Riddles Solved by Silence

Spring is coming in the northeast where I live, and I’ve got a tan.  Chalk that up to a dysfunctional relationship with my father whereby I haven’t seen him in nearly six years.  That Daddy-Daughter hiatus brought me on a flight down to see him in Florida for a long weekend, Friday to Monday, by myself, leaving my husband at home with our boys (broken up by a visit to his family for some variety).  Awkwardness wasn’t something I was worried by in the reuniting, more like the chattering in my own brain.

My father is vastly different than my mom.  Anyone who knows my mom, aka ‘Bubbe’ (if you don’t…you will eventually through this blog), eventually asks upon meeting or hearing about my Dad, ‘How were they married so long?’  Unfortunately, my brother, Brian and I reached that stage of parent/child relationships where the dialogue between is as adults.  He dared ask the question, I was a casualty of hearing the answer from my Mom ‘Well, the sex was really good.’  After I stopped screaming and realized I was only temporarily deaf and blind, life continued in as normal a fashion as it could following.

Suffice it to say, my mom is outgoing, outspoken and very much engaged and connected to people.  My mother is my best friend, confidant and sometimes, I want to strangle her, as happens with people one is closest to.  I talk to her just about every day and sometimes, we just have this psychic, Hungarian connection where we can sense something is up with the other person.  It’s a Mother/Daughter relationship on steriods.

My dad is the total opposite.  He’s pretty content to keep to himself, by himself.  While I marveled at how many more entertaining stories he had than I figured after exhausting the standard weather and ‘How are you’ obligatory topics, he’s not the person moving too far off his standing point to talk to anyone at a party. My memories of him are of simple things; my brother and I as kids, riding with him on NYC’s old  M100 bus route on the weekend, eating accapurria and learning how to shoot pool at the depot during lunch hour.

When we were little, there were lots of hugs and kisses, fun playtime with my Dad.  We grew and as we got more complicated in our questions, our views of the world, so grew the space between us, sadly and unexplained.  Weekend or vacation time as a family was pretty mellow, echoing my Dad’s demeanor.  Content to sit in his rocker and read the New York Times on a Sunday or stand at the edge of a beach, toes nipping by the water as he kept a steady gaze out at the sea, staring off in silence.

And as I was in Florida, visiting my Dad, I found there not to be as much silence as I anticipated.  My father telling me stories I hadn’t heard before about his time there, about his past as an adult; surprising me that he now said ‘sh*t’ a lot and making me feel funny for being the kid around a cursing Dad.

And as I suspected, I thought about asking him why he’d never ventured north after his mother died to see his own children; to meet the grandchildren he’d never met.  But, I didn’t, knowing full well the lack of a good answer beyond his not wanting to journey to the cold northeast.  He said as much, for the umpteenth time in answer to my offering to take him to a Yankee game...in August.

‘Daddy.  It’s not cold in August. It’s HOT.’

‘No. No, no, no,’ he returned. ‘I’m not going nowhere. I love the weather here too much.’

He may as well have punched me in the stomach. It was a slight variation, a finite, closed one of the excuse I’d heard before. Used to it? I thought I was.  I thought I’d grown accustomed to it.  Apparently not. I sat silent for a few minutes as we drove to the beach.  I swallowed the tears, the hurt, hid them and waited to appeal to the sun to heal me.

Can’t understand it? Want to explain it with psychobabble?  Trust me, it’s not worthy of introspection.  It’s just that simple.  It has nothing to do with malice, hard feelings or otherwise.  It’s just that he’s lacking that chromosome that connects him to people and guides him to let his heart pull him to them. And for that, he doesn’t want to go outside what’s convenient for him, and doesn’t realize what he’s missing. His children, his grandchildren…blessings…love.  Somewhere in his upbringing, the will, the innate ability to connect to this was lost…damaged. This trait was not fostered, it was stifled, strangled in unspeakable ways. But, those are memories that are his.

As a parent, I find the past and lacking connection hard to justify as excuses. (Though I have been able to forgive his coming to NYC five separate times, that I know of, to see his ailing mother, but not think to call his own children, Brian and I.)  So, I accept that this is who my father is, that he is not drawn to meet his grandchildren, or see his own children if they do not come to him.  It gets easier with time, and with my years as time has me embrace humility, appreciation for my health, the blessings of my children, the abundance of love from my family, friends, and friends who are as family to me.

As I struggled with the riddle of how I ask my father directly why he does not want to come meet his grandchildren, I thought of telling him how his not meeting, not having any desire to, hurts me. But I decide as my time with him on this trip drew shorter, I do not want to muddy an otherwise fine visit, for an answer I know; an answer that maintains the sharpness of a fine, steel blade. For all the chatter in my brain that went on as a result of my taking this trip alone, the riddle of how to solve this one, how to quiet the question, how to erase the hurt of that same answer, eludes me.  It’s quelled by nothing but silence.

I press my face to my father’s. The moment is frozen in time…and silence.

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