Notes from Maine - 2022/02/06
I just stumbled through writing the date, and I was copying it from my computer’s calendar. I had to think about each digit. Is it really February? Are we in 2022? Seems like a few more years tumbled into the “forgotten before they started” hole. If a scientist in a lab coat showed up right now and told me that all my memories of the past decade were implanted (that’s why they seem barely real), I would have no choice but to believe them. It’s all fake. Prove me wrong.
I woke up thinking about my father. No news is good news. By now, his personal care assistant will be at his house. Someone would have called already if my father passed during the night. I’ll go up and see him in the near future just to see for myself. I said, “No news is good news,” but is it actually good news? His health continues to slide and he’s lamenting his condition. People make assessments about quality of life for our animal friends. Are we allowed to have that conversation about people? It seems wrong. I’ll shut up about it.
When I was growing up, I didn’t sense anything unusual about my father’s relationship with his father (we called his father Grandpa). Sometimes they would have disagreements that would leave my father angry. Dad mostly obeyed Grandpa’s wishes, but sometimes subverted them when there was a better way to do things. Dad was sometimes a negotiator between his parents. When his mother (we called her Cha) had an issue she couldn’t raise with her husband, she would whisper it to Dad and ask him to talk sense to his father.
I overheard a conversation one time where Grandpa (in his eighties at this point) was complaining to Dad about a lack of intimacy with Cha. I’m not sure what he expected Dad to do about that. Was Dad supposed to “talk some sense” into his own mother?
Much later, when I was writing down Dad’s stories of his childhood, I got a clearer picture of the relationship between my father and Grandpa. An engineer for the Air Force during WWII, Grandpa was always on the move. The family sometimes followed, but always months after Grandpa had been assigned to some new arctic airfield. They chased Grandpa to northern Maine, Greenland, and eventually Japan. When the whole family was together, Dad found his father’s rules to be arbitrary and oppressive.
Dad had to wait for Grandpa to be reassigned so he could use the shop and build his soap box derby car. He knew that if Grandpa returned, he would be reprimanded for using the “good scrap wood” and not putting away the tools correctly, so he worked quickly. Dad found a local garage to sponsor him, giving him the money for wheels. When he finished, Dad raced a few times and earned a trophy but then the family followed Grandpa to the next base and his mother scrapped the car. Half-joking, Dad told me, “I never forgave her for moving that damn dining room table into storage but junking my car.”
When they came back from Japan, Dad had one more year of high school left. He went to Lenox, a boarding school in Massachusetts, because he was so far behind in his education. Dad found a summer job and stayed in Massachusetts even after his family moved to Tennessee. Dad had “no interest” in Tennessee, so he found a job at the Elm Court Inn where they would give him room and board and a little money for the summer, and all he had to do was wash a million dishes.
It seems that they fought about everything (Dad and Grandpa). Dad earned money in Greenland to buy a bike when they got back to Massachusetts, but Grandpa took all that money and bought both Dad and his brother lesser bikes (and they fought). Dad wanted to do a second year at Lenox because he couldn’t pass the math exams, but Grandpa thought it was a waste of time (and they fought). Grandpa wanted Dad to go to the University of Maine to get in-state tuition rates (they fought). Grandpa would only pay for college if Dad took ROTC. Dad dropped out and didn’t tell his father until graduation (big fight!).
I’m sure they got along fine and didn’t actually fight about everything, but Dad structured many of his stories around a fight with Grandpa. It’s interesting that he framed so many things that way. He saw his youth as a contradiction of the marching orders that Grandpa gave. He battled the rigid rules drawn up by an engineer’s logic. When he got to college, Dad studied liberal arts. This pursuit was a “waste of time” in Grandpa’s eyes. Later, when Dad studied law at night, Grandpa told him that the degree was another waste of time.
I think my father was somewhat dismayed when I gravitated towards math, science, and engineering. And, as soon as I graduated, I moved up to Maine and lived with Cha and Grandpa. In some ways, I fit perfectly into Grandpa’s idea of usefulness (although I didn’t take ROTC).
I suppose it’s time to call my father’s house and check on him.