ON FATHERS

"...what did I know
what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?"

--Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays"


I have been thinking and reading lots about masculinity this summer. I still don't entirely get its fragility, its bluster and bravado. Its construction is so dependent upon other men, their opinions and bullying, their respect. And I have been thinking about fathers since reading Clio Bluestocking's post, how much women need fathers, and how awkwardly men can and cannot fill that role. It's like they're just knocking around in a badly fitting pair of shoes, oblivious to the harm they can cause, oblivious to their power to do good.

I haven't spoken to my father since he unleashed a whole bunch of misogynist and sexist vitriol, several weeks ago. He sent me a CD he'd burned, of his usual showtunes/Kurt Weill/Sondheim something-or-other. The gift means he is attempting to apologize. Except, it isn't really an apology, because showtunes are his obsession, and mainly because an apology includes the word "sorry" in it. I'll be holding out on that one until eternity, though. And nothing is gained from insisting on being right.

On the occasion of the day of fathers, our commodified American holiday wherein we are supposed to go out and buy some tacky shlock, I wanted to share a memory.

My father and I were swimming. I was three. We were in Ontario, at our cabin, on the same lake where my paternal grandparents had gone on their Prohibition-era honeymoon. It's a place that my father goes to in order to in some ways "be" with his own father, who died before my dad was 5. And who, as lore would have it, was a strapping example of skilled masculinity. Athletic, charming, tough, handsome, handy.

As the above showtunes example likely indicates, my father is and was and will not ever be an outdoorsman. He's a pretty poncy and intellectual sort of man, quiet, with a sharp and subtle sense of humor. A keen dresser, who smells good, is punctual, and always has a comb and a handkerchief in his pocket. A hard worker, and diligent. But he can't fix things, gets flustered by newness, is easily embarrassed, hurts himself flagrantly, and passively demands all kinds of care. Woe betide you if you brush against that which is "private" information. Or, god forbid, if you point out his lack of capability. He is brittle.

We were out in the lake. I did not yet know how to swim. I was wearing a styrofoam egg, the better to keep me afloat in the deeper water. He could stand. I would paddle to him. We were at the drop-off, where the water turned from greenish clarity to solid ink-black depth and nothingness.

My father goaded me to take off the egg. What did I know? He faced me towards the deep. "Now, go under and open your eyes," he said.

I did. And I was terrified, pouring up through the surface in a panic. Everywhere was emptiness, and I couldn't right myself. There was no light. Anything could be lurking in the water and I wouldn't be able to escape. If ever there existed a definition of "the void," that was it.

He laughed.

I still don't know what the lesson is. My father mocked my fear, after setting me up to be afraid. He did not console me.

But he was there to physically catch me.