden leg to kick all the warts off a dill pickle?” Decades later, my brothers and I are still trying to figure out the meaning of that one. No matter! It still brings a smile.
He was generous to a fault, always good for a few bucks or the use of his car. My friends liked him too; he was the dad who would drive us all over. One day in the spring of my junior year in high school, he sprang me and two of my buddies from school and drove us halfway up the coast to watch our baseball team in a playoff game in San Luis Obispo, including his buying lunch and dinner for everyone. During that day-long adventure he didn’t say more than half-a-dozen words. He just listened all day to three goofy sixteen-year-olds with mush for brains talking about girls.
Yep, Ted was a great guy, most of the time. In fact, I’ve put a number on it. My dad was a great guy around 80% of the time. My brothers and I differ slightly on the percentages, but the sentiment is the same; he was a real nice dad. Most of the time! You see, all those tender and delightful things described above about my dad took place when he was sober.
If you have ever experienced addiction in your life, you know that it is like a big rock thrown in the lake, rippling outwards in all directions and rocking the canoes. It does not matter whether the addict is your parent or your child or your brother or your sister of your husband or your wife or your bestie, or yourself. Truthfully, it is way bigger than any pebble in a pond; it is a boulder, creating a tsunami of emotional and financial upheaval, swamping the family.
Our dad wasn’t a daily drunk, tying it on in this evening and stumbling off to work tomorrow. He was a sporadic drunk, periodically succumbing to his demons, felled by whatever triggers, plunging into this dark place for days and weeks at a time, as many as two or three times a year. His longest stretch of sobriety was about two-and-a-half years, from the early spring of my sophomore year in high school until August of the summer after graduation; but that story about his falling off the wagon is for another time.
Now I want to tell you that I did not hate my dad. On the contrary, I loved him deeply. My friend Frankie once said that his dad was the most reliable, dependable, sober, hard-working dad of all time; but my friend never felt that his dad ever really loved him. My experience was just the opposite; I knew my dad loved me, but we couldn’t count on him. Over the years during his life and mine, and for ten years after he died, I harbored feelings of anger and resentment and bitterness and unforgiveness for the times he didn’t show up at my games and didn’t show up for my necessary discipline, leaving the heavy lifting to our mom.
And in addition to his drinking, he was also a gambler; and that is a lethal combination. He would bet on almost anything. A couple of years before I came along, he was in an all-night poker game, accompanied by strong drink, and he literally threw the mortgage to their house into the pot, like a riverboat gambler. He had to ask Audrey to sign on the dotted line, telling her that he needed the money for an investment. Well, addicts don’t always tell the truth.
His favorite place to lose money was the racetrack. He loved the ponies. As a rite of passage, we all learned about famous horses, jockeys and racetrack touts. To this day I could probably tell you the names of most of the Triple Crown winners.
One Sunday morning in church the worship band was leading the congregation in a song based on an OT Scripture: Some trust in horses, some trust in chariots; but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God. My brother leaned over and whispered, “We knew someone who trusted in horses.” We had to stifle our laughter there in the pews, but at least I could laugh at that point; because it had been many years since my personal confrontation about the unforgiveness I harbored for this man who went off to the fields of France in WW One as a 17-year old, witnessed untold horrors, was mustard gassed and lost a lung, and probably developed the habit of a lifetime of disappearing into a bottle. But that epiphany of mine is also a story for another time.
Sometimes we have to take a long look at the people in our lives, stop what we’re thinking, and realize they are doing the best they can. For many years these tears of mine about my dad were born of anger. Now these tears that run down my face and fall on the space bar are born of melancholy, tenderness, and nostalgia. My dad’s strengths and weaknesses were as 80 against 20 in his favor. At the end, I will be more than happy to take that tip of the scales in my favor. I am no longer a child, but I am still Ted’s child, and grateful for it.
Tidings from Tim 