Friday, June 19, 2020

The Fathers In Our Lives



JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Sunday is Father’s Day, and it’s going to be a different one for lots of folks. Where normally you might have made a trip to Dad’s house, or had the family over for a BBQ, that’s the last thing you want right now, with older people being the most vulnerable population to Covid-19. As for younger fathers who still have kids at home, they’ve probably been seeing more of their offspring than they might like, and are wishing for a break!

I’m fortunate to still have my dad around. He’s a healthy 84 year old who’s finally getting out more now that Gov. Cuomo is easing restrictions in upstate New York. Only one of his eight kids is close enough and quarantined enough to see him in person - the rest of us will call. I always thank Dad: most of us are assigned fathers by fate, but he chose me. He married my mom when I was 14, and adopted me shortly afterwards, changing my name from Julia Spencer to Julia Spencer-Fleming (although I was always called “Julie” at home…) He couldn’t legally adopt my sister and brother - their birth father was still alive, unlike mine - but he raised them as his own. There was never a difference between the kids he had had since birth and those of us he picked up later.









The Spencer-Fleming-Lent family,c. 1980



And of course, on Father’s Day I think of my own kids, who have lost their dad. Ross’s big thing for the day was to have the kids make homemade cards. He didn’t care about presents, or being taken out to dinner (we did hit a few Sea Dog games over the years, which was nice) but he adored those homemade cards. And thank heavens for that - after he died, we went through his “memory bags” - totes where I would stuff everything he wanted to keep - and there they all were, to make us laugh and remember what a good father and man he was.

Okay, Reds, now that I’ve made myself get all misty, tell us about the dads in your life.


LUCY BURDETTE: My dad was a keeper--I was lucky, so lucky to be his daughter. He loved having a family and being a father, loved taking us camping, reading and singing to us, and was very proud of everything we accomplished. I will always miss him and can’t wait for you to read my sister’s memoir, I HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED THE SINGLE BIRD, which is coming in August. The photo is my mother, my sister and me, and my dad, probably around 1954. My father-in-law was terrific too as a dad, and so is John. I hit the jackpot in the fathering department.











RHYS BOWEN: My dad was a lovely man— gentle, kind and very generous. He adored my mum and always put family first. He did love to tease, however, which I hated as a teenager. He was an engineer by profession and there was nothing he couldn’t fix. He was always redecorating and improving our house. My fond memory? It was the year small transistor radios came out. I really wanted one but I was being given a ticket to Germany for my friend’s wedding as my Christmas present. On Christmas morning I opened my stocking and found a battery. What would I need a battery for? Unless… wild hope surged and there at the bottom of the stocking was my radio, thanks to my dad.







DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was lucky in the father department as well. He was quiet, kind, generous to a fault. He grew up poor in east Texas, had very little formal education, and was determined to give my brother and me the things he hadn't had himself. He was creative, writing his own advertising for his business and a little bit of poetry. I think if he'd had different opportunities he'd have been a writer. He loved travel, and food! (I wonder who he passed that one down to?) One of our family jokes was that Charlie always planned any trip around meals.

He adored giving presents, which you can see in this photo, one of my very favorites.




HALLIE EPHRON: Talking about my husband now, who is a superb dad. He did his duty, humiliating our daughters by wearing socks with his sandals and pens in his pockets (he’s a physicist). One of my daughters had a nightmare that her dad showed up in his artichoke T-shirt and sequined shorts, with his bird binoculars hanging around his neck. She wrote about it for a college essay (she got in). She’s come to appreciate him (as I type they’re playing Words with Friends) and she even has (and uses) her own bird binoculars and Peterson Guide. I’m not sure what happened to the artichoke T-shirt but I’m sure it’s somewhere in his closet.




HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My dad. In this photo, doesn't he look  like Arthur Miller? He was a composer, and a musician, and he and my mom married when she was 19. And had me. But before that, he was drafted into World War 2, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and was taken prisoner..and ah. Was in prison camp with Kurt Vonnegut. But later, he became the music critic for the Chicago Daily News, and told me his mantra which I think of today: "There's always another typo."
Isn't that great?
He then became a diplomat, and became the cultural affairs officer at embassies around the world. He retired from his job in the foreign service after serving his last post at the court of St. James. He's buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Until the end, he loved music, and poetry, and taught me about Pogo and Mozart. That is quite a legacy.


Hank's father..circa 1955 

Now it's your turn, dear readers. Tell us about the fathers and father-like men in your life. And in honor of Jerry, and his artichoke T-shirt, here's the actual Giant Artichoke Restaurant of Castroville:


86 comments:

  1. John is one of those World’s Best Dads who will happily brag about his kids [and grandkids] and will do anything for them . . . our family is truly blessed.

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    1. A good husband and father is life's greatest blessing, Joan...

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  2. Hank, I don't know what Arthur Miller looked like but when I saw your dad's photo, I thought he was like a younger Larry King (the broadcaster).

    Unlike others, I do not have a close relationship with my dad. I know his viewpoints about women and his racial prejudices are a function of growing up in WWII Japan but I cannot tolerate them. He has become a stereotypical cranky old man who refuses to listen to anyone, including me.

    If I had listened (obeyed) to my dad, I would never had gone to university or had a successful career in climate change research. My role was to get married and give him grandchildren, period. Of course, I did neither, which disappointed him greatly.

    When T told him that I was retiring from the Canadian federal government 4 years ago, the first thing he said was "Who is going to take care of you? You live alone". That phone call ended pretty quickly after that. Enough said.

    Happy Father's Day to the other great dads in the world.



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    1. That’s hard Grace. What’s kind of amazing is how sometimes we turn out well in spite of our families! As you sure did.

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    2. Thanks, Lucy. I did learn to become self-sufficient and independent as a young adult. Also I had to be very frugal and became a good cook, as I put myself through university and then work. My defiance back then actually spurred my mother to get a job outside of the house once I left home. Believe me, my dad was angry with both of us for a long time. But things turned out well in the end for both me and my mom.

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    3. Hugs to you, Grace. It's hard to push back against that kind of parental pressure, but I'm glad you did.

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    4. Hugs to you, Grace. Thank you for sharing.

      Diana

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    5. That is so difficult,Grace. Interesting that you know--we don;t get to choose our relatives. And I am fascinating with your use of (obeyed). Good for you for turning out so beautifully!

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    6. Growing up in an Asian family, total obedience was expected, Hank. Defying them was a pretty big no-no. I can be more detached about writing about this now, but of course, it hurt badly at the time.

      Most of my relatives are in Japan. I have 9 female cousins, and 3 male cousins. None of the females were "allowed" to go to university. It was considered a waste of money/education since they were going to be married and raise a family (this was in the 1990s). Of course, 2 out of 3 male cousins when to university and got their Ph.Ds.

      Not saying this is true in all Japanese households, but expectations and traditional female/male roles are followed by my relatives.

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    7. Grace, your "expected/obeyed" framing made me think of writer Tess Gerritsen, who is first generation in a Chinese-American family. She knew she wanted to write since she was little, but she went to medical school and became a doctor to fulfill family expectations. (Obviously, she went on to do the work she loved - and is probably more "successful" than most MDs!) I was boggled by that cultural boundary, and for the first time realized how hard it must be to buck your parent's expectations. I just never recognized it, because my parent's expectations - college, career, marriage - were all easy for me to want as well.

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    8. The pressure to conform to tradition in Japan is pretty strong, Julia.



      I think of Masako, who became Empress when her husband ascended to the throne last year. She is pretty close to my age. Before marrying, Masako was a Harvard-trained lawyer and diplomat. But once she married Naruhito, her sole job was to provide an heir. After several miscarriages, they have one daughter who cannot ascend to the throne since Japan has a male-only imperial succession system. They are still debating whether to change this system in Japan.

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    9. Grace, when I taught conversational English in the Tokyo-Yokohama area in the mid-seventies, the men's attitudes (all of my students, because I taught engineers) felt like I was back in the fifties in the US. I'm so sorry to hear those attitudes toward women persist.

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    10. It's said that the best revenge (maybe not the best word choice here) is to live a full and successful life, and you have and are certainly doing that. I'm so glad that you had the strength to ignore the conformity of a limited life and became the amazing person you are.

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  3. Reds, you made me cry with every entry! I think my father and Lucy's must have been clones - Daddy also adored us, took us camping, sang to us. When I showed up at my parents' bedside after having one of my many nightmares, he was the one who got up to put me back to bed and sing me to sleep.

    He was a high school teacher, loved hillbilly (aka bluegrass) music, and typed long single-spaced letters. When one of us four had a question at the dinner table, he would fetch one of the many encyclopedias in the house and read out the answer. From him I got my study build, allergies, and congenital optimism. Sniff.

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    1. (Us four kids, I mean to write.)

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    2. How lucky to have inherited congenital optimism Edith!

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    3. Edith, I was thinking about you since I finished your new Quaker Midwife mystery - TAKEN TOO SOON. I LOVED the book! I received an ARC from NetGalley. Your Dad sounds like a wonderful person. Thank you for sharing.

      Diana

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    4. I am, Lucy.

      Thanks, Diana! I'm glad you read it and hope you loved it. Daddy was the best and died way too young (63).

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    5. Oh, dying at 63 is way too young, Edith.
      I would gladly take the congenital optimism, and accept the allergies, as inherited traits

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    6. Can't do anything about the allergies, so I cope as I can (they are seasonal, mold, and dander, not food, thank goodness).

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  4. If I could use only one word to describe my dad, it would be "ornery." Like Rhys's father, mine loved to tease. We used to joke that no matter where we went, he'd run into someone he knew. Even when we went on vacation to Florida, he ran into an old friend. Any time we lost track of him, we'd eventually find him sitting on a bench, catching up with someone he knew from somewhere.

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    1. My dad also loved to chat with everyone he met!

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    2. Annette, in my family, that was my mother. And lo and behold, now it's me!

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  5. Growing up, my dad was my "go-to" parent. I knew Mom loved me, but Dad and I had a special bond, even beyond my three siblings. He taught me to drive, we played endless games of Trivial Pursuit, and that's where I get my love of reading, baseball, and hockey (my son was shocked at how much sports knowledge I had, as opposed to his father). He's 73, has had his health issues, and has his "cranky old man" moments, but we still text frequently and he loves his 19-month-old nephew (just like he loves my two).

    And he loves a good dad joke!

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    1. Yes, Liz, dad joke! Dad joke!

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    2. I went to the store yesterday and saw a tray full of bees. They all had price tags. Except for one. He was a free bee.

      A pirate went to his doctor to have the moles on his back examined. The doctor said, "Don't worry, they're benign." The pirate replied, "Arr, look again. I think there be ten."

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  6. Thank you for sharing those heartwarming stories, Reds. These stories about your families are so personal and add tremendously to the personalities we are coming to know here on your blog.

    My dad was a character, for sure. Like Annette's and Rhys's dads, he was a tease. But he was also an amazing story-teller and mimic. He could tell a joke like a pro and I have wonderful memories of all my cousins sitting spellbound, or laughing until our sides ached from his antics.
    He was a great husband to my mom, who was badly crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, assisting her with everything around the house, even if he'd worked a 12 hour day.
    My husband already was a dad when I met him. He never, for any reason skipped his dates with her. His devotion to his daughter and the way that he always kept his promises to her, made me realize that those qualities were the ones I wanted most. (Of course, it helped that he was adorable.) He is a super dad and grandad and I feel lucky to be with him.

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    1. Judy, I remember my mother telling me one of the things that made her decide to marry my dad (after being widowed and divorced, she had vowed to never walk down the aisle again) was the way he was such a good son to his mother and a good father to his kids. When I was in my early twenties and looking around, se told me, "Watch how a man treats his mother. That's how he'll treat you."

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    2. That is such good advice!
      I was 31 when I met Irwin and had not been too happy about the way most men treated women. I promised myself that I would be sure not to get involved again with someone who did not treat me well. Shortly after I made that vow, he bought the condo across the street from mine;-)

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    3. I would also advise, watch how his mother treats him. My ex-husband's mother was heavy on guilt trips. She'd smile as she verbally stabbed you in the back. He learned that from her, one of the many reasons I divorced him. One of my biggest gratitudes is that my own sons didn't take it on from him!

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  7. I lost my dad when I was 13, so I suspect my memories of him have benefited from all the rough edges smoothing over time. He had dropped out of high school to volunteer for WWII, where he was an aerial gunner in the Air Force. He was deprived of oxygen for too long in a plane going down and sent home to set his affairs in order because of his heart damage. He was 51 when that heart finally took him. In the interim, he was a construction worker driving the huge machinery used to build the interstate system of highways. At least, that's what he worked on most of my childhood. Though not educated, he was very intelligent and very articulate. I also remember that he was kind and very funny.

    Actually, I have to share one story about him that I always felt reveals who he was. He often worked away all week and came home only on the weekends. One weekend he told us that as the crew went out to dinner each night, he gradually realized one of his co-workers was illiterate. He always just ordered the same dinner as someone else, and a couple times Dad noticed he didn't even seem to like what he got much. So after that, Dad said he made a point of doing his menu browsing out loud, so the poor fellow would at least have more choices.

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    1. Oh, Susan, that really does show what kind of man your father was. Observant, caring, and sensitive enough to help someone out without bruising his pride. What a wonderful story.

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  8. My dad was stern and introverted, an organic chemist and USN veteran. My favorite quote: "Your mother is the gardener, I just do her yard work."

    My husband is a physicist with a stack of ancient road race T shirts, former soccer coach and referee, usually seen walking our two standard poodles. He's anxious to catch up with the kids via Facetime on Father's Day.

    Hallie, the artichoke T shirt beats anything in my husband's extensive collection.

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    1. Margaret, Ross used to say it was a father's duty to show up wearing something that would appall the kids occasionally!

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  9. Misty-eyed here, with all these great dad memories. And miss my own dad--gone 20+ years now. The heartache eases, but the missing never ends. But the dad I want to honor here is my nephew. He had some troubled years as a teenager and when he was a week past his 16th birthday, an older woman plied him with alcohol, weed, cigarettes, and money to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. The result? He discovered last year that he has a now 5-year old son. The mother had become a heroin addict and the ex-boyfriend had custody of the children. My nephew was told the boy was possibly his--a DNA test confirmed it. The ex-boyfriend and his family encouraged my nephew to get to know his son. He took that step, and then another--and last June he was granted full custody of the little guy. He has seen him through a hospital stay (thanks, Mom!), abuse that occurred during the mother's visitation (thanks again, Mom!), and yet has striven to be a stable, loving influence in his son's life. From finding a good school to piano lessons, to planning special activities and learning to cook (so his son knows Dad can take care of the cooking), to establishing special rituals (cuddled together to watch a movie or bathtime/book time), he has hit a few rough patches, but is the brightest star in that child's life. And is finishing his college degree to boot. For all the young dads like him, I raise a glass and salute them this father's day.

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    1. I still miss my dad too, gone over 30 years

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    2. Flora, what a terrific young man your nephew has grown into! As well as a great dad. You must be so proud of him!

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    3. Flora, that's the kind of man I hope my son grows up to be.

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  10. My father died at 59, massive heart attack, and I was 28. My memories of him are bittersweet. He adored my mother, me, and his grandchildren, pretty much to the exclusion of everyone else in the world. He was a German professor,a Naval officer, and an ordained Lutheran minister who never had a church. That last part I think was to please his parents, immigrant poor dirt farmers in Kansas. They sacrificed more things that I can imagine to send him first off to boarding school and then to university, during the depression. He was the chosen child to educate. He didn't speak English until he started to school, and he thought and dreamed in German. He denied the existence of the Holocaust, saying it was a Zionist plot to discredit. This from a brilliant man with a PhD. I'm still speechless more than 50 years later.

    On the other hand, my sons and son-in-law are exemplary fathers who think spending time with their children is the greatest privilege on earth. I can't imagine having a relationship like that with my father. Times were different maybe? Certainly WW2 got in the way as he spent my early childhood on a sip in the South Pacific.

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    1. I feel like some of us "survived" in spite of one (or both) of our parents. Makes me take less credit for turning out two terrific daughters.

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  11. My Dad died when I was 29. He was lucky to have lived that long since he had TB in his 20's and spent 5 years off and on in a sanitarium being treated. He finally had a lung removed and was able to move on with his life, but he had been an athlete (basketball, golf, swimming, tennis) and after the surgery could only play golf. He wasn't going to get married but met my mother and they married when he was 36. He wasn't going to have kids but my brothers and I are glad that they did. Because he was older and not in the best of health, he couldn't play with us like a lot of fathers do, but he would pitch for us so we could play baseball and he was able to play badminton with us as long as he had a partner. Because of his age (he was 40 when my older brother was born) he tried to do things with us that were different. He used to take one of us into work with him when he had to work on a Saturday (he was a travel agent), and we got to see all parts of the business - and play with the adding machines, which was fun! He would take us out to eat at a nice restaurant or the best hole-in-the-wall hamburger joint in Philly for lunch. When I went to college, he wrote me a letter every week all four years! His handwriting was not the best and my friends could never read them, but I knew that every Wednesday I would have a letter from him in my mailbox. He wasn't the most demonstrative man but I never doubted that he loved us all.

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    1. Kitty, that's beautiful. I think for so many of us, it's those small, steady moments that told us our dads loved us. I love that he wasn't going to get married, but... he wasn't going to have children, but... makes me think you must have (had?) a pretty amazing mother as well.

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    2. A letter every week from your dad. Wow, Kitty. That is extraordinary indeed.

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  12. My dad was one of the good ones: unconditional love for his three children, devotion to his wife, and a life lived with an open mind, always. His final 18 months weren't much fun for anyone, but he lived well while he could.

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    1. Hugs, Amanda. My dad lived to be 96. The last few years were not great but he never lost his sweet nature.

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    2. Amanda, what better epitaph for any of us, than "he lived well while he could?"

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  13. I do agree, unconditional love is the best gift a dad can give to a kid.

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    1. Absolutely, Hallie. I experienced a bad dad and a good one, and I credit a lot of who I am as an adult to the good one. Especially in seeing how he loved and cared for my mom and us kids - that gave me a model when it came time to start my own family.

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  14. Love the artichoke t-shirt, Hallie, having been to Castroville myself. And that's a wonderful picture of you and your Dad, Deb. I love it.

    As for my dad . . . Let's just say he's easier to appreciate from afar. He's an intelligent man, born to parents who never made it past the eighth grade, but who always valued education. He joined the Navy in WWII and was hailed as a hero for helping his shipmates safely evacuate their aircraft carrier, the USS St Lo, when it was sunk during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. When he got out of the Navy he used his GI Bill benefits to get his college degree and a teaching certificate. Over the years he got additional degrees, and rose to become a full professor at what is now Missouri State University. I salute him for all his achievements.

    At home, he was difficult. He drank too much, was verbally and sometimes physically abusive, emotionally manipulative, and probably suffered from what we'd now recognize as PTSD, although he never got help for it. He considered his two brilliant daughters to be our mother's "hobby," with no commitment to parenting on his part. I attended the same college where he taught, but the most he ever contributed toward my education was to sometimes lend me his faculty ID card so I could get a 10% discount on new textbooks.

    He was married twice, and cheated on both women. When he left my mother in the middle of my junior year in high school, she had a total breakdown, which at least taught me to be self-reliant. Ten days after my husband died, Dad sent me a copy of a letter he'd sent to a friend in which he accused Warren of being a lazy, abusive husband and lying about his service record. It was total BS that Dad had made up for who knows what reason.

    Dad is still alive. At 95, his short-term memory is starting to go, and he insists on medicating his stage-4 ulcer with daily doses of scotch. I keep telling myself he'll make a great character in a book someday, but the truth is Dad needs a woman to blame for all the problems in his life, and I'm his on-deck favorite now that his mother, my mother, and my step-mother are all gone or out of the picture. He was never a good father, but he's my father, so I'll tip my hat to him on Father's Day from a safe social distance.

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    1. As Hallie said, many of us turned out great in spite of our parents.

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    2. He will make a great character in a book, Gigi!

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    3. Agreed with Debs, Gigi. It sounds like you have a clear understanding of him and healthy boundaries, which is the best you can do with toxic people who happen to be your parents.

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    4. Yes, keeping a safe distance from toxic people is the best way for you, even when they are your parents.

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    5. Gigi, what a story! It's sad to hear about parents like that but surviving them and even more so, recognizing them for what they are, does can make you stronger and a better person yourself. All parents have faults, and I decided that some of the things my parents did that I hated, I'd never do. It's a good thing to live up to!

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    6. Thanks, everybody. He made a great negative example when I picked my beloved. Warren was none of the toxic things Dad is. Alas, Warren was also not the healthy-as-a-horse exemplar Dad continues to be.

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    7. As Julia said, what is good is that you seem to understand that he is the problem and not buy into any of his BS or manipulation. What he is or has been has nothing to do with you. That your father would try to take away the joy of your husband is absolute abuse on your father's part. I do hope you limit your exposure to your father, even though I know you want to be the bigger person.

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  15. Wonderful stories, everyone. I am crying as I am reading all of your stories. Thank you for sharing.

    Diana

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    1. If you have seen the British programme Doc Martin, it is about a character who is not very social. I am laughing because my Father is so much like Doc Martin. He grew up in extreme poverty, joined the Marines, and went to college on the GI Bill. He did the best he could under the circumstances.

      From him, I learned a lot about history. He was always trying to help people. I remember that he loved to build things like his Scottish grandfather who was a ship's carpenter. Once he created a leather globe with Braille for Blind people. I have a photo of him with the leather globe.

      Diana

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    2. Diana, that's marvelous! The stories of all the fathers of the Greatest Generation - we have quite a few of them today - are amazing to me for their endurance and for how far so many of them came from hardscrabble roots.

      And my dad is also not very social - and by that, I mean we were worried he'd never see anyone except the priest during mass once a week! However, after my mom's death, he's come out of his hermit crab shell a bit, and is now (safely distancing) socializing with the other oldsters in his community.

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  16. My dad died when I was 13; he was 37 and killed in a car crash. My memories of him are generally good (I remember a few battles as I got my stubbornness from him). He had a great sense of humor and he wrote wonderful letters. A couple of years before he died, his company sent him to Turkey for several months and he wrote regularly to my mom (this was the early 1960s) and a few times to me. Fortunately, I saved them. He never went to college and was insistent that his children would. It never occurred to me that I had any other choice! And he expected me to have a career.

    After he died, his older brother became my father figure. He was a lawyer and loved to debate. He was a very conservative Republican and I remember many hot debates (read: arguments) with him about Nixon in the early 1970s. I rarely scored many points as I was too emotional but I learned so much from him. And he was the best storyteller. If only I'd had the good sense to record him.

    When my mother was 60, after doing all the work to raise three kids mostly alone, she remarried. My step-father and I butted heads a lot but he loved my mother so much and gave her so much joy (and four step-children) that I finally came to understand that my disagreements with him were minor.

    Both my uncle and my step-father are gone now and I miss them still. And my dad. But how lucky was I?

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    1. I'd say very lucky, Chris! As you can see from some of the stories here today, there are people who never have one good father, let alone three.

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  17. Thanks, Deborah, I am proud of my nephew. He was the last grandson my parents got to enjoy (#8 of 9) and I think my dad would've been proud too--and would have loved having another little boy to spoil!). [Blogger doesn't seem to want to put my responses where I intend them to go!]

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  19. My dad was an alcoholic, his son was an alcoholic and his father was an alcoholic. He married the third daughter in a family of seven kids who's mother was alcoholic. He was never wrong, everyone else was. He loved music but couldn't sing a note. One of the few times he did as my mom asked was to pretend he was singing in church so my brother would see it was okay to sing. He was an auditor because he couldn't pass the CPA test. He was very good at blaming others for his failures. He taught me how to roll a tight sleeping bag and light the fire in our ancient cast iron barbeque kettle. He told my younger sister, when she was an adult, that everything that went wrong was because of her. The ironic thing is that my sister's early childhood reaction to the polio vaccine and spending so much time in the hospital is from his side the family. His dad was allergic to many different things that were supposed help keep you healthy. My uncles, mom's sister's husbands were great family men, who told great stories, spent time teaching their kids to build, repair and support their families. Dad couldn't keep up with them. He couldn't fix anything and at an early age I told him not to fix something, he couldn't do it so let granddad do it. He had an affair with the mother of one of the kid's who went to high school with my sister, who he left my mother. When he finally destroyed everything, he started AA. During that step when you are supposed to make those talks with those you hurt he spoke with mom but told her he didn't need to speak with my sister and me. I didn't know granddad was an alcoholic. He went through AA before I was born, was dry for the majority of my life. He told grandma he wouldn't have a drink of alcohol until he was 70 and he kept his word. When my dad died, his widow didn't call me. I found out from mom who wanted to know how I was doing. Mom was told by the parish administrator. My mom took care of the reception after his memorial service and I arranged the altar flowers. My dad was not a nice man. He was a user and was disrespectful of others who did not see things the way he did. In hindsight, as an adult, I have discovered the faults so many others saw before me.

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    1. You have my sympathy, Deana. Even though it seems like the end of the world when your family breaks up over a guy like that, sometimes its the best thing that could happen.

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    2. Deana, I'm so sorry that you had to deal with this disappointment. It certainly speaks well of you and your mother that you both stepped up and took care of those things for his memorial service. I so admire you both for rising above all the hurt.

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  20. My dad died 12 years ago, age 87, and was married to my mom a few months short of 65 years. She was 19 when they married and he was her first boyfriend. The war had started; it was clear that he, a trained aircraft mechanic, would spend the war in Florida, fixing Army planes; and he said, “Why wait?” Neither of them ever had a second thought. For months after he died, mom, who had dementia by then, was convinced he was on another floor of the nursing home and she could take the elevator to visit. They had 3 children in 4 years, not much money, and somehow kept it all together. He worked hard, with long hours and road trips in his busy season, but he was seldom too busy to listen to a problem, help with homework or talk in funny accents to make his children laugh. A man who only had a few college classes, he was a fund of knowledge about odd things, including the ancient world and archaeology. He could install a dishwasher, build a greenhouse, help with algebra and conduct a religious service in Hebrew. He could also make pancakes and I believed until I was an adult that he could cook. Because he could to anything. (He couldn’t cook. Just pancakes and, a 1950’s dad, meat on the grill) He loved children and they were crazy about him. He had been in great health until he was 86 and then it all fell apart. When he died, he had been very ill, brain-damaged, and no one who loved him, except mom, wanted him to linger. It took several Junes before I could shop for a my husband’s Father’s Day card without getting weepy. Among the people who know they were lucky to have him in their lives were his kids, his grandkids, his kids-by-marriage, and his in-laws.

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  21. PS Loved all your stories. Thanks so much for sharing.

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  22. My dad is several hours away from me, so I won't get to see him. But I rarely see him for Father's Day. I've sent a card, and I'll call on Sunday. He's a great man. I just wish he had passed on his ability to do it yourself projects. I'm one of those guys who just makes things worse, but he is very handy.

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  23. My dad was the youngest in a family with a strict Presbyterian mom who was undemonstrative and a Swedish immigrant father who was hard working and reserved. Dad was also reserved with others but was fun loving with us kids. He was the one who took us to the swimming pool when he got home from work. And the one who’d go with us on trail rides on vacation. He teased us and gave us nicknames. He also gave us the infamous Swedish silent treatment when he was mad at us. He loved all kinds of music. He had me in tears of laughter one day when he sang a few bars in falsetto and danced the Freddy. He struggled with the situation but came to terms with it when the youngest was diagnosed with autism. He constantly wrangled with health insurance for benefits due when my youngest sister had kidney failure. He couldn’t stomach seeing all the medical procedures my sister was subjected to but he was a rock. He cleaned the home dialysis machine himself after each use. He had faults but he had so many good things in his character and I have many, many good memories. And embarassing ones. Like his seeing a woman’s hair style and announcing “I’ve seen better heads on a beer!” That was my dad.

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  24. My stepfather, yeah, a different personality altogether. VERY tough, very critical. SO smart and so opinionated. And so successful at his corporate lawyering. You either agreed with him, or you were simply stupid. His favorite saying when I was about 16? He'd look at me and my hair and outfit, scowl, and say: "What do YOU represent?" My sisters and I still say that to each other, in the sarcasm font.

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    1. It's kind of funny from the outside, but I'll bet it wasn't much of a laugh for a 16-year-old. For the record, you represent integrity, professionalism, intelligence, and generosity. Just, y'know, if anybody should happen to ask.

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    2. Thank you, Gigi. In a weird way, I think it made me more determined. He absolutely could not be pleased, and that may have been a driving force in my life. ("An A? WHy not an A-plus?")

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  25. My father was a great provider and a visionary in real estate. He developed the first subdivision in the county of Kentucky where I grew up, and he went on to develop two more. He loved to talk to people, and his career in real estate enabled that mightily. I can remember more than once as a child, I wished he'd hurry up and quit talking so we could be on our way. He was a water diviner, a water witch, who could find a water source in the ground by using a diving rod, which was for him a small forked wood branch that he always kept in the boot (trunk) of his car. He gave me the legacy of Daniel Boone being my great-great-great-great uncle. He drove me, the youngest, and my three siblings to all our many school and church events until we kids turned sixteen and could drive, because my mother didn't drive. He paid for my college education and those of my siblings and bought us each a car (of course, he was probably delighted to buy me a car, as the last kid he no longer had to haul around). He was 52, almost 53, when I was born, but he worked in his real estate business until he was in his early 90s, so he never seemed old until then. I did go through a phase when I thought my parents must have really been my grandparents or that I had been adopted (my mother was 43 when I was born) because my friends' parents were so much younger, but my parents always kept up with the younger parents. So, my father was a good father. What was missing was a closeness that I see others have or had with their father that I didn't have. I wasn't Daddy's girl or his princess. That just wasn't my father's way. He wasn't particularly impressed with my education or my academic achievements. He, like so many of his contemporaries, didn't finish high school and went to work on his father's farm. But, he was very intelligent and went on to be a successful business man in real estate, as I've mentioned. But, he was more impressed by a work ethic than by education, and that meant that, even though I worked really hard in school, that wasn't what he valued. It was my mother who had the college education and taught school who was the academic encourager and was proud of me. I don't remember my father ever really expressing his love for me or any of us really, but I do realize that his providing well for us was to him a way of saying that he cared for us. If I'm to be honest, he did say several things to me that still sting to this day, but I don't think he knew how to talk to his children. Church was important to him, and I'm glad that I grew up in the Methodist church, as it was a soothing religion to me, not to mention how much I loved being in the hand bell choir. So, I'm grateful to have had a father who took good care of me, and I've come to understand that the lack of emotional closeness wasn't a rejection. My mother provided the emotional connection I needed, and I had a great childhood.

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  26. Oh, Hank, you father does look like Arthur Miller. My mother's father looks like Edgar Allan Poe.

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  27. My father! That is a hard one, I think I can say that we did come to a meeting of minds by the end of his life. Douglas Hugh Constable, joined up when war was declared in 1939. He was in one of the rear guard battalions at Dunkirk. He was later in the Commandos and being put ashore on the coast of Norway. By the end of the war he was married and with a child, me. He had very Victorian views the the role of girls and women with which I disagreed. His entire professional life was spent out of the UK: Trinidad, Ceylon, Ghana, Togo, Burundi, Ceylon again, Indonesia, UAR, before returning to England and a retirement in Cornwall with my mother who was the love of his life. While I know he loves his children - Celia, Rosalind and Andrew, it was clear to me that my mother always came first. I do miss him. There is so much I want to talk about with him. That is the sad fact that we all face with age.

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  28. My dad passed away two years ago at the age of 92. I was blessed to have him around for 58 years and miss him everyday. He was a wonderful man- loving, smart, fun and funny. He loved camping, Dad jokes (especially puns),his children,grandchildren and great grandchildren. He and my grandpa are my heroes. There is a special bond between dads and daughters and he was one of the best.

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  29. Here I am, almost 72 and my dad who just turned 94 is still going strong. He just started using whatsapp so he can see me. He answers a question with a question. Once an engineer, always an engineer. He had a successful career but you'd never hear about it from him. His family is everything. He was 21 and Mum 18 when they married. If Mum had lived 10 more months, they would have made it to 70 years of marriage. To this day he ends every phone call with "I love and adore you". The best part is that he means it. I love him with all of my heart and soul.

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