Sins of My Father (Part Four) - By the Time I Get to Arizona

My summer trips to Charleston continued through my eighth grade year. It was in that summer that I started to recognize that my dad had issues and struggles that I knew nothing about. My mind was growing and developing and I was anything but an incurious teenager. I was beginning to form opinions and attitudes and ask ‘why?’ and ‘why not?’ often.

I looked forward to accompanying my dad to his baseball games. He managed an amateur team made up of guys who either just missed making it or missed it a long time ago. Most of his players were in their late twenties and many of them had families. It was similar to beer league softball except far more intense and the players were far more skilled and talented.

Often, my grandfather would come with us and hang out in the dugout or coach first base. I went along at usually watched for about three innings and then went looking for something else to do until the game ended. On one drive to the ball field I entered into what I thought was a light hearted debate about drugs with my father. My cousin Vicki had used marijuana during the school year and was hanging out with some general ‘undesirables’. This had created quite a ruckus in the family. When I suggested that in the big picture, this was really no big deal it was clear to them that I needed to be scared straight. Poppy and my dad took to teaching me about weed on the way to the game. Dad told me that pot was every bit as dangerous as any other drug and could actually kill you. While eighth grade certainly wasn’t inundated with pot, it was around and the social warning label that had been placed on it in my mind was starting to fade and come into a truer focus.

Midway through the debate, Poppy accepted that I was not a user or even vulnerable to be and eased into his seat, listening to the Cincinnati Reds game on the radio. Dad persisted, digging his heels in, insisting that Vicki’s joints and bongs would lead to her literal demise. Ready to give up and move on, I responded to one of his inane claims by saying, “you’re crazy!” Dad nearly drove off the road. His blood pressure shot through the roof. In the rear view mirror I could see that his eyes were bulging and glaring at me with an anger with which I could not personally relate. He barked, “I AM NOT CRAZY!” I was stunned still, with no idea how to respond. I just stared at him in the mirror. “Do you hear me? I am not crazy!” Poppy stepped in and told him to settle down. Slowly he did, but his reaction was like nothing I had ever seen in anyone, especially him.

In the several seconds that this exchange took place I wilted. Sitting alone in the backseat I melted into a mix of confusion, guilt, pain and rejection. My eyes filled with tears as I wished to myself that I could go home. The thought of flying home early passed through my mind. The more I thought of it, the more I wanted to go and the more I cried. I stared out the open window with the wind in my face so that my tears would blow off my cheeks and not be seen. We all sat quietly for the rest of the drive.

In the dugout at the field, Poppy sat down and told me that dad was very sensitive to being called crazy. He went on to chastise me for being disrespectful, attaching a long list of bad luck that my dad had experienced in his life as if that alone bought him extra understanding from a son he saw once a year. While I was still hurting, I let it go. Most of the emotion that surged through me was guilt for hitting what was clearly a nerve in my father. I didn’t ask what should have been the logical follow-up question; “why is he sensitive to being called crazy?” That would have begged the questions, “is he crazy?” and “what is wrong with him?” Looking back, his reaction to me seems almost cartoon like. I think it was less a reaction to my lack of fear and proper respect for marijuana and more of an issue of me not buying into his experience and authority on the topic. Not as a father, but as someone who knows. He failed to sway me and I reacted in a way that passively challenged his sanity.

Of course, his contention that pot kills was not something that I thought made him truly crazy. It seemed that all adults towed this company line and I called anyone with which I disagreed, ‘crazy’. It was that simple. However, this was the first time in my life that I felt anything other than unconditional love for my dad. It was also the first time that I wanted to react back in a hurtful way. I nearly launched back with the, “you were never there, you have no right…” barrage that kids of divorce often employee when hurt. But more than any of this, his reaction along with Poppy’s explanation created the first time I ever wondered what it was that happened to my dad to make him how he was. Everything else came into an unhealthy, dysfunctional focus at that time: he bounced from job to job, lived with his parents and had little regard for the integrity of the truth in any vain. Suddenly, in the backseat of his car I saw my dad as the tremendously flawed man that he was.

What I did not see nor did I have the ability to properly relate to, was the pain that he felt. At that time, I didn’t understand it and could not have known the depths to which he repressed it.

Perhaps it was the years of living with and being raised by my mom, but I was of the opinion that I had earned a lifetime of parental immunity from my dad when it came to him being upset at me and lashing out. All parents slip up and lash out at their kids, but typically they have a sense of equity in the process from which to draw. It became clear to me in a flash that he did not and in my mind did not have the right to raise his voice at me. Of course being the peace-keeper, the codependent in training, I quickly let all this go and moved on as far as my reaction went. I guess I figured if we all just pretended like none of this ever happened, things would be easier. So I did and they were.

Baseball more often than not accentuated what was best about my dad. He was often generous and paternal to young men who needed a father figure. The man that he was to so many of those guys was an aberration, though. There was very little truly paternal about my father. His parenting instinct was almost non-existent and his judgment was suspect to say the least. The position that he assumed with so many of his payers through the years was most often a hybrid of mentor and friend. The language he used in their company was unlike any that even I, at fourteen had ever heard. Off the field he never used this language, but on it he used profanity in context that made no sense. Where many would ‘damn’ or ‘shit’, he would opt for ‘piss’ or ‘cunt’. I have never heard the word, ‘cunt’ used on a baseball field since. I actually thought about helping him how to more effectively curse, teaching him the context that he lacked.

This summer vacation ended differently. Nanny and Poppy and I drove Poppy’s van from West Virginia. It wasn’t abundantly clear to me at the time, but Poppy was scouting out a new place to live. He was ready to leave West Virginia and wanted to be closer to my brother and me. There was clearly an ulterior motive that was not clear to me at first, however.

After Nanny and Poppy made their move to Florida, dad moved to Phoenix. In West Virginia, he had last worked for the state medical examiners office. He had worked out a transfer to a similar office in Arizona. It immediately occurred to me; why when his parents were moving two miles from his children, he would move 2,500 miles in the opposite direction? I was profoundly confused. Even as Nanny was still putting glasses in her new shelves at her new home, I asked her why dad had decided not to come with them. She dodged the question saying that it was complicated. As I challenged her, suggesting that dad didn’t care enough to be close to us, she snapped back, “that is not true, Mickey.” Nanny rarely lost her cool, so when she did it spoke volumes. I backed off and accepted that there was something behind the scenes that I knew nothing about and probably wouldn’t understand.

I was much more comfortable prodding Poppy for these answers. He didn’t enjoy the topic any more than Nanny, but he accepted my need to know and my ability to understand. Like, Nanny he reassured me that my dad would much rather be close to Chris and me. What followed was the shell of an explanation designed to explain just enough to a teenager without telling too much. What stuck with me was that my dad had entered into a partial ownership or a stake in a local bar that he frequented with his players. I remember seeing this place. It was a fee-standing building next to nothing, near nothing with basically no windows. I’m not sure I was ever inside the bar, but have a pretty good idea what it looked like. The bottom line seemed to be that something went wrong and someone was in hot pursuit of my dad. I wasn’t sure if it was the police or someone who had maybe financed the effort. The idea of organized crime even crossed my mind. Certainly the mob wasn’t in West Virginia, were they?!

While I really had no choice but to let this go, I did so knowing that this is about as much as I would get on the subject. The truth of the matter was probably a bit of all of the theories that had run through my mind. He probably defrauded someone who had invested and had them as well as the police in route. Running in the opposite direction as my grandparents made sense. Anyone looking for my dad would certainly look in the home of his parents. It’s almost as if he went to Phoenix to ride things out. The more time that has passed on this theory, the more I have come to believe it.

As Nanny and Poppy settled in, Nanny started sharing stories from dad’s new life in Phoenix. Predictably, it wasn’t going well, and he was struggling mightily. I asked her why he hadn’t called me at all since moving west. Nanny went on to tell me how depressed he was. I asked for his number. I had decided to call him myself.
I was angry that I was in the position of having to call him. It had now been several months since I heard from him and I was angry and confused and quite worried. Mostly, I was mad as hell.

His phone rang three times and I thought about hanging up. He picked up the phone and answered in a muted, hushed voice. I had forgotten to do the math on the time change between Florida and Arizona. Again, I thought about hanging up, but quickly greeted him, “dad?”

We spoke very briefly. He was concerned with me getting in trouble for calling. I assured him that no one would have an issue with me calling. I asked about Arizona and his job. He told me that he had gone on a date with Stevie Nicks, which I did not believe. He told me that money was a problem, and for a minute I had a glimpse into the depression that Nanny had told me about. While he was happy to have heard from me, I continued to fume inside that I called him instead of receiving his regular call.

After I hung up, I called Nanny and asked for my dad’s mailing address. She gave it to me and didn’t ask why. I rummaged up an envelope and stuffed all the money I had into it and threw a stamp on it. As I walked it to the mailbox my anger started to subside. I became focused on how I might be helping him and that Nanny would be proud. Yet her unwritten rule was to do nice things for people and tell no one so that our motives remain true. So, I didn’t tell her about the thirteen dollars that I sent my dad. On my walk back to the house it occurred to me that I had probably just sent my dad cigarette money for the week, and I became angry again. With a dismissive gesture toward the mailbox, I said out loud, “fuck it.”

When my dad got the money, it did not prompt him to call me, but he did call Nanny and Poppy. My gesture moved them and they told me so and how happy things like that made Jesus as if I were nine years-old in Sunday school class. As Nanny hugged me tight, Poppy handed me fifteen dollars from his pocket.