Marty writes:
When friends talk about what they have in common with their fathers (like Jenna recently did right here on Banana Camo), I just think of quiet, dark places and have no idea how I would convey my father/daughter bond in a conversation. It would go something like this, “Calm. Peace. Hard, honest work. Eyes closed in prayer and thought. Comforting darkness. Quiet.” Not party conversation. It would make more sense if I were to first say what we don’t have in common. Him, a thin, meek devoutly Catholic Portuguese man born in 1920, no taller than five foot three and me, a five foot ten big out dyke with a flattop born in 1970. In the moments he did talk, he told me about life before television and about his days performing in the waning days of vaudeville.
My father is a quiet man. What we have in common are quiet moments. Time spent with him allowed my mind to rest and then wander. Driving the streets of Worcester doing errands, he rarely spoke unnecessarily. Necessary is subjective, but in this case, it points to what he didn’t say. When we passed an old closed down factory, he didn’t talk about what happened to our industrial city. He didn’t say what happened to create the dozens of drug addicts and hookers who peppered that infamous strip of Main Street. He didn’t tell me not to do drugs or hang out with drug addicts. He didn’t talk about my mother’s problems and her bouts of truly crazy behavior.
His two jobs kept him busy most weekends…kept
us busy on weekends. In the winter, the grade school where he was the janitor needed constant attention. My mother gave Blithewood Avenue Elementary School the villainous name, “That bloody Blithewood.” From my mother’s perspective, Blithewood held her husband hostage every winter with its hungry coal-burning boiler system. My father’s Blithewood was a serene place, a poor man’s club med. My Blithewood was a monk’s chamber.
During the coldest winter months, the school’s boiler needed stoking around the clock, causing us to drive through blizzards. Why we? I don’t really know. Back then, I thought it was because my father wanted company and I was a good helper. I don’t remember any discussion between my mother and father about it either. Now, more than 30 years later, some reasons make sense, but none can have confirmers. Two likelihoods are 1) My father took me with him to give me a respite from my mother’s abuse fueled by mental illness and/or 2) My mother sent me with my father because she didn’t trust him.
The school’s only telephone was locked in the principal’s office and my father was reticent to use the big boss’s telephone and, yes, again, he didn’t talk much. Although it was in a city, Blithewood was a remote island when school was not in session. The place filled with lively students and overworked teachers seemed to grow bigger in its emptiness when closed. On weekends, the rasps of a dragged desk reverberated in a classroom, when the same sound would be just a few notes played in the orchestra of 20 fidgeting performers, with the maestro’s face turned away holding a chalk baton.
Bathrooms, hallways, and stairways were simply their surfaces. My father taught me cleaning tricks. Sometimes he smiled slyly, showing me how to make a job easier, “I don’t kill myself.” Then, I looked up to him; he knew how to clean the shit out of his building. It was all his to clean, fix, heat, run. Now, I don’t know what I think about a 57-year-old man taking pride in how he got away with something by making backbreaking work manageable.
Blithewood was one of the last schools in Massachusetts still fueled by coal. There were a few lights in the stone and mortar basement, but my father did almost everything by one very low-wattage bulb. The rest of the light came from the roaring flames of the open door of the boiler. A few feet away from the boiler sat two metal-framed cots. Their narrow green canvas shells were uncomfortable unless we lied flat on our backs with our arms folded. We slept like two mummies, waking every two hours or so to check the fire. If one of us got up while the other slept, we’d simply shovel coal in the mouth of the boiler and go back to bed. The scraping and flinging sounds awakened the other, but it meant that the sleeping person‘s bones could rest longer. My father never told me this is how it was going to be, it just was.
I brought piles of library books on these retreats and my father brought peanut butter, jelly, bread, cereal, crackers, powdered milk, and anything else that was easy. These blizzard weekends were busy. I’m sure I wasn’t much help at seven years old, because shoveling the schoolyard by hand took both of us all day. The day was full of blinding light bouncing off the snow with coffee breaks together in the teacher’s break room. At home, I snacked a lot, but at the school I was relaxed and just ate when I was hungry. Being away from the anxiety of my mother’s rages was a vacation on many levels.
At night, tired from a day of work, I read lying with my head near the boiler’s door. It was hot as hell, but the orange glow was ideal for reading. My father read the newspaper and listened to his Radio Shack AM radio through the single old yellowed ear bud.
This tranquility created by the fire and the soft shadows is what we shared. After I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer to read, I turned around to put my feet close to the fire. This was usually when my father prayed with his rosary beads. Raised Protestant by my mother, my prayers rambled on and on. I sometimes wished someone dictated what to say to God and how, like the Catholics. I felt like my prayers were never done, falling asleep mid-prayers.
Today, on Mother’s Day 2009, I think of my father who was more like what people say is ‘mother.’ (Tune into Banana Camo on Father’s Day for some words about my mothers…yes, plural.) Parkinson’s disease has slowed down 89-year-old Abel. A couple of months ago I visited my parents for my yearly pilgrimage. As other people talked and the television blared, my father and I simply looked into each other’s eyes and had our halcyon moment.
At this point, he can’t put words together to speak very well, making me wonder about his silence in my childhood. I thought this man
didn’t say things when it’s possible that he
couldn’t verbalize the realities he prayed for and feared.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the quietly nurturing fathers out there!
Labels: Blithewood, father, mother's day, prayer, Worcester
