Remembering My Father

Not sure why, but lying in bed early in the morning I started thinking about my father. He doesn't often enter my thoughts.

My parents divorced when I was seven. I saw him every Sunday afternoon for the next eleven years. We almost always just got into the car and took a ride in the country. It was one of the few things we enjoyed in common. We rode for a couple of hours through rural Pennsylvania - rolling green hills, farmland, through the woods, past the Springfield Dam, under the Memorial Arch commemorating World War I dead, watching the highway stretch ahead of us. It always gave me a thrill as a child to look ahead and see the road rising over two or three hills, knowing that we were going to roll up and down over those hills. Sometimes my father, who knew nothing about farming, but always wanted to sound knowledgeable on every subject, would say, "Nice stand of corn in that field." Sometimes we would drive to the tiny church where his grandparents and many other relatives were buried. The approach to that church was up a short hill so steep that I used to think the car was going to tip over backwards. We would get out and inspect the grave stones. I enjoyed being in that beautiful little church yard, and seeing the familiar names on the stones. But wherever we went, we always ended by driving along the "Joanie Road". My family called me by my middle name, Joan, and long ago, my father had named that stretch of woods and streams that I loved so much, the "Joanie Road". He once gave me a 5x7 black and white photo of that stretch of road that an acquaintance had taken. I did love that picture. When we drove there, I knew the afternoon with Daddy was about over and we would head home. My usual feeling was relief at that. While I enjoyed the ride, most often accomplished in silence which I also enjoyed, I was never completely comfortable in my father's presence. And I knew at the end he would ask me, in that funny tone of voice, "Do you love me?" and I would have to say, "Yes, Daddy." It took me a lot of years before I realized, I did love him, in spite of everything. He was my father.

It must have been cold on that mountain top where he resided, looking down at all the people. Looking down on the poor people, the black people, the Catholics and the Jews, the people less educated than he, the Democrats, the blue collar workers, laborers, "those foreigners", anyone who was not a carbon copy of himself, and there weren't many of those. It must have been a sad and lonely place. He must have been a sad and lonely man.