monday punch-in-the-face blogging: the "i don't know what to do with my hands" issue

whatever issues i have with my father's politics and social morals--and those issues are many and varied--i'll always be the first to stand up and say that he was a hell of a dad. when my parents bought their first house, a few months after my younger sister was born, my dad was thirty-one years old and the main earner in the household; my mother worked because she liked to be busy, but her income was more or less pocket money. not long after we moved, though, my dad was laid off from his job as a machinist. neither of my parents had more than a high school education, and with two kids and a new mortgage, they couldn't afford to be choosy about work. my mom took a night job as a waitress, and my dad, who'd just gotten used to the idea that he was actually going to be able to come through on that promise every good father makes about giving his kids a better life than he had and being as good or better a father (depending on the family history) as his father was, stuffed his hopes and his ego in his back pocket and did what had to be done.

for a while he couldn't find any work at all, and my mom had to pick up whatever extra hours she could at the restaurant to cover the loss. my dad became responsible for preparing meals, something he'd never had to do, having gone directly from his mother's cooking to my mother's. at first we ate a lot of fish sticks and hot dogs and macaroni and cheese--but we were kids; that was what we wanted to eat. soon, though, he discovered the miracle of the stir fry and nearly wore a hole in our wok with his zealous efforts to create an entire balanced meal in a single, easily washed pan. this tactic is the cornerstone of my culinary existence to this very day.

when he could get work, he took it, no matter what it was or how far from his ideal situation the description ran. for a while he worked on a semi-freelance basis refinishing hardwood floors. when that dried up, he took a position in the snack bar of the local kmart. at night he still made dinner and fussed over the (very fussy) baby and never said no when i asked him to play a board game or read a book. if he felt stressed about the life he'd found himself in, it didn't show. my mother was a crackling mass of nerves who'd snap like a too-tight guitar string if i left a stray sock on my bedroom floor; my dad never raised his voice, never complained, never said he wished anything were different. he did what had to be done, and then he went to bed and woke up the next day and did it again. my sister and i were incredibly happy kids, because that was what my dad, in his utterly unexpected role as our primary caretaker, had decided we would be. i didn't realize my family had been poor until i started working myself and came to understand how little you can get with a minimum-wage paycheck. we were shielded from the entire experience. even after he found a steady day job, he still came home and helped me practice my multiplication tables or my softball swing, let my sister put makeup on him so they could pretend they were princesses, made sure we were clean and had everything we needed for school the next day, and never made us go to bed without a story. being a good parent isn't something that just happens, and it isn't an innate skill; it's a choice. and my father chose it every day, because family is, to him, the most important thing. if it calls for sacrifices, you make them, and if it demands that you give up a little more after that, well, you do that too. because if your family can't count on you, nothing else you accomplish or obtain will be worth a fistful of sand.

when my dad's mother went into the hospital last december, he drove an hour into boston after work every night for two weeks to sit with his father and his younger brother and sister in the visitors' room at the end of the hall. he didn't stop going when his mother lost consciousness, or a few days later when it became clear that she was unlikely to regain it. on christmas day, he stayed home with us while the rest of his family gathered in that hospital room, because he wanted us--not himself, really; just us--to have a good holiday. and when at four o'clock that afternoon, while my mother and sister and i were standing in the kitchen in our coats preparing to head out to the car so we could join everyone else at the hospital, my uncle called to tell us that my grandmother had passed away, my dad said to us, "i'm sorry this had to happen today. but at least we had a good christmas morning together." he spent the rest of the night calling relatives. he made all of the funeral arrangements alone, because his family couldn't pull themselves together enough to lend a hand. he paid for everything himself because no one else offered to help and he didn't feel right asking under the circumstances. i stayed at my parents' house for the two days of the wake and the service, and i didn't stray far from them over that time. my grandfather and aunt couldn't do anything but cry, and my father tended to them like they were his own wounded children. not once, in those two days, did i hear anyone ask my father how he was.

nothing improved in the months following the funeral. my aunt and grandfather seemed to have made some sort of unspoken pact to exist in a state of grief-stricken suspended animation. my grandfather is barely mobile and physically unable to care for himself completely; everyone seemed to agree that the best thing would be for him to move to an assisted-living facility. my father had all the necessary papers drawn up for the sale of the house and admittance to the residence, but when he gave them to my grandfather to sign, they sat on a table and were eventually lost in the clutter that accumulated around and on top of them. my uncle lives with my grandfather, my aunt lives not fifteen minutes from him and sees him nearly every day, but in a year none of them has been able to cancel my grandmother's newspaper subscription, or even throw away a single newspaper. with two capable adults in and out of the place on a routine basis, my grandfather refused my dad's offer to pay for a meals-on-wheels program because he's afraid that if someone saw the inside of his house, he wouldn't be allowed to live in it anymore. and every time my aunt leaves the house, she calls my father to ask him why he isn't taking care of it, what kind of son he is to let his father live that way. this is one of two reasons she's had to call my father in the past year; the other is to cry, late at night, about how much she misses her mom. she has still not asked my father how he is.

this past saturday, my dad called his dad to ask if he wanted to come to my parents' house for christmas, rather than sit in his sad, dirty living room surrounded by his wife's never-ending newspapers. and he said yes, in fact, he would like that very much. because my grandfather can't drive anymore, my dad called his sister to ask her to please bring their father over for christmas, because there was no way to make the day less sad, but they could at least be together. and she said no, no, no, no, no, she couldn't do that, she couldn't do anything but crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head, how could he expect her to do anything at all after what had happened to her. but my dad believes that what matters is coming through for your family, so he asked her once more, very gently, very calmly, to think of their father and what would be best for him, to think of what their mother would have wanted them to do.

and my aunt started screaming. flat-out screaming. screaming about how cold and heartless my father was to call her up and make demands when she was still struggling just to hold on after what had happened to her. screaming about how she was the only one who was doing anything to try to keep that family together, since clearly no one else gave a damn about them. screaming about how my father had no right to talk about what their mother wanted, because he hadn't even cared enough about her to be with her when she died. and then she hung up on him.

when i left my parents' house tonight, my father was gathering together the gifts that he planned to bring over to his sister the next day. because a good man looks after his family.

now, either i'm a no-good woman, or my father doesn't have the strength to draw the line--or maybe there's one more option. my mother and i don't care at this point if my aunt does crawl into her bed, pull the covers over her head, and dissolve into bubbles and foam. my uncle is a useless mooch, but he knows it and makes no claims to the contrary, and he's never asked anyone to feel sorry for him. still, i resent his uselessness because it has created so much unnecessary work for other people i love, and if he disappeared my heart wouldn't break. i'm attached to different threads, i'm bound by different knots. my aunt and uncle are family, but it's different blood, its thickness lessened by its being once removed. my father thinks this runs contrary to every value he's ever tried to instill in me, but i think it's just the opposite.

how you love someone is a choice--but whether or not you love them is out of your hands. my dad will go on quietly cleaning up messes and carrying three other people on his back until his father passes away, and i pray that that will be the last time he'll ever let himself rescue these selfish, helpless, imbalanced people--but i don't believe it will be. because my dad throws things at me when i insult the president and tells me i'm a weak-willed despot lover who would have raced out to greet the wehrmacht with flowers and pfefferneuse, he says my senseless insistence on a human contribution to climate change only proves how ignorant i am about the scientific history of the earth, he has threatened to disown my sister for letting immigrants change the oil in her car, and he chooses to walk past the composter and carry on for another twenty yards to throw leaves and lawn clippings into the woods rather than put them in that stupid barrel--but i'd stop speaking to every one of his relatives today for nothing more than their inability to express a modicum of gratitude for his efforts, and if any one of you said an unjust word about him i'd very contentedly set you on fire.

because if your family can't count on you to have their backs, you're nothing.