The plan was hatched in a McCarthy’s bar booth on a random weekday night. Let’s go to Chicago and watch the Browns play. Just out of college, working sporadically on moving trucks during the non-busy season, I had a lot of time on my hands. I was back in Lakewood, living in my mom’s basement, which had become a de facto party hub for my Lakewood buddies.
The plan seemed good. Four of us were in. George, the renowned artist and noted basketball ball hog, he was in. I call George a ball hog but I was willingly complicit in his exploits. Most of my recreation basketball career was spent giving him high picks and seal screens so he could get off his shot. George was a good shooter, and a straight shooter in life. He would have a few beers with the boys, but you would be lucky to hear a curse word out of him. He could laugh at himself though, and his do-gooder ways provided plenty of fodder.
Brian, “Techno”, was in. Brian had just finished up at Mount Union. He was about to start a good career in the medical industry. But when we hatched the plan to go to Chicago, he was just a grinder living day to day with an upbeat attitude and no car insurance. We were playing a lot of ball together in those days too. A high school football pass rusher, a college baseball player, and a recreation hoops scorer, he was pretty all-around.
And Casey was in. The funniest guy any of us knew. Casey had been mischievously cracking heads up since birth, I presume. He had a condition from birth that distorted one of his arms and limited its use. I never once heard him complain about it, and he would be damned if it was an issue for anyone. He would still play football, swing a baseball bat, shoot a deep three. He was inspirational that way. We spent a lot of time lounging during self directs shooting the shit in high school. You can not overstate how funny he was.
Saturday, day before game day. We carjacked my mom’s car, and we were off to Chicago. George was fresh as a daisy. Techno and I were a little bleary eyed. I picked up Casey, and he hadn’t gone to bed from the night before. No matter, he could get a little shut eye in the car. I made it to the Windy City in way less time than it should have taken, the speedometer analogous to our level of excitement and anticipation. From the start, we should have slowed down.
We checked into a downtown hotel, four men to the room. Casey was a hetero dude, and in high school had one of the prettiest girlfriends in the school, but he was a true homoerotic all star. “Look at that guy, he’s hot,” Techno shot out as we crossed a downtown Chicago street resplendent with metrosexual men. “I think I am getting a boner,” I offered. “Heavens to Murgatroy, I’m getting a boner thinking about you getting a boner!” Casey closed. George shook his head and fought a smile. The party was on.
Pizza and beers. More beers. Some cab rides. Casey split off from the crew for a while. We knew he was getting into some things that we weren’t, but I wasn’t judging him either. A couple hours later, he came back to the bar we were in, with a story from a housing project that seemed lifted from a CSI episode. We cabbed back to the hotel, two or so in the morning. We had to wake up early the next day, get down to Soldier Field, and scalp some tickets to go to the game. George and Techno snuggled into one bed, me and Casey in the other. At four in the morning, Casey’s snoring woke me up, as did the need to piss for about seven straight minutes. I hopped back into bed. At half past seven, I woke up again. This time there was no snoring. I looked at Casey’s face. It was blue. I knew right away.
“George, check his pulse!” “Call 911!” “What the hell is going on?” George and Brian shot out of bed, knowing the dark gravity of the situation immediately. The paramedics came. They took him out. A policeman ushered us to the hospital. A homicide cop interviewed all three of us independently. I called my mom. The hospital told us what we knew, he was dead. My mom’s cousin Joe picked us up and took us to breakfast. We drove home to Cleveland. Four in the car on the way out, three on the way back in. The ride was silent, the soundtrack was the game we didn’t attend on low volume. The Browns had built a lead and a crescendo of excitement, before falling apart late and losing in dramatic fashion. Morbidly, I could only think this was fitting.
So that was that. Any threads of innocence that I was grasping onto had been frayed. We all lost the funniest guy we knew. The feelings of guilt, anger, and sadness were overwhelming for weeks. What could I have done? I knew he was partying too hard. Then I would get mad at him, like why the hell did you do this to yourself Casey, you were too fucking smart for this. Then I would just miss him, and the way his brilliantly crafted sense of humor, a style that matched self deprecation and mischief with a quick witted trigger, could disarm any situation and turn it into a cavalcade of laughter.
Fast forward ten years, and while the memory has never left me, the pain of it had certainly subsided. Every now and again something would remind me of Casey. I went back to Soldier Field this past January. I would hear a dirty joke, and think of how Casey could have invariably one-upped it.
My friend, and one of Casey’s best friends, Ryan, called me last week. “Very bad news, call me back.”
Another one of our old boys, and one of Casey’s BOYS, was gone. I don’t want to speculate on how it happened too much. Unlike with Casey, I wasn’t there. But it is safe to say that it was too much, and it killed him too soon.
And Eric’s passing pushed all the old memories of Casey’s death right back to the forefront. Eric and I spent a lot of time in our late teens and early twenties together. He was on the softball team for a couple of years. We golfed at Little Met. We played video games in his parents TV room. He was, much like Casey, a flat out funny man. Indeed, Eric and Casey were very close, and I know Casey's death had hit Eric hard. Despite the pain from his friend's death, it seemed that with Eric, an Austin Powers’ “Yeah, baabay,” was the perfect salutation for any occasion.
But I knew of some of his demons. We drifted apart. He had joined the military, and some were saying that he really straightened out. I was hopeful for him, but never completely sure. And then, he too, was gone.
Without melodramatizing the situation, this was a tragedy with scary symmetry. It was two friends, two dynamic senses of humor, two teammates, two classmates, two rivals, and two unique souls ultimately felled by their vices. And it is too bad, and way too soon.
RIP Eric. And here’s to you, too, Casey. The memories housing the belly laughs from the friends you left behind will be your everlasting legacy.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Baseball is Amazing
The scene is still clear in my head, because that's where it originated anyway. I was eight years old, the summer of '87, alone but with 80,000 people cheering my name. My mission was more profound than a finding a cure for cancer or eliminating world hunger. I was ending the Indians' World Series drought, live from Cleveland Municipal Stadium, transposed to my grandparents side yard in Madison, Ohio.
I threw the tennis ball in front of me, and took a mighty hack with the Bombat designed for softball, dented by fierce hacks at Roland Beach down the road a half a generation before me. My aunt Susan would buy me a bat later that summer, one with a prettier complexion and truer barrel, but this old thing would do for the time being.
I cleared my bony hips early and extended my toothpick thin arms, aluminum mating with rubbery felt. I was a pull hitter, a power hitter, and this baby was gone. The ball soared towards the maple in front of the ditch, but I didn't even need to look. This might as well have been hit in the opening between the blue bleachers and the red and yellow seated concourse on the Lakefront, the rare air only Doby, Mantle, and Joe Carter ever hit balls to. Herb Score was already butchering the home run call on the radio, his mangled prose high poetry from the Mahoning Valley to the Maumee Bay.
The home run trot was fast and stoic. I hadn't yet adopted the Albert Belle stutter step gait around the bases. The bird house was first base, the big tree was second, the thorn bush was third, and the spot where the grass didn't grow any more because that's where I pretended I was a baseball player was home.
Last night's World Series game six took me closer to the magic of that make believe moment more than any I can remember. It was the magic of baseball and it was all in your face. There ain't no clock in baseball. But there is timeless magic, when a boy can live out his ultimate fantasy, and it can all be real. David Freese, a man a couple years younger than me, a boy that grew up just outside St. Louis pretending to hit game winning home runs in the World Series for the hometown team, hit a game winning home run for the hometown team. Preceding that for Freese was a bottom of the ninth triple misplayed by Texas' outfielder Nelson Cruz (prompting a late night text session with a friend that produced the nicknames Nelson Keller and Suri Cruz). And preceding all of these heroics was a dropped pop up. He was the goat of the hour. And then he was an instant icon.
I will be tuned in tonight to game seven, although its result will be meaningless, save a small wager or two amongst friends. I don't need any more proof, however, that the greatest game needn't be measured in Nielson ratings, ticket receipts, or jersey sales. America's game is measured in moments, and baseball produces moments more consistently and poetically than any of the rest. Last night's game produced more tension-filled, memorable moments than any game I can remember.
Baseball brought me home, to that place where the grass didn't grow any more because that's where I pretended I was a baseball player.
I threw the tennis ball in front of me, and took a mighty hack with the Bombat designed for softball, dented by fierce hacks at Roland Beach down the road a half a generation before me. My aunt Susan would buy me a bat later that summer, one with a prettier complexion and truer barrel, but this old thing would do for the time being.
I cleared my bony hips early and extended my toothpick thin arms, aluminum mating with rubbery felt. I was a pull hitter, a power hitter, and this baby was gone. The ball soared towards the maple in front of the ditch, but I didn't even need to look. This might as well have been hit in the opening between the blue bleachers and the red and yellow seated concourse on the Lakefront, the rare air only Doby, Mantle, and Joe Carter ever hit balls to. Herb Score was already butchering the home run call on the radio, his mangled prose high poetry from the Mahoning Valley to the Maumee Bay.
The home run trot was fast and stoic. I hadn't yet adopted the Albert Belle stutter step gait around the bases. The bird house was first base, the big tree was second, the thorn bush was third, and the spot where the grass didn't grow any more because that's where I pretended I was a baseball player was home.
Last night's World Series game six took me closer to the magic of that make believe moment more than any I can remember. It was the magic of baseball and it was all in your face. There ain't no clock in baseball. But there is timeless magic, when a boy can live out his ultimate fantasy, and it can all be real. David Freese, a man a couple years younger than me, a boy that grew up just outside St. Louis pretending to hit game winning home runs in the World Series for the hometown team, hit a game winning home run for the hometown team. Preceding that for Freese was a bottom of the ninth triple misplayed by Texas' outfielder Nelson Cruz (prompting a late night text session with a friend that produced the nicknames Nelson Keller and Suri Cruz). And preceding all of these heroics was a dropped pop up. He was the goat of the hour. And then he was an instant icon.
I will be tuned in tonight to game seven, although its result will be meaningless, save a small wager or two amongst friends. I don't need any more proof, however, that the greatest game needn't be measured in Nielson ratings, ticket receipts, or jersey sales. America's game is measured in moments, and baseball produces moments more consistently and poetically than any of the rest. Last night's game produced more tension-filled, memorable moments than any game I can remember.
Baseball brought me home, to that place where the grass didn't grow any more because that's where I pretended I was a baseball player.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Now Where? 9/11 Ten Years Later, aka Getting the Train Back on the Tracks
Ten years and here we are. There are two and a half wars going on in Muslim nations. Our national economy has stalled and our fiscal pre-eminence is wavering. These are gently massaged facts, but they are mostly facts nonetheless. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
And much, not all, but much of our forever altered place on the global stage can be attributed to our national reaction in the days, weeks, and now full decade that followed Al-Qaeda’s devastating attack on our country. I don’t think it’s an unpatriotic thing to say we’ve failed. It would be unpatriotic to believe that we can’t do better.
There are many great stories of heroism, courage, and selflessness that emerged in the minutes and hours following the greatest strike on our country’s shores. I am not trying to discount this in the least. The first responders and people on the hijacked flights that risked and lost their lives deserve the honor of being properly mourned and respected. All of those who lost loved ones or knew of people who did deserve sympathy.
But this is a referendum on our reaction to the events of September 11, 2001. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that we whiffed at our opportunity to set an example of how a civilized, democratic, free, and diverse nation should act in the face of an unspeakable tragedy. We took the aggressive and at times bigoted approach, and this is mirrored in our policy decisions as well as our national attitude over the past ten years.
Our national cry to remain “united” was drowned out by the forces that believed protecting our shores and our way of life could only be attained by dividing our citizenry. Let’s face a few facts; the perpetrators who blew up our buildings believed in an extreme bastardization of Islam, so yes, to an extent, they were Muslims. Let’s also own up to the fact that between 8 and 10 million Muslim Americans, and as many as a billion Muslims worldwide had absolutely nothing to with the events of September 11th.
My ultimate point is that our very reactionary reaction was so insular, volatile, and lacked any hint of foresight, that it has forever weakened our place on this planet. More than anything, to be American was an attitude- an attitude that transcends and supersedes any supposed cultural identity wrapped in traditional Judeo-Christian tenets. The attitude was “can do”, “live free”, and “we’re number one.” The Patriot Act and ballooning of our hidden top-secret “intelligence”(used loosely) infrastructure (covered exhaustively
by PBS in its expose among other things, have turned our
government, once proudly transparent, into a disgracefully shady and backroom operation. You know, like how the bad guys operate. This is a damned shame.
And let us not forget what these decisions have done to our ultimate might, our standing in the world from the perspective of other nations. This reverence of America, from mimicking our governments to striving to attain our prosperity to putting our pop stars at the top of your pop charts, this global admiration has abandoned us to a great degree. A president who liked blowies while working once said that America leads best when it leads by the power of its example rather than the example of its power. This is rhetoric, but it's brilliant, and it's true.
It’s a truly remarkable thing to consider that a nation of 300 million could be the gold standard in a world of over 7 billion. But that’s who we were, and I believe that’s who we can be again. We weren’t revered the world over strictly because we had the finest military on the globe. (Which we do- but our fighting forces have also proven they are not equipped to battle ideologies instead of nation-states, and are more equipped to fight than to nation-build.) We were looked up to because of how we lived. Free and rich. The diverse land of opportunity. This is not to portray the pre-9/11 USA as some sort of utopia. We had plenty of problems. But post-9/11 America has lost sight of what really matters. Peace and prosperity is where it’s at, and we’ve been at odds with this ethos for ten years.
So we eschewed the peaceful route, and this has also derailed our train on the prosperity express. I can think of a few better ways to spend a few trillion dollars than to blow up Arab nations and try to rebuild them as lovers of those who blew them up. I’ll even leave it up for debate. Progressives could argue that this money could have been spent on schools, infrastructure, and green economy initiatives. Conservatives could argue that this money could have been returned to the tax-paying public, or used for investing in American businesses and research. Fact is, they are both right. We’ve lost too many people in the global community, diminished our standing on the international stage, and spent far too many dollars waging unwinnable wars.
I can hear people asking now, “what were we supposed to do, not fight back?” I’ll answer that question with a question. “If someone punches you in the face, do you punch their distant cousin in the face?” Fact is, we ended up getting Osama and many of his top lieutenants in operations conducted outside the scope of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So as we move forward in the next ten years after the first ten years after our nation’s great tragedy, let’s look forward instead of in reverse. How can we do better? That is a far greater question than to ask- How do we get revenge? Revenge is fleeting and panders to the most simplistic of human emotions. Peace, prosperity, and setting the example of how to attain it is everlasting and actualizes our place as the most sophisticated mammals this big ball of matter has ever seen.
We will never forget. But when we look back, let’s make sure we don’t forget who we are, and not let the cowardly actions of a devious few dictate how we conduct ourselves as a proud nation, united in our pursuit of peace and prosperity.
So I'll stand tall and strong, like the pillar of the American Dream that stands firm and true holding my deepest beliefs as an American citizen; We can do better and We will do better. We are Americans, and that's what We do.
And much, not all, but much of our forever altered place on the global stage can be attributed to our national reaction in the days, weeks, and now full decade that followed Al-Qaeda’s devastating attack on our country. I don’t think it’s an unpatriotic thing to say we’ve failed. It would be unpatriotic to believe that we can’t do better.
There are many great stories of heroism, courage, and selflessness that emerged in the minutes and hours following the greatest strike on our country’s shores. I am not trying to discount this in the least. The first responders and people on the hijacked flights that risked and lost their lives deserve the honor of being properly mourned and respected. All of those who lost loved ones or knew of people who did deserve sympathy.
But this is a referendum on our reaction to the events of September 11, 2001. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that we whiffed at our opportunity to set an example of how a civilized, democratic, free, and diverse nation should act in the face of an unspeakable tragedy. We took the aggressive and at times bigoted approach, and this is mirrored in our policy decisions as well as our national attitude over the past ten years.
Our national cry to remain “united” was drowned out by the forces that believed protecting our shores and our way of life could only be attained by dividing our citizenry. Let’s face a few facts; the perpetrators who blew up our buildings believed in an extreme bastardization of Islam, so yes, to an extent, they were Muslims. Let’s also own up to the fact that between 8 and 10 million Muslim Americans, and as many as a billion Muslims worldwide had absolutely nothing to with the events of September 11th.
My ultimate point is that our very reactionary reaction was so insular, volatile, and lacked any hint of foresight, that it has forever weakened our place on this planet. More than anything, to be American was an attitude- an attitude that transcends and supersedes any supposed cultural identity wrapped in traditional Judeo-Christian tenets. The attitude was “can do”, “live free”, and “we’re number one.” The Patriot Act and ballooning of our hidden top-secret “intelligence”(used loosely) infrastructure (covered exhaustively
by PBS in its expose among other things, have turned our
government, once proudly transparent, into a disgracefully shady and backroom operation. You know, like how the bad guys operate. This is a damned shame.
And let us not forget what these decisions have done to our ultimate might, our standing in the world from the perspective of other nations. This reverence of America, from mimicking our governments to striving to attain our prosperity to putting our pop stars at the top of your pop charts, this global admiration has abandoned us to a great degree. A president who liked blowies while working once said that America leads best when it leads by the power of its example rather than the example of its power. This is rhetoric, but it's brilliant, and it's true.
It’s a truly remarkable thing to consider that a nation of 300 million could be the gold standard in a world of over 7 billion. But that’s who we were, and I believe that’s who we can be again. We weren’t revered the world over strictly because we had the finest military on the globe. (Which we do- but our fighting forces have also proven they are not equipped to battle ideologies instead of nation-states, and are more equipped to fight than to nation-build.) We were looked up to because of how we lived. Free and rich. The diverse land of opportunity. This is not to portray the pre-9/11 USA as some sort of utopia. We had plenty of problems. But post-9/11 America has lost sight of what really matters. Peace and prosperity is where it’s at, and we’ve been at odds with this ethos for ten years.
So we eschewed the peaceful route, and this has also derailed our train on the prosperity express. I can think of a few better ways to spend a few trillion dollars than to blow up Arab nations and try to rebuild them as lovers of those who blew them up. I’ll even leave it up for debate. Progressives could argue that this money could have been spent on schools, infrastructure, and green economy initiatives. Conservatives could argue that this money could have been returned to the tax-paying public, or used for investing in American businesses and research. Fact is, they are both right. We’ve lost too many people in the global community, diminished our standing on the international stage, and spent far too many dollars waging unwinnable wars.
I can hear people asking now, “what were we supposed to do, not fight back?” I’ll answer that question with a question. “If someone punches you in the face, do you punch their distant cousin in the face?” Fact is, we ended up getting Osama and many of his top lieutenants in operations conducted outside the scope of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So as we move forward in the next ten years after the first ten years after our nation’s great tragedy, let’s look forward instead of in reverse. How can we do better? That is a far greater question than to ask- How do we get revenge? Revenge is fleeting and panders to the most simplistic of human emotions. Peace, prosperity, and setting the example of how to attain it is everlasting and actualizes our place as the most sophisticated mammals this big ball of matter has ever seen.
We will never forget. But when we look back, let’s make sure we don’t forget who we are, and not let the cowardly actions of a devious few dictate how we conduct ourselves as a proud nation, united in our pursuit of peace and prosperity.
So I'll stand tall and strong, like the pillar of the American Dream that stands firm and true holding my deepest beliefs as an American citizen; We can do better and We will do better. We are Americans, and that's what We do.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Long Road Here
My dad is about to die.
That statement alone invokes a powerful reaction, no matter who says it. But when your definition of what “father” means is so fractious and elusive, it calls to mind more than what generally meets the eyes. Even the eyes confoundedly staring back at me in the mirror.
Everyone’s relationship with their parents, and really by extension, their personal narrative, is unique. Mine is unique on steroids. I’ve gone most of my life without contact with my biological father. I carry the last name of my mother. Save for a couple intervals between age 15 and 23, I’ve really had no contact with him.
Act One, Before Painful Realization:
Before the initial relationship attempt with my dad, I had an idealized notion of what he could still be. What we could be. I was a fairly observant lad, if rambunctious and deviously defiant. And I observed the hell out of other fathers. I absolutely idolized my mom’s dad, Big Bob Hagan. I had more uncles with kids, my cousins, than anyone. My best friend had a sweet father. I envied all of these relationships.
And it’s what I didn’t have, what I could never get. It’s just that for a while I thought I could. The years would go by, the unasked questions were answered, and the unanswerable questions were asked. Still, despite the void, I felt I could fill that void, and fill it with my “real” father.
I didn’t know my dad but I knew who he was. I knew some of the bad things that afflicted him, and some of the qualities that made people gravitate toward him. I had a few pictures. For several years, I knew where he lived. But I didn’t know him.
I was in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” mode when it came to explaining the situation during my childhood. My closest friends knew. Many classmates kind of knew. New friends either didn’t know, or knew and were courteous enough not to press me. Still, there were many moments when the situation came to the forefront. I dealt with it in various ways, with differing levels of absolute honesty. No matter how I dealt with it, it was accompanied with pain.
I longed for a normal relationship with my dad more than a little girl longs for a pony from Santa Claus in every movie ever made that has an interaction between a little girl and Santa Claus. More fragile than the typecast little girl, my pony never showed up under the tree.
Act Two, Strained Reconciliation
At 15, I started trying to get to “know” my dad. He came to my family’s cottage, and we watched a Notre Dame football game. I had always loved Notre Dame for one reason and one reason only; my grandpa Big Bob liked them and watched them play football every Saturday. He liked them because they stood for the Irish working class or something, but by the time I liked them it was a fairly privileged and prestigious school, and wasn’t exactly leading the charge for the disadvantaged. No matter, we were a Notre Dame duo, me and Grandpa Bob.
Coincidentally and ironically (I think they both work here), my dad went to Notre Dame.
Act Two is filled with attempts to recreate and recapture father-son moments. But from that initial meeting onward, the powerful feeling of resentment grew. “What the fuck were you doing?” “How could you not make an attempt to raise your son?” Those questions are not easily answered, especially when the visualized notion of who your dad was becomes a tangible image of what he was not.
But still, an attempt was made, and I think it was an honest attempt, especially on his part. He gave me a car (a 1989 Nissan Sentra, a legendary car around Lakewood High School in the late ‘90s). We played some golf. We even played a game of catch, the time-honored signature father-son activity.
Here I must digress. I was already pretty good at catch. Which means I had, subconsciously or not, filled a few of the voids on my own. My uncle Jim would play catch with me for hours on end. My aunt Monica’s ex-husband Dennis worked on my throwing motion. My mom’s boyfriend Norm took me to the Dawg Pound from the age of nine, and we were a world-renowned heckling duo during sparsely attended Indians games at the old stadium, and I watched every American league middle infielder intently, including the incomparable Omar Vizquel, first with the Mariners.
So when I first played catch with my dad, the resentment built. “This was your job, motherfucker, and you suck at it.” Blooming with youth, and brimming with piss and vinegar, I seized this as an early symbolic opportunity. I quickly realized he wasn’t awesome at catch. Although my most dominant pitching days were in fifth grade (struck out four batters in an inning, think about it), I had a decent arm. “I’m going to give you the hardest fastballs I have.” And so I did. He struggled to gather the first one. But I saw the competitor in him, the exact fucking same competitor I have in me, emerge. His easy smile turned to a concerned growl. He threw the ball back as hard as he could.
I caught it in my bare hand.
Now it’s my turn again, and I wish I had a radar gun on this one, because I’m rather certain it’s the hardest ball I’ve ever thrown (for the record, the highest I ever recorded was a somewhat pedestrian 75 mph at an Indians game with my cousin Timmy in tow. Who knows how accurate those guns are? That reading was probably high). He wasn’t coordinated enough to catch it cleanly in his glove hand. It bounded off his wrist and made a loud noise. He cringed hard, and quickly tried to act like it didn’t hurt at all. Game over.
That’s the last time we played catch.
Act Three, Here Comes the Nation
I made it through college, admittedly only because I had just enough inherent academic talent to overcome a lack of direction and inspiration. I also drank a lot in college, and may have enjoyed smoking a few doobers on back porches. I guess that experience is not so different than that of many other college students. But I would occasionally write the passionate paper, and ace the test when I needed a 96 for a C+ for the term. I scooted through in four years, and harvested up a bushel of great friends.
I also started giving up on the idea that my father was my dad.
Right after college I worked for my uncle Tim for a year, another of the men on my Mount Rushmore of father figure icons. We bullshitted our way through every county of the state of Ohio during his run for governor. We were comforting doses of keeping it real for each other. He knew his personal assistant slash driver should be a little more professional, and I knew I should be doing more than trying to find him a good Krispy Kreme. But he also knew he wasn’t going to win, and I wasn’t gonna give him any shit, nor feed him any packaged spin that his dutiful professional handlers had to. I was gonna hang out with him and drive 87 mph to our next stop. It was a good experience for me, albeit one I “should” have taken more from. I took plenty though, it was a year on the road with the Bull.
This brought me back to the early formative years, Act One, and all the male influences that influenced me in a real way and not just in fantasy. Tim and Jim, my mom’s oldest brothers, I already mentioned. My uncle Billy was in Connecticutt, but he was cool, and had his own sense of how to navigate a life. Bobby was a hard ass, a tough guy with passion and street smarts. Jack was a reporter and a writer, funny and often deadpan, contemplative but often seeming outwardly emotionless. Chris was a jack of all trades, and liked to have fun. He taught me how to sail. Jeff was the youngest of my mom’s brothers, a hipster and an intellectual, and an occasionally roommate in his post-college years. He was the older brother that I picked on, not vice versa, and his commitment to not being a bad person precluded him from putting my snot-nosed ass in my place.
Yeah, my mom had seven brothers and six sisters, so this list is long. Jimmy, Katie’s wife, was a tall hulk of an athletic man, burdened by his own intellectual prowess. Jeff, Maggie’s ex, was the gruffest of the gruff, but would take all the kids to play putt-putt and played a mean game of pepper. Anne’s husband TJ was a farmer and a free-thinking, and hired me to work at his moving company when I was a teenager. Almost 15 years later, I’m still there, and he’s entrusted me with a big chunk of the operation. I even developed a kinship with my Aunt Mary’s temporary husband Ebe, an Iranian man with an early knowledge of computer games. I once borrowed a Farsi-English dictionary from the library in order to connect more with this mysterious and friendly looking Persian.
My friend Zak’s dad always welcomed me in their home, and treated me with the kindness and the gentle firmness of a graceful man who knew I was growing up without a dad. Many other friends had cool dads too, and I’m pretty sure most liked me well enough.
So here I was, starting life on my own. Rent, bills, going to work, playing ball, trying to make out with chicks. I learned all of these lessons and more, some more successfully than others, without emulating my dad for any of them. I didn’t want to have him anymore. I had me, god-damnit, and a mother that struggled and did a damn fine job. And I had a composite image of a father, a mosaic of personalities and perspectives. It’s just that none were mine.
Act Four, Current Situation
I found out a few months back. My dad was terminally ill. The forgiveness of my mother and her brothers has it that they had forgiven him much more than I, and they’d been in a lot more contact with him than I had. I got the call at work from my uncle Chris, his best friend of the brood. I took the news in stride, rationally, with concern, and with humor. I took it like a god-damn man. I told my cousin John, a confidante and business partner, and then walked into the break room and sat down. He walked in a couple minutes later. He knows me just about better than anyone, and can read my soul without saying a word. I looked at him. I started crying.
And that was it. Back to work. Kick some ass. Comment on a picture on Facebook. Play a little ping pong.
And I’ll be gosh darned, I was fine. I was really feeling fine. I really didn’t talk to many people about it. I decided to open up about it to a newer friend on a weekend fun trip a couple months ago. I thought, why not? I’ve got nothing to hide, and I’ve long been done covering up for who I am. I’m ok, if a little eccentric, as I am. It felt good. The reception I was given was compassionate and non-judgmental. The reaction was more of intrigue than anything. Hell, I have a story to tell. Nothing wrong with a little catharsis. But the words of a friend at the end told me what I had to do.
“Matt, you should go see him.”
Maybe I knew it myself, but the words of another person, someone removed from the situation but one that was listening to my story, gave me a new perspective. I really should go see him.
And now it’s reached that point. I talked to another friend on the phone tonight, this one from college, who had been delivered my story in a piecemeal fashion over the years. I talked to my uncle Chris again for a while.
“Do what you gotta do Tiger,” he encouraged.
There’s no script for this. But I think I’m going to be good.
I’m going to drive down and see him this Saturday. I don’t think he will have anything profound to say, because I don’t think he can speak above a whisper. I know I won’t have anything dripping with gravitas coming from my mouth. But he’ll feel better seeing me, I know. And I’ll feel better seeing him. Hey man, no hard feelings, you've made me who I am.
And I ain’t going nowhere.
That statement alone invokes a powerful reaction, no matter who says it. But when your definition of what “father” means is so fractious and elusive, it calls to mind more than what generally meets the eyes. Even the eyes confoundedly staring back at me in the mirror.
Everyone’s relationship with their parents, and really by extension, their personal narrative, is unique. Mine is unique on steroids. I’ve gone most of my life without contact with my biological father. I carry the last name of my mother. Save for a couple intervals between age 15 and 23, I’ve really had no contact with him.
Act One, Before Painful Realization:
Before the initial relationship attempt with my dad, I had an idealized notion of what he could still be. What we could be. I was a fairly observant lad, if rambunctious and deviously defiant. And I observed the hell out of other fathers. I absolutely idolized my mom’s dad, Big Bob Hagan. I had more uncles with kids, my cousins, than anyone. My best friend had a sweet father. I envied all of these relationships.
And it’s what I didn’t have, what I could never get. It’s just that for a while I thought I could. The years would go by, the unasked questions were answered, and the unanswerable questions were asked. Still, despite the void, I felt I could fill that void, and fill it with my “real” father.
I didn’t know my dad but I knew who he was. I knew some of the bad things that afflicted him, and some of the qualities that made people gravitate toward him. I had a few pictures. For several years, I knew where he lived. But I didn’t know him.
I was in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” mode when it came to explaining the situation during my childhood. My closest friends knew. Many classmates kind of knew. New friends either didn’t know, or knew and were courteous enough not to press me. Still, there were many moments when the situation came to the forefront. I dealt with it in various ways, with differing levels of absolute honesty. No matter how I dealt with it, it was accompanied with pain.
I longed for a normal relationship with my dad more than a little girl longs for a pony from Santa Claus in every movie ever made that has an interaction between a little girl and Santa Claus. More fragile than the typecast little girl, my pony never showed up under the tree.
Act Two, Strained Reconciliation
At 15, I started trying to get to “know” my dad. He came to my family’s cottage, and we watched a Notre Dame football game. I had always loved Notre Dame for one reason and one reason only; my grandpa Big Bob liked them and watched them play football every Saturday. He liked them because they stood for the Irish working class or something, but by the time I liked them it was a fairly privileged and prestigious school, and wasn’t exactly leading the charge for the disadvantaged. No matter, we were a Notre Dame duo, me and Grandpa Bob.
Coincidentally and ironically (I think they both work here), my dad went to Notre Dame.
Act Two is filled with attempts to recreate and recapture father-son moments. But from that initial meeting onward, the powerful feeling of resentment grew. “What the fuck were you doing?” “How could you not make an attempt to raise your son?” Those questions are not easily answered, especially when the visualized notion of who your dad was becomes a tangible image of what he was not.
But still, an attempt was made, and I think it was an honest attempt, especially on his part. He gave me a car (a 1989 Nissan Sentra, a legendary car around Lakewood High School in the late ‘90s). We played some golf. We even played a game of catch, the time-honored signature father-son activity.
Here I must digress. I was already pretty good at catch. Which means I had, subconsciously or not, filled a few of the voids on my own. My uncle Jim would play catch with me for hours on end. My aunt Monica’s ex-husband Dennis worked on my throwing motion. My mom’s boyfriend Norm took me to the Dawg Pound from the age of nine, and we were a world-renowned heckling duo during sparsely attended Indians games at the old stadium, and I watched every American league middle infielder intently, including the incomparable Omar Vizquel, first with the Mariners.
So when I first played catch with my dad, the resentment built. “This was your job, motherfucker, and you suck at it.” Blooming with youth, and brimming with piss and vinegar, I seized this as an early symbolic opportunity. I quickly realized he wasn’t awesome at catch. Although my most dominant pitching days were in fifth grade (struck out four batters in an inning, think about it), I had a decent arm. “I’m going to give you the hardest fastballs I have.” And so I did. He struggled to gather the first one. But I saw the competitor in him, the exact fucking same competitor I have in me, emerge. His easy smile turned to a concerned growl. He threw the ball back as hard as he could.
I caught it in my bare hand.
Now it’s my turn again, and I wish I had a radar gun on this one, because I’m rather certain it’s the hardest ball I’ve ever thrown (for the record, the highest I ever recorded was a somewhat pedestrian 75 mph at an Indians game with my cousin Timmy in tow. Who knows how accurate those guns are? That reading was probably high). He wasn’t coordinated enough to catch it cleanly in his glove hand. It bounded off his wrist and made a loud noise. He cringed hard, and quickly tried to act like it didn’t hurt at all. Game over.
That’s the last time we played catch.
Act Three, Here Comes the Nation
I made it through college, admittedly only because I had just enough inherent academic talent to overcome a lack of direction and inspiration. I also drank a lot in college, and may have enjoyed smoking a few doobers on back porches. I guess that experience is not so different than that of many other college students. But I would occasionally write the passionate paper, and ace the test when I needed a 96 for a C+ for the term. I scooted through in four years, and harvested up a bushel of great friends.
I also started giving up on the idea that my father was my dad.
Right after college I worked for my uncle Tim for a year, another of the men on my Mount Rushmore of father figure icons. We bullshitted our way through every county of the state of Ohio during his run for governor. We were comforting doses of keeping it real for each other. He knew his personal assistant slash driver should be a little more professional, and I knew I should be doing more than trying to find him a good Krispy Kreme. But he also knew he wasn’t going to win, and I wasn’t gonna give him any shit, nor feed him any packaged spin that his dutiful professional handlers had to. I was gonna hang out with him and drive 87 mph to our next stop. It was a good experience for me, albeit one I “should” have taken more from. I took plenty though, it was a year on the road with the Bull.
This brought me back to the early formative years, Act One, and all the male influences that influenced me in a real way and not just in fantasy. Tim and Jim, my mom’s oldest brothers, I already mentioned. My uncle Billy was in Connecticutt, but he was cool, and had his own sense of how to navigate a life. Bobby was a hard ass, a tough guy with passion and street smarts. Jack was a reporter and a writer, funny and often deadpan, contemplative but often seeming outwardly emotionless. Chris was a jack of all trades, and liked to have fun. He taught me how to sail. Jeff was the youngest of my mom’s brothers, a hipster and an intellectual, and an occasionally roommate in his post-college years. He was the older brother that I picked on, not vice versa, and his commitment to not being a bad person precluded him from putting my snot-nosed ass in my place.
Yeah, my mom had seven brothers and six sisters, so this list is long. Jimmy, Katie’s wife, was a tall hulk of an athletic man, burdened by his own intellectual prowess. Jeff, Maggie’s ex, was the gruffest of the gruff, but would take all the kids to play putt-putt and played a mean game of pepper. Anne’s husband TJ was a farmer and a free-thinking, and hired me to work at his moving company when I was a teenager. Almost 15 years later, I’m still there, and he’s entrusted me with a big chunk of the operation. I even developed a kinship with my Aunt Mary’s temporary husband Ebe, an Iranian man with an early knowledge of computer games. I once borrowed a Farsi-English dictionary from the library in order to connect more with this mysterious and friendly looking Persian.
My friend Zak’s dad always welcomed me in their home, and treated me with the kindness and the gentle firmness of a graceful man who knew I was growing up without a dad. Many other friends had cool dads too, and I’m pretty sure most liked me well enough.
So here I was, starting life on my own. Rent, bills, going to work, playing ball, trying to make out with chicks. I learned all of these lessons and more, some more successfully than others, without emulating my dad for any of them. I didn’t want to have him anymore. I had me, god-damnit, and a mother that struggled and did a damn fine job. And I had a composite image of a father, a mosaic of personalities and perspectives. It’s just that none were mine.
Act Four, Current Situation
I found out a few months back. My dad was terminally ill. The forgiveness of my mother and her brothers has it that they had forgiven him much more than I, and they’d been in a lot more contact with him than I had. I got the call at work from my uncle Chris, his best friend of the brood. I took the news in stride, rationally, with concern, and with humor. I took it like a god-damn man. I told my cousin John, a confidante and business partner, and then walked into the break room and sat down. He walked in a couple minutes later. He knows me just about better than anyone, and can read my soul without saying a word. I looked at him. I started crying.
And that was it. Back to work. Kick some ass. Comment on a picture on Facebook. Play a little ping pong.
And I’ll be gosh darned, I was fine. I was really feeling fine. I really didn’t talk to many people about it. I decided to open up about it to a newer friend on a weekend fun trip a couple months ago. I thought, why not? I’ve got nothing to hide, and I’ve long been done covering up for who I am. I’m ok, if a little eccentric, as I am. It felt good. The reception I was given was compassionate and non-judgmental. The reaction was more of intrigue than anything. Hell, I have a story to tell. Nothing wrong with a little catharsis. But the words of a friend at the end told me what I had to do.
“Matt, you should go see him.”
Maybe I knew it myself, but the words of another person, someone removed from the situation but one that was listening to my story, gave me a new perspective. I really should go see him.
And now it’s reached that point. I talked to another friend on the phone tonight, this one from college, who had been delivered my story in a piecemeal fashion over the years. I talked to my uncle Chris again for a while.
“Do what you gotta do Tiger,” he encouraged.
There’s no script for this. But I think I’m going to be good.
I’m going to drive down and see him this Saturday. I don’t think he will have anything profound to say, because I don’t think he can speak above a whisper. I know I won’t have anything dripping with gravitas coming from my mouth. But he’ll feel better seeing me, I know. And I’ll feel better seeing him. Hey man, no hard feelings, you've made me who I am.
And I ain’t going nowhere.
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