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To write about Daddy is a more ambiguous task than to
write about Mama. Daddy and I didn't have what you would
confuse with a warm, sitcom type of father/son relationship. We
never tossed a ball in the backyard. Conversely, it wasn't a
violently adversarial relationship. He was my father and I was his
son and as such we fulfilled a few of the roles played by such in this
culture. I was misunderstood, he was exasperated. It worked out
pretty well for us.
Here's an early memory. I couldn't have been much older
than a toddler. I was fussy, crying and wanting to be with Mama,
clinging mama's boy that I was. I remember Mama carrying me
into the living room and handing me to Daddy, who was sitting in
his rocker. Clearly, Mama had work to do in the kitchen, and she
couldn't do it with me hanging on her. I struggled to get out of
Daddy's lap so I could run back to Mama.
This event reveals a paradigm for my relationship with my
parents. Even when I was no longer sitting in his lap or struggling
to get away from him, I always felt a little anxious if it were just
him and me together. I would return to Mama as quickly as I
could.
I think it is fair to say that we were afraid of Daddy, we
being his seven children. He wasn't especially rough with us, but he
was big and loud (due, I later discovered, to a slight hearing
deficiency) and just not especially gentle. At least, that's how it
seemed to me.
As I write this, I am conflicted because I don't want to paint
too negative of a picture. Let me try to get across a few things via
negativa. Daddy was not one to go on rampages and if he yelled, it
wasn't an out of control sort of yelling and there weren't derogatory
names called or threats made. He certainly never threatened or
yelled at our mother. He was not a violent man in that regard. He
drank a beer maybe half a dozen times a year, usually after a day of
especially strenuous farm work (hay hauling for example) or
perhaps at a wedding. I never saw him drunk. So as I tell the
following story, I want these things to be understood and
recognized.
I personally have no memory of Daddy exercising corporal
punishment on my person, but the potential for it was always there.
I do recall a incident of corporal punishment that my youngest
brother (the one directly older than me) received. I was in first or
second grade so my brother was in the fifth or sixth grade.
Something happened on the school bus that involved a note passed.
My brother had written it. I never learned what was in the note,
but it apparently was enough to get him into bad trouble. The night
my parents confronted him about the note, I was sent to bed (my
brother and I still shared a bedroom). I have only the vaguest
memories of what I heard coming from my parents' bedroom so I
won't try to recreate that. I do remember my brother coming to
bed and showing me the stripes on his butt and thighs from our
father's belt. I may have cried harder than he did. I know I cried
longer because Mama had to come into our room to calm me down.
I made her look at my brother's stripes and asked if he needed to go
to the doctor. She assured me he didn't and I eventually settled
down. The only other thing I remember from that night is my
brother assuring me that he deserved it.
As hard as it is to think and write about that night, I still
have to emphasize that this is the only time I remember my father
whipping anyone. I don't have a sense that punishment was
something Daddy relished or else I think he would have found more
reason to practice it. Tales from friends' families, wherein fathers
did relish the power of punishment, suggest that I'm right about
that. I have more a sense that Daddy wanted us to grow up acting
right and punishment was a duty to be stoically carried out. I also
recognize that I only knew my father from his late forties onward.
As I wrote about my mother, he may have mellowed by the time I
came along. Listening to some of my older siblings, they may have
experienced something different.
Here's another story from my first grade year to counter-
balance the terror of the previous story. We were the only family
with children on the western edge of the Giddings Independent
School District. In fact, we were a few yards beyond it, living as
we did just over the county line. Mama or Daddy had to drive us a
mile or two down the highway to catch the school bus. One
morning when Daddy took us -- it must have been winter because
Daddy waited with us in his pick-up instead of simply dropping us
off -- I was studying for a spelling test I was to take that day. I was
nervous about it because we were being tested on the longest word
given to us so far. I still remember the word: family. It was three
whole syllables!
Daddy asked, "What are you nervous about?"
I said, "We have to spell 'family.' It's a long word."
"Ach, that's not so hard," he said. "Spell it."
I spelled it.
"See? You can do it."
Now, if you read that bit of dialogue with a soft-spoken,
Robert Young sort of voice, go back and read it with a slightly
rougher tone, tinged ever so slightly with the German inflection of a
central Texas Lutheran community. It's not as warm and fuzzy as it
appears in print, but it was Daddy trying to be encouraging.
Years ago, I read that someone did a study that showed that
children who grew up seeing their parents read grew up to be
readers, too. The study stressed that children had to see the parent,
that homes wherein parents read, say, in their bedroom, out of
sight, had children less inclined to read for pleasure. If this is true,
it's my father who influenced me to become a reader. I grew up in
a home of Louis L'Amour and Max Brand paperbacks and one of
my strongest images of Daddy is of him in his rocker, reading.
Although I never got into the western genre much, I would try from
time to time, in an effort to make some connection to Daddy. Short
of that, Daddy could almost always count on a few paperbacks for
Christmas and his birthday.
In the summer, Mama would take us to the public library
and one time, I checked out a rather thick western paperback. I
don't recall the name but I do know I checked it out to share with
Daddy. I read a chapter or two, but didn't get very far into it, but
Daddy read it. After I had turned it back in, Daddy came to me and
asked if I had read it. I told him I hadn't and he said he was just
wondering because it "got pretty rough in places." It was one our
more soft-spoken moments. He didn't say any more about it but
now I would love to know that book's title, find it, and read it.
What was so "rough" in it that Daddy actually attempted to talk to
me about it? I wish I would have had a better relationship with him
at the time (how old was I? 11? 12?) and had felt more free to ask
what he meant. I really would like to know what sort of
conversation we would have had if I had read it.
I felt weak in comparison to Daddy's strength. I'm talking
about physical strength. He was a hard worker, a farmer and
rancher when that made enough money, a carpenter when he
needed to supplement the farming. I have a feeling of
powerlessness in my childhood memories of Daddy. I was
powerless to stand up to him, to help him, to be like him, to make
him proud of me.
In one of my earliest attempts at journal keeping, I
remember comparing my dreams with what my two oldest brothers
were doing. They were truck drivers and I wanted to be a
cartoonist. Their lives seemed so much more manly than anything I
aspired to. I suppose I received mixed messages on this front
because I do recall Daddy telling some visitors with some amount
of awe and pride in his voice, "I don't know how he does it. He sits
there and can make it look just like in the book." He never
discouraged me from my pursuits, he just never directly encouraged
them and I suppose that's what left me feeling like he was more
baffled than proud about my answer to "what do you want to be
when you grow up."
I think it's somewhat common for sons to want to please
their fathers. I was no different, so when I did receive even indirect
praise like that above, it stuck out in my memory and made me
hungry for more. It was a hunger not satisfied in my family. We
just weren't demonstrative in that way. I have a memory of helping
Daddy put up electric fence by the hog pens and he sent me to the
shed for some particular tool. While I was there, I saw something
else that I knew we'd need and brought it too.
"That's using your head, Sonny."
That's all he said and he even said it a little like he was
surprised that I would think ahead. Still, I hold onto that brief
compliment as if he'd said I was the best son in the world. I can still
feel the pride of the moment. If only for that moment, Daddy
thought I was smart.
I should say that Daddy had a sense of humor, too. I didn't
always get it because it was a little dry. It wasn't until I was an
adult and tried joking with kids with a deadpan face that I realized
this. I have seen on children's faces the look that we must have had
sometimes because we couldn't tell if Daddy was serious. Add to
that his loudness so he sounded like he was yelling all the time, and
I'm sure we just seldom got his jokes. I have memories of
sometimes feeling really put upon by Daddy and his stupid rules
when I would look up and see him with a sly smile. I suppose it
was most confusing, because he really was serious about keeping
my hair cut above my ears and that I should always wear a belt (in
the seventies it was cool not to wear a belt). Still, he had one
proverb that I carry with me: "You need a little foolishness to
make the day go by." Probably his best friend outside the family
was an older Mexican man and they did a lot of carpenter odd jobs
together. I worked with them one summer (my first paying job)
and I didn't always understand what they were saying or doing, but
they seemed to have a good time throughout the day.
An embarrassing story comes to mind. I laugh as I think
about the one time Daddy caught me masturbating as a young
adolescent. I don't now how I didn't hear his approach because he
had a heavy footstep that could be heard from one end of the house
to the other, but he was suddenly at my bedroom door and I hastily
tried to cover what I was doing, none too subtly, I'm sure. He
didn't say anything, just had this knowing grin on his face. He told
me what he'd come in to tell me and left again. He never mentioned
the sexual activity. Then again, we never really spoke about sex
anyway.
Daddy was diagnosed with colon cancer when I was in the
eighth grade. This caused some tension in the house, some worry,
but if my parents were gifted in any one area, it was that they knew
how to be nonchalant in the face of deadly situations. I never really
understood the seriousness of what was going on until years later.
He went through chemotherapy and radiation therapy and a
colostomy surgery and even more than a week's stay in the hospital
didn't impress upon me how serious this all was. I mean to say
Mama was good at not letting us worry!
There was a weekend while Daddy was in the hospital that
my closest brother and I were supposed to go visit him there. We
had been responsible for keeping the livestock fed after school and
we certainly weren't allowed to skip school to go to the hospital.
Mama went to Austin everyday to sit with him, but she came home
each night to take care of the two sons she had at home and to
make sure we were taking care of the farm. Well, both of us boys
came down with the flu that weekend so I never did get to see
Daddy in the hospital. While we were in bed burning with fever,
though, a cow decided to have a calf on the edge of the stock tank
on a cold, rainy Sunday morning. There Mama was, Daddy in the
hospital, two boys sick in bed, and a cow calving in the water. She
got a neighbor to help her with the cow, but it must have been
frustrating for her, all her men unable to help her.
I remember being excited all day at school the day Daddy
was scheduled to come home. I think I envisioned some sort of
heartwarming homecoming, sort of "what if Pa Walton had been
away from Walton's Mountain for a week." It wasn't exactly that,
but it was about as heartwarming as we got. I ran up to his bedside
when I got home and said, "Welcome home, Papa." (We
sometimes call him "Papa" and I'm sure I felt that was more
Waltons-like at the time.) He smiled at me and said hi. We had an
awkward moment and then I probably went out to do my chores.
That was pretty much that.
Daddy survived his bout with colon cancer and lived
another ten years. I do think the cancer worried me just enough to
make me realize that, despite our tenuous relationship, I did love
him.
Daddy died when I was 25. About that time, I was at the
end of my first round of struggling with my homosexuality and
resolving to become heterosexual. He and I certainly never
discussed it as it would be another six years before I came around
to discussing it with anyone. As I wrote about Mama, I don't see
him as the sort who would have cut off all communication
(whatever communication we had) because of it, but I'm sure it
would have been difficult for him. There are times when I can
picture him being more bemused by it than angry, but if he would
have reached that point, I doubt it would have been his first
reaction. Since we never spoke about sex in any context, we may
never have spoken about my sexuality, period. It's hard to project
back onto that relationship.
I will close with one observation that mystifies me some.
My family isn't one for nicknames. The names our mother gave her
children (and she is the one who named us -- Daddy supposedly
told her "I can call them whatever you call them") were the names
we were called, period. Whatever that says about our family, there
it is.
But Daddy had a nickname. It was one I only heard from
his aunts (I had a number of great aunts on Daddy's side of the
family) and Daddy's younger brother, who gave him the name.
Daddy's given name was Alfred and in our German context it was
pronounced something like Ah-fred. Daddy's younger brother
mispronounced it Oppie. (That's Ah-pee, not Oh-pee like the kid
on Andy Griffith.) Apparently, the whole family picked up on it
and used it.
I don't think I ever got to know Oppie. It's a cute name, a
boyish name. Daddy was 46 when I was born, already a
grandfather. I just can't imagine a nickname sticking in our family
unless it somehow fits and, to me, Daddy never really seemed like
an Oppie.
I wish I knew the side of Daddy that fit the nickname. I
wish I saw the boyish side of him that would have made it stick
until he died. (When my oldest brother called Daddy's youngest
brother that Daddy had died, our uncle asked in disbelief, "Oppie?")
I can't help but wonder, had Daddy lived farther into my adulthood,
if maybe I would have learned to know this boyish side. If he
hadn't dropped dead suddenly at the age of 71, would we have seen
him revert to a childlikeness that would have explained the
nickname to me?
I suppose we always would like more time with our loved
ones, but 25 years wasn't enough for me to get to know Oppie.
And I'm pretty sure that's a loss worth grieving.
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Growing Up Gay in the South : Race, Gender, and the Journeys of the Spirit James T. Sears
Rita Reed
Other Articles In This Series By Neil Ellis Orts:
With Feeling
With Feeling Two: When I Think of Home
With Feeling Three: Learning on a Nervous Stomach
With Feeling Four: Learning on a Nervous Stomach
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