My father only saw me play in one football game.
Not that my gridiron career spanned decades. We’re talking roughly 50 games, give or take a few. His absence also included youth league basketball, as he missed all of those games. He never attended a band recital either, so it wasn’t an anti-sports sentiment. I hear it’s difficult to juggle a wife and kids when you also live with your girlfriend on the other side of town. Considering that perspective he probably performed admirably with his time management skills.
In my younger, elementary years I loved tossing a ball around with a friend. Honestly, I loved doing that with anyone and any type of ball. Just show up and bring your arms. After my parent’s separation, every other Saturday my dad did just that. He brought his arms and threw a ball back and forth with me for about an hour. I don’t know who allotted that time block, but I enjoyed it. For some reason when our 60 minutes passed, he left. Time management, I suppose.
At my birth both parents hit their mid-40’s while already raising an 18 year-old, a 15 year-old, and an 11 year-old. Quite likely, my unplanned arrival caught dad by surprise. Growing up, I had no idea this age gap wasn’t typical. Alas, I’m sure my moment of conception was a romantic rendezvous dear old dad wished to reverse. It was a bad time for my mom not to have a headache, too. Hey dad, didn’t you have to mow the backyard or wash the VW Bug, you frisky little fornicator? Oh mother, where’s menopause when you need it?
Years later I learned my father sought a divorce far earlier, but his older brother, Daman, forbid it. Keep in mind, my father was a grown man and needed no such approval. However, this was 50 some years ago, so maybe the eldest sibling held some kind of sway over his little brothers. So he stayed in a dead marriage and fathered one last kid he never intended to raise, just to assuage Daman. I’m not trying to dis dysfunction. Growing up in an orphanage, my dad likely relied on Daman as his surrogate paternal role model. Families get so complicated and messy.
My father was a federal judge and Daman was a Georgia redneck.
Daman possessed nothing my father needed, such as an inheritance of land or money. My dad forged a life and a career far from the Georgia backwaters. But nonetheless, Daman held him at marital bay. By the time Daman passed away, my father began crafting his exit strategy. By 1980 my parent’s separation officially morphed into a divorce. My dad and his new wife moved across the country to sunny, southern California. New wife, new life. And less complicated time management, I imagine.
I hate saying this, but in complete fairness (what a dumb concept, nothing is fair), my father stayed married to the “other” woman for longer than the 32 years he spent wedded to my mother. As far as I know he remained faithful, which was not a skillset he mastered after his first “I do”. I wonder whether my mother knew of his infidelities and just kept the the family chugging along. Perhaps she never knew. Without modern day technologies, indiscretions remained discrete. No answering machines, 4 television channels, and the term social media had more akin to fascist newspapers than digitized networking.
Since mom and dad both passed away, such questions will likely remain unanswered. If my mother knew, how lonely and rejected did she feel? I remember her attending counseling after the divorce. She seemed to carry an immeasurable burden in those days. Oddly, she never took off her wedding ring. She wore it for the next three decades and most likely carried it to her grave. My mom raised me in Virginia, but she lived in denial. The ex isn’t coming back, so sell that damn thing and move forward!
My sister cremated our mother shortly after her death.
In a stroke of brilliance she combined our mother’s ashes with some of my father’s ashes and interred them together inside a memorial bench’s leg at a Danielsville, Georgia cemetery. I know. I, too, cringed upon hearing how my parents got unwittingly reunited in death, forever trapped together in the base of a concrete graveyard loveseat 36 years post their divorce. It’s kinda like a Hallmark romance movie filmed through the lens of an insane asylum. Maybe someday your children will bury part of your ashes with your ex or former lover. It’s just so damn heart warming and unsettling.
As I aged, I understood that relationships take hard work, raising children gets tough, and all marriages harbor some issues, disagreements, and letdowns. As humans we tend to foul things up from time to time. So when I found myself in southern Georgia for work in my late-30’s, I thought it wise to bury the hatchet. I planned a visit with my once philandering father at his retirement home near Savanah.
I arrived on Saturday morning and planned to stay as long as possible into Sunday with him and his wife, Kelly. Imagine my surprise on Saturday night when he relayed that they planned to hit a flea market Sunday morning, followed by him watching a televised tennis match in his den. Their plans did not include me, be it the shopping excursion or watching television. They indirectly invited me to leave. Our extended father-son hour was up. Time management, baby.
My visit checked a box for both of us.
We filled our proverbial 60 minute session. I didn’t see him again for about 9 years, shortly before he passed away. By this point his memory faded in and out. Sometimes he knew who I was, other times he asked who my father was. Exactly, I thought.
But on a chilly October Friday night in 1984, the only thought coursing through my un-matured prefrontal cortex centered on why is my dad here. He stood by the track with his hands atop a chainlink fence as we ran off the football field into the locker room. I cannot say whether he saw the whole game or just the final few minutes. It didn’t matter. He showed up once and ruined his perfect absence record. Way to blow an unblemished mark.
My wife and I only missed our kid’s events for work trips and conflicting children’s schedules. We maintained this during youth league up through high school. I can’t imagine just not showing up when it’s completely feasible to make the event. My daughter will play in what is likely her final collegiate volleyball season this fall. My wife and I plan to make every game. Even if there’s a super neat flea market or inane pro tennis match to watch from a BarcaLounger.
I don’t remember who we played that Friday night, or how well I performed, or if we won or lost the game. I just remember dad showed up out of the blue, without any advanced warnings or notifications. Maybe that’s how he saw me 57 years ago in the delivery room. Assuming he managed to carve out the time to be there. Thank God mom made it!