THE NARRATIVE ARC
Dad Thought He Had One Treasure but There Were So Many More
Gifts For My Father
This is my father. Well, maybe not exactly my father, but this picture represents my father. His is a unique story, and frankly, he’s kind of a unique man.
No, wait, scratch that. He’s not unique. What am I thinking? “Unique”? Absolutely fucking not.
Let me start again.
This is my father. Well, maybe not exactly my father, but this is a picture of a father, and this tale is about my father, so we’re close.
People found him fascinating, in much the same way you might find fascinating the man on the street who has long, detailed, and intense conversations with invisible people. Sure, there’s empathy, but there’s also wonder at what that man’s life is truly like for him.
Like that man, my dad was a man whose life you could watch safely from afar and someone you wanted to connect with while simultaneously wanting to avoid in order to protect yourself.
He led a varied life. One might say it was interesting, but in some ways, it was a bit too “stereotypical,” depending on how you look at it.
To be clear about things from the get-go here, Mom and Dad divorced when I was very young. I was the youngest of seven kids and likely the only one who doesn’t remember what living with him truly was like. My memories were limited, and my relationship was challenged.
He wasn’t around much. I wanted him to be around; he disappointed, he apologized…. You get the idea. Stereotypes.
I could digress and point out that while I’m the youngest of seven, I have more than just those six siblings and that he had an “extra” child (or two) who knew him even less than I did when young, but that’s a tale for another time. Or two.
I could also digress and tell a story about how he wasn’t a good father because he didn’t have a good father, and in fact, had a horrible, abusive father, but that sort of feels like making an excuse, and really, that’s all a tale for another time too.
I will leave it this way: He was a chronic liar, cheater, and gambler, who ran in some shady circles, survived threats, escaped death, and was possibly the most charming man you could ever know. The ladies thought he was handsome and fun. The gents thought he was a great friend who always had their back.
Neither the ladies nor the gents were wrong.
As for absentee fathers, he was top-notch at it. We would get together at Christmas or maybe a birthday (don’t count on it, though), and, of course, there’s always Father’s Day, right?
Each June, Mom would instruct us that the day was coming up, and we needed to go buy a gift and a card. I never wanted to, but it didn’t matter.
“Here’s ten bucks. Go down to the mall and get something. He’s still your father.”
So we’d trudge down to the store, look at the cards, and scour through the “Gifts” section (whoever thought of that as a store’s department?) and come home with something. Remember those “World’s Best Dad” figurines that you used to be able to buy at WoolCo for $1.99? Everyone bought one of those things, or something just like it, at some point, right?
I bought one every year for years, and even then, I knew it was just a piece of crap that would end up sitting there cluttering up a shelf, collecting dust, or sitting in a box somewhere.
There are those boxes that everyone, or so I assume, has in the back of a closet or in the basement that are permanent fixtures of the space. My family had tons of those. I supposed Dad did, too, at his place, but I wasn’t sure.
Anyway, my Dad never got one of those gifts, even though that’s what I always ended up buying. They had words like: “World’s Best Dad!” or “The Greatest Pop” or “Super DAD!”
My favorite was the one that didn’t have a little statue or cartoon picture of the “dad” at all, but instead was a plastic, gold-painted trophy cup! The box had a little sticker on the outside telling you there was an extra plaque included that you could get engraved to personalize the award and that the base had the right amount of extra space for it to be glued on with any household glue! (“Glue sold separately.”) I think it was probably $3.99.
So I bought these things, but he never got them. I kept them.
He didn’t get them because plans were canceled last minute, or maybe one time, the gift never seemed quite right in the moment, and I’d leave it behind. Not only did I know it was a piece of crap, I also knew….it was all a piece of crap. He wasn’t the world’s best dad by a long shot.
By the following June, the gift was forgotten, or it was broken in half or otherwise destroyed.
Gary Flemming, the kid down the street, used to like to blow things up with firecrackers and would recruit me to find shit to destroy. These were perfect for it. We had fun sometimes.
So, each year I’d go out and buy another one. And each year, I’d fail to give it to him.
Eventually, despite the fireworks, I had quite the collection, spread out among various boxes, sitting in corners of the closet or in a drawer somewhere.
That was years ago, of course, and over time, like a lot of things, they sort of disappeared.
You know how there are some things you no longer have that you also don’t ever remember getting rid of? They just go somewhere? Well, so it was with both the cheap gifts and Dad himself.
He gave up, moved away, and made a new life.
Our relationship over time became less strained, was rather non-existent for a good while, and only later on did it briefly start to grow.
I was in a place where I wanted to make a concerted effort to heal things and surprised him with a gift just before his number was abruptly up. The gift? I had plane tickets for a trip to visit him. I was able to change my flights without fees because they became bereavement tickets.
Dad never was one to keep to a real plan or reliable schedule.
That was about fifteen years ago, and I have a whole tale to tell about his brief illness and funeral, full of manipulative people, laughter, major secrets revealed, and my own anger at his missing out on all the gifts he ignored, like his children and grandchildren. But I’ll keep this tale about the store-bought crap.
While we were all gathered at his home after his funeral (being polite to the evil woman he had been married to for over thirty years), his nephew (by marriage, whom we just met) mentioned his “award” that was hanging out in the garage. This piqued our interest, so we all went out there.
First thing I noticed? That garage was as neat as a pin, without a single old box full of crap.
And then I spotted it. There on the wall was a framed certificate for “World’s Best Dad”.
I had forgotten about this entirely. I didn’t buy this one; my older brother did. But I was in on it.
Hand-signed by all us kids thirty-some years prior, it was one of those cheap things — a piece of paper for someone to fill in the blank of the father’s name, date it, and sign it below. We filled it up with seven signatures (mine being the scrawliest), stuck it in a cheap, plastic frame, and presented it on Father’s Day, 1974.
We were all a bit surprised to see it and sort of laughed at the ridiculous irony. Turns out, it had been up there for years, and in fact, it had hung up in each place he’d lived since he’d received the award. (Which were quite a few.)
The nephew, a guy who thought my dad was just the best man around, told us about how Dad would point it out to people, to all his buddies, even to strangers.
“You see that? My kids gave me that. Ain’t that great?” he’d tell them.
Apparently, he was quite the proud papa.
Color me shocked and befuddled.
Of all the things he could’ve had, of all the potential gifts in his life, this idea of a thing turned out to be what he cherished?
I find that rather sad.
After having been offered various items from his closet, like clothes (that no one wanted) or his watch, we figured the framed award was up for grabs. Surely, the evil woman wouldn’t have wanted to keep it, and she’s probably why it was in the garage and not in the house itself.
We stood there in silence as a group, smiling and staring at it in wonder.
What if it had been real? What if?
No one touched it, and we all wandered back outside into the autumn evening.
