What Do You Want to Know?
If I could have any wish granted, it would be to know my Dad. Really. Know. My. Dad.
Whenever I run into anyone I haven’t seen in a while, someone from my distant past, the first question out of their mouths is never, “How are you, Andra?” It is ALWAYS, “How is your Dad?” Roy makes quite an impression on everyone, without revealing much about himself in the process.
Trying to get an answer to the question ‘who are you?’ is maddening. I even cornered an author once, Alexander Stille, and begged him over dinner to tell me the secrets to getting my Father to tell me who he really is. Or, who he was before I met him.
Here’s what I know:
- My dad is the fourth of five children and the only son of an alcoholic womanizer from outside of Cleveland, Tennessee;
- His dad was a dairy farmer, and his original farm is buried under the TVA;
- Both of his parents dipped snuff, and he tried it when he was six or seven to ill effect;
- My grandfather took my toddler father to his various drinking holes, where my two-or-three-year-old Dad got nickels and dimes for cursing and smoking cigars;
- My Dad did some acting and played basketball when he was growing up;
- He served in the Army because of the draft during the 1950′s; he was stationed in Germany. In the blog photo today, he is the boy-man on the left, patrolling somewhere in Germany in the years after World War II.
I also know that he met my Mother while he was working as a forester in Kentucky. That’s pretty much it.
Asking my Father more questions about his past only renders circuitous discussions, where I find myself answering invasive questions. (How much money do you make, huh? When did you last talk to so-and-s0-who-you-aren’t-friends-with-anymore?) Maybe he sees my questions as similarly inappropriate and responds in kind. I don’t know.
My Dad is turning seventy-seven this year, and I feel like I’m running out of time to know him. The child who entertained the masses in bars. The boy who watched his father be unfaithful to his mother. The man who still treasures a turkey call and some hunting paraphernalia that belonged to his father, a man I never knew, yet who never once went hunting in the entire time I’ve known him.
One thing my Dad has expressed is a wish to return to Germany before he’s gone. This year, around Thanksgiving, I want to try to fulfill that desire and travel there with him. Yet, I have no idea what meant anything to him when he was there in the 1950′s. I don’t know where he was spent his time, where to take him.
How do we recreate meaning for someone who means something to us? I love my Dad enough to try, stranger that he is to me. Even then, I know I will be left to fill in the blanks on my own, to imagine the backstory of a man I’ve always worshipped, who flits just beyond the tips of the fingers of my paltry imagination.
Too Much is Just Enough: Trying Harder When We Want to Give Up
The trip to Germany is a great idea and you won’t have to ask questions, just go where he goes and enjoy what he wants to do. That will tell you all you ever wanted to know.
It’s hard to answer questions in depth about “who you are”, it just isn’t comfortable for many folks, especially the older generation, that’s just not how they see their place in the world.
When he asks you questions in kind, he is indeed showing you that it is difficult to answer questions about himself that are “who I am” in nature. Don’t push it, just go to Germany with him and roll with it. The more you enjoy the trip with him, the more you will learn about him and yourself. Good luck.
Thank you, Lou, for trying to say something to a post such as this one. It can’t be easy to come up with anything.
What will really be maddening is when I try to plan the trip and he acts like he doesn’t want to go after he’s talked about it for decades. But I guess MTM and I can go stare at that building in Stuttgart that he loves so much.
I hope you have adjusted to your iPhone.
Well, it was an interesting situation and I think you would enjoy the trip. Just tell you’re booking the flights and let him pick the timeframe.
Still hunting and pecking the if phone, haven’t had time to sit with the online manual enough. I like the appearance, though.
I guess the iPhone is so easy for me because I’ve had an iPod touch for a couple of years. I was already familiar with the platform.
You know Lou, you can go down to the Apple Store and they will help you use it. They even have classes on using it!
That is a good idea. I can meet him there and buy a car charger.
Hi Michael, I do plan to do that, just mo time yet, thks.
Or you could ask a friend for some one-on-one help. Just saying!
Carnell knows how to use the iPhone Lou. I’ve adapted pretty quickly, too.
I think Lou’s right. Some men just don’t talk about themselves. However, if you are there when things are happening and they are experiencing them, you will get the understanding as an observer and a participant.
I kinda think it’s like raising teenage boys. When my sons were teens, I realized that if I was “around” when they weer, that they would talk to me when they were ready, but never at my behest. They talked in their own time, of their own accord, and what they said was always important stuff.
Like hunting, you just have to go into the woods and wait.
We did take a Father/Daughter trip once, in 1997. We went back to Tennessee, and he showed me his old home place and we tramped through grave yards for the weekend.
Dad really doesn’t talk either way, about anything. He’s always been that way.
Now you know that your dad can talk sports until the cows come home. He talks about things that he is interested in and knows about – you just have to get on his plane and you can learn a lot.
About things he knows about, but not about him. It’s always been this way and I have accepted that it won’t change.
Dad’s are interesting creatures. One presumption is that the trip already means so much to him that it’s easier to poo poo it than to show the real emotion he feels for it.
I don’t know. It’s like all the years he pined for a place in the mountains. When I said I’d go in on it with him, suddenly he didn’t want a place in the mountains any more. I’m sure it had nothing to do with me. That’s just my dad.
Interesting. Just having the dream is enough for him, no interest in making those a reality. Maybe there’s some subconscious thing that the reality won’t live up to the dream? For you, the message may be in the journey on this one [planning the trip to Germany] not the destination.
Maybe so. There is a lot of architecture there for MTM to ogle, even if Dad decided not to go.
I am a dad! Watch what you say.
Interesting that the comments are lagging a bit today. Maybe we are all waiting for the repercussions?
I love the stories you do have about your dad. Nancy and I were talking about it and thinking about the differences in the generations – back to dads and grandfathers and such. Funny how the times and perceptions of things change. When you go all the way back to my grandfather on my mother’s side, you are talking about pre-1900 Switzerland! Now there are some cultural differences.
My father is fairly open and easy to talk to, and he gladly tells stories, but it is amazing how often a new one still emerges. Sometimes he comes up with it, but often it is his sister who tells on him. It wasn’t until just recently that we found out he, accidentally, shot one of his friends when he was a kid!
Now, about that book you need to write on your family….
Or, perhaps the shine is wearing off my blog.
(I put that here for MTM’s benefit……)
Really, this isn’t a post that can generate a whole lot of commentary. I mean, what do you say?
And, I will never write a book on my family. I may write numerous novels that are inspired by my family, though. There’s enough fodder there to write until I’m dead.
Not even short stories? Awww, come on!
Fictional short stories. Wink wink.
Hello fodder, hello Mudder…
They did send me to camp a couple of times against my will…..
Another comment: my dad was the quiet type and never talked much to his children. I could probably count on one hand the conversations (short – few words) we had before he died when I was fourteen. But I always knew my dad loved me. He worked hard for his family and provided for all our needs. But after he died, I never thought much about his feelings for me – I just loved him and was so sorry I didn’t let him know how much I loved him. It wasn’t about me at all. Another thing I remember is although he didn’t talk a lot, you could hear Mom and him talking constantly after they went to bed at night. It was comforting to lie there listening to them just talk.
I know Dad loves me. This is more just a desire to know more about him.
I am just now slowing down enough to read and respond. I think that you have gotten some excellent feedback from everyone. I remember that my dad was a hard worker and did his best to provide us kids with all the material things that we needed. He was very keen on the differences between wants and needs. My dad was emotionally absent most of the time until he became angry about something and then he could show us that anger as he was disciplining us children. I believe that he did the best he could with what little information he had to go on at the time. His father died of pneumonia when he was a child and therefore did not have a father figure while growing up. That can make it difficult to know how to be a father to your own children. My parents (adoptive) adopted my sister and I in an orphanage in Germany. I recently wrote an essay about this for English composition. One of my bucket lists is to visit Germany and see where the orphanage is or was.
I think you wrote about that on your blog, too, didn’t you?
I know most people do the best they can with the tools they have. One of the reasons I’ve never chosen to be a parent is because of how hard it is and how ill-equipped I feel.
You and Katy should definitely go to Germany, James.
I don’t try to be a good parent. In fact, I see it as my duty to society to be the worst parent I can. I feel it is necessary to beat my children regularly and make them work in subterranean sweat-shops. How else can they really appreciate freedom and responsibility?
I mean seriously! You should see my children – they cower before me. Oh, wait. You have met my kids. Er… never mind.
Your kids are awesome, Carnell. Though I must say that they DO NOT cower before you.
I think that some people are better equipped at being parents than some. I know for a fact, that I was not well equipped to be a parent. If anything, I was no where near ready to be a good parent. One of the reasons for that, is because I did not have a good childhood,or a good role models for parents. Don’t get me wrong, I am eternally grateful for my parents scooping me and my sister out of that German orphanage, and bringing us to America. Life has certainly been so much better for us because of it. My adoptive parents provided for us materially but they failed to demonstrate the type of love and acceptance, that all children need and deserve. Needless to say, as a young adult, I was pretty messed up. Had it not been for my faith in Christ, and the work that he did in my heart, I would have wound up in prison or dead, because of some sort of drug addiction. One of the people that I listened to, and learned from about parenting, was James Dobson. Ok, I have probably shared more than I should have. I shared this with you so that you will know that if I can be a parent anyone can be a parent. As a matter of fact, I bet you would be an awesome mother.
Maybe he became an ace Nazi-hunter and joined up with the NSA or OSS and he just can’t talk about his top-secret past. Or maybe he came across a vast marijuana plantation in the woods while working as a forester and is in the Witness Protection Program. Or maybe he just truly doesn’t realize how interesting his life has been, and can’t fathom why you would want to know about it. Whatever the case, I’m glad he is my father-in-law!
I’m sure those scenarios could make arresting stories, MTM.
This is a tough one Andra. Some people just don’t let others in, or at least without a fight. You could try getting him talking more about you when you were smaller. Sometimes individuals that are closed off open up and show more about themselves through their own children’s stories. My husbands father was the same (although I never had the chance to meet him personally) and it was through these stories that he was able to learn more and more about his father.
If you really want to take him to Germany just buy the tickets. Parents, especially fathers, want to be seen as the providers. If he has talked about revisiting then it might just be his pride that is making him now say otherwise. I wouldn’t be surprised that this was the reason he changed his mind about the home in the mountains. My parents are the worst when it comes to this. They will give you half of their last dollar, but if they think you are trying to help them out by asking them to even dinner, they run coattail in the other direction.
It is funny that my Dad is such a softie that he can get very emotional over talking about when I was little. It may be the emotional vulnerability part that keeps him from revealing more about himself.
The last time my Dad tried to go to Germany was 2000. To make a long story short, they had tickets and ended up turning them back in over a series of things. I am reticent to just buy tickets, because if he decides he doesn’t want to do it, then it won’t matter that I’ve spent the money. Which means springing for refundable tix.
Maybe it is like Lou said earlier. It is generational, since you have similar familial experience.