Best Dad Ever

By Jessica Lake

Armenian Holocaust 1914–1915

A boy at the time, my grandfather returned from an errand to find his family brutally murdered. A generous Turkish family hid him until he could escape.

What must that morning have been like?

A surprise but not a complete one?

Yet they remained tangled in home, breakfast, and one another.

Perfect—only?

You will be back before you know it.

As there is nothing for it, he is off to the generous neighbor.

Back already, he crests the last hillock.

And there is home, snug within its low wall of flat stones.

Each an heirloom of a son perched atop that of father.

Morning herself had lazed by his absence,

so that even now some traces yet remained.

That moment begins with a mournful gate clinging to the busted frame with its final hinge.

He does not look, knowing that shadows can blind.

They are arrayed as a list of things to strike out.

He crosses a line through the shadow

of someone who now waits elsewhere.

The list complete, there is nothing for it.

And he is off to the generous neighbor.

God graced us every two years with Eddy the Grinch, Gary the Changeling, Jeff the Rebel, and Aleta the Match Girl. After God’s much-needed rest of ten years, he graced us with Archangel Michael and dearest John the Lost Boy.

Before kindergarten, the full compass of my world was my mom and me. And for this there was only my gratitude. In the morning, after breakfast, while she labored at her chores, I would watch my shows. After a trim lunch, she would plop herself upon the sofa and scoot her legs beneath her. And I would do the same, only I would press my boyhood against the strength of her vast twenty years.

I’m mostly sure it was before I was five that someone told me I was pretty. I still feel that warm fuzzy thrill, like the purr of a warm kitten deep within me.

Now to the matter of discourse. For the last 50 years, I have idealized my father. At the age of 25, I indentured myself to him for 10 years. I shared his dream of a grand business—a legacy for the whole family. And when his business failed, I tried to save the family home from foreclosure. My dad was my best man at my wedding. I even gave him a “Best Dad Ever” card. Twice. At his funeral, everyone attested to his enlightenment.

With him gone, though, I can finally admit—he was a terrible father. Like the WWII Navy sailor he’d been, his wife and many children were nothing more than a cherished dream far across the sea.

Until my high school graduation, he never involved himself in my life. As a child, I remember maybe four good times of just him and me. I now grant that’s all there were in eighteen years. I’m sure, except Ed, it was the same for us.

He did teach us boys how a helicopter flies, how a race car approaches a tight corner, and the fundamentals of the CRT and TV raster scanning.

As eldest son, Ed may have longed for abandonment. For as the years passed, my father spilled his molten wonder and ambition into his young son. Perhaps what was lost on my father was the cliché of unrewarded genius. Maybe this embittered Ed and led to his rage. I do not know.

Sit spellbound as I prove my point.

I graduated Norwalk High School in June of 1968, had a dismal summer, and now the chill of September was in the air. That is when my father and I had that talk.

“So—” Dad began tentatively. I could imagine him trying to stay engaged.

“Gary,” I prompted.

Please forgive me if I interrupt my younger self. Again, I’m 18 years old. And this was our first talk about me and my future. Our first anything other than honing a skill. You would have thought it might have come up in a father’s mind on occasion.

“I guess?”

What did I know? I still believed in the power of imagination. Waiting to become a real girl or for aliens to bring me home. I had just spent the summer barefoot, in short cutoff jeans and a bare midriff. I had a nonsensical notion about the sexes and sex. I was the definition of clueless. Everything I’d learned was from 1950s movies and 1960s television. I didn’t know anything about grown-up life or what they did every day.

“What are you interested in? What do you like to do?” Father of the year asked.

My dad didn’t know what interested me. He’d drawn a blank. He had no idea who the young man before him was. What did I want? Nobody had ever bothered to ask me. I didn’t want to grow up. But a lot of good that did me.

“I like to SCUBA dive. Maybe I could be an oceanographer.”

Take note of this admission. I was wrong. I said oceanographer, but I meant marine biologist, like Jacques Cousteau. Only he was neither of these; he was a filmmaker. I wanted to talk to whales.

“Be an engineer. You’ll always have a job.”

In closing, never once in my 50-year career as an engineer did I ever question my father’s judgment. I had been the best little engineer ever. This is where the MBA idea of the “loss of investment opportunity” comes into play. We’ll let Daddy Warbucks explain it.

“Sure, Annie, you made a 3% ROI in your fixed-income investment. But while your liquidity was tied up there, you could have made 12% ROI on equities just based on the market index.”

And I had a sorta okay life.

But maybe?

Maybe I was meant for a great life?

Thanks, Dad.

Please let an even older self interrupt. I am all over my father’s case. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I am 18 years old. My father asked me about my future. I drew a blank. I had never considered anything after high school. That is an idiot of a special kind. My Dad is talking careers. I am talking hobbies. And I am not even sure about that. Without a school deferment I could be in Vietnam fighting the Cong. I did not know that. Neither did my Dad.

FRESHMAN

Guess what? You need good grades for college. In high school, I had gone from bottom rung to top tier, but that averages out as so-so.

It was 1969. While the Vietnam War still waged, the US was dialing down the count of draftees. Still without a student deferment, and with my winning lottery number, I was headed to Vietnam. Nobody had bothered to mention that to me. And remember, gender dysphoria hadn’t been invented yet. Despite Christine Jorgensen.

During my freshman year, I lived at my grandfather’s. His variety store was in Bridgeport, so he could drop me off at school. My mom would pick me up. Pretty much like high school, right?

For the first time ever, I didn’t share a room with Ed and Jeff, or just Jeff. My own room with a lock! I got some of my sister’s finery. Both semesters, it was Fun with Gary and Shipping Tape. And enemas in the tube. Luckily, I still didn’t have any body hair. Odd to think that at 19 I had not yet begun my descent into manhood.

My freshman year! What did I know about college? Easy: if you don’t have to go to class, don’t go. I’ll read the textbook chapter before the test.

And I learned about me and pretty women. There was one who caught my eye. She shone so brightly, with a brilliance all her own. I’d look at her and I’d feel anger and rage. A smoldering jealousy that I loathed in myself. My grades at BU were a low point. Luckily, I got accepted at UCONN.

SOPHOMORE

I began my sophomore year as a commuter at UCONN in Stamford. Again, just like high school. They even had a bell that rang between classes. Bernie and my mom drove me to school and back.

I took classes that interested me and aced them. I grew to love mathematics. Abstraction aswirl in my head, a heaven. And I impressed my professors. They would anonymously showcase the originality in my answers to the class. How I’d mastered everything I learned. I did so well that they accepted me at the main campus in Storrs.

Yet again, too good to last.

I was twenty and physically devolving. And I’d never been away from home and family. Ever.

I went hog wild.

I stayed up as late as I wanted. Sometimes all night, just for fun. I read books any time I wanted. I’d study subjects on my own, like quantum mechanics and tensor calculus, just because they interested me.

I got nowhere.

Mind, this is when I still believed I didn’t need anybody.

There was no privacy at college. All I had were the long walks I’d take. That’s when I would sing. But by then I’d figured out how to prosper with my unspoken gender issue.

Just keep so busy you can’t think.

That’s why I invited physical fitness into my regimen. Swimming, running, and weight training.

JUNIOR

Junior year, I learned I totally suck at anything engineering. It didn’t make any sense to me. Just a bunch of stupid rules. And I could not stand engineers. So many wonders in this world and no interest at all. No fun at all.

Fortunately, I aced film, computer science, and advanced mathematics.

SENIOR

Senior year, I’m back on campus. No stupid car.

I skied. I swam. I SCUBA dived. And I worked out with the girls’ gymnastics team.

I never drank, or smoked, or did drugs, or partied, or dated. I had zero money.

And I had the best time ever, all by myself.

One correction I made with a little more interpretation than the others was the Cousteau sentence: “Only he was neither of these; he was a filmmaker.” Your original “Only he was know of these” was too damaged to recover literally, but I think that is the thought you intended. Everything else is essentially copyediting rather than rewriting.