The essence of childhood. Distilled. Use drop by drop so as to last a lifetime.

This seems like a proper place to come in with a piece actually written in the first person.  Not being a fan of memoir, these writings avoid the "I" and lend to a more experiential as opposed to academic, take (and this has been mentioned once or twice before).  However, for this piece, to take the "I" out of it, makes little sense.  As such, a different tone, a variation on cadence, but very much still, be not still, my voice.

***

It seems that with Father's Day passing through once more, everybody is penning their tributes.  Warm, heartfelt, full of reminisce and regret and reliving and relieving and reconciliation.  Here's my inspired attempt at the same…as most of my current friends know little of my background.

My parents had been married for a few years when the marriage started having problems.  The usual, really.  Fighting, lack of communication, disdain.  Somebody (and I would guess it would have been my paternal grandmother) convinced the not-so-newlyweds, that having a child would be a good way to save the marriage.

So, they did what adults do when one is attempting to get pregnant.  Alas, to no avail.  Months passed.  No sign of stork on the horizon.  Finally, the arguments too much to bear, they decided that even a child could not save this union.

Then, my mother got pregnant.  My birthday being approximately nine months after my father's birthday, leads me to make some assumptions about conception…they may or may not be true…and thus, a misconception…

My father then disappeared when I was T-minus six months.

He was having an affair.  Don't know when it started.  Do know when it ended.  Eight months pregnant and in need of support, my mother had little choice but to take him back, when he came a-crawlin'.

I was born.  I have vague recollections of the man being around, of times in backyards in Norwalk CT.  I have vague recollections of my mother finding a note the day my father walked out the side door.  At least, I can picture it - the green metal cabinet, the saloon doors between the kitchen and living room, the round orange table.  I had logged but thirty months on this body when he had another affair.  This one, too, failed.  This time my mother did not take him back.

For five years, father was a brown paper box.  The occasional gift, such as an Atari 2600 (when I was six), and a phone call or two.  At family events, when relatives asked my mother if there had been any contact, they'd refer to him as the B-A-S-T-A-R-D thinking I had no clue what they were talking about.  Little did they know what to do with how smart I was, little did they expect I'd be spelling bee champion year after year at Stark Elementary School (at least until I missed "adamant" in the sixth grade).

When I was seven and a half, he returned.

We walked into the Burger King on a Sunday afternoon and he was wearing a cowboy hat, giant aviator sunglasses, a big broom mustache, belt buckle, boots, and smoking a cigarette.  I picture seeing his face for the first time, as Kurt Vonnegut describes in Cat's Cradle, when the father leans down to show the narrator the wrapped-around-the-fingers string.  For two hours I interacted as I would with any adult.  He never took those shades off that entire visit.

Eventually, he was trusted to have visitations alone with me.  My life was defined by rotating configuration of weekend - whole, half, half, open.  This meant he had me for the full weekend (Friday night to Sunday night), two half weekends (Friday night to Saturday night or Saturday night to Sunday night), and a weekend when I was at home.

My father was Willy Loman, personified.  An insurance salesman for a company whose name I have forgotten in the passing years of not considering these memories, he would often arrive late for pickup because he was chasing some sales goal for the week.  He would then ask my mother if he could return me equally late on Sunday.  My mother would say no.  He would bring me back at 9pm, anyhow, after taking me around to more insurance calls, and showing off his son.  Maybe he thought I would help sell more insurance.  Marc-eting 101.

For five years, my activities were determined by whether or not I was to be spending time with my father.  Birthday party for a friend?  Sorry, too bad.  Invitation to a playdate?  Maybe next time.  Thankfully, soccer gave him little choice in allowing my attendance because the long term commitment required games not be missed.

Then, he was given longer visitations.  A week of spring vacation.  Two straight weeks of summer vacation.  Tryouts for the state soccer team who wanted me as goalkeeper?  Nope, sorry.  Have to leave all my friends at camp to…sit around on his couch for two weeks?  Yup, that's the plan.

He remarried, wife number five, and lived in an itty bitty apartment in an absolutely frightening section of Bridgeport CT.  I slept on the couch, watched the blue haze fill the kitchen as he and his wife chain smoked, and watched American Movie Classics late into the night when his wife would fall asleep in the chair, next to the couch, with the television on.  My love of film was born in this time as I was scared to go outside and play.  Two hundred yards to the left of the apartment building, the owner of the convenience store was shot and killed during a robbery.  Two hundred yards to the right, and six months later, the owner of the little hardware store was shot and killed during a robbery.

I don't say all these things because I'm scarred.  I don't say these things because I'm angry or in need of therapy.  My catharsis is my own and long ago.  I say all these things as a way of reminding myself.  Keep reading.  You'll understand why.

Planning of visitation was left to my parents and the courts wanted nothing to do with us.  Other than the psychological evaluation of me that was done when I was eight (and that I found in my mother's desk drawer when I was thirteen) nobody ever asked me what I wanted.

You see, I was a good kid.  I wanted to make everybody proud of me.  Happy with their lives.  Fulfilled in raising a child.  Straight A student - made people boast "Doctor or Lawyer".  My father's side of the family showered me with toys and spending money, expecting that this would keep me coming back for more.  I remember my paternal grandmother asking me for the three hundred and seventy second time, "What do you want to be?"  I responded "An actor!"  She spent the next three hours talking me out of it.

The other picture that stands out in my mind is my father wearing his soft collar neck brace that was a part of his wardrobe due to having slipped and fallen on some ice in Waco TX some long ago year, prior to his return to New England.  This collar, due to some mysterious slipped disc that never did heal, led to workman's comp after workman's comp claim.  Grimace after grimace.  Excuse after excuse.  Borrowing money whenever he could, he never quite had enough and was always asking somebody for a little help.

Waco TX.  Where he disappeared to and why he came back looking like a commercial for Wrangler Jeans.  It lent me an unfair disdain for the entire state for much of my youth…

At twelve and one half years old, fed up with my father yelling at my mother every time they were planning visitation, I picked up the phone and told him he was never allowed to speak with her, and that he could make plans through me.  This, of course, led to my learning what passive-aggressive meant for the first time in my life.

He wouldn't call me for weeks.  When he would call, he would scream about the fact that I hadn't called him.  Because I must not love him, he would attempt to lay upon my shoulders and heart.  This would end with somebody hanging up and no visitation occurring.  We probably saw each other six times a year for the next three years.

My sophomore year of high school, I was supposed to spend winter holiday break with him.  Just days before, my first cat, Sparc, got deathly ill and was taken to the vet to be euthanized.  I was a wreck.  I spent the entire winter break in tears and mourning.  I never called my father to finalize plans.  He never called to make plans.  For six months, he didn't call.  I didn't call because frankly I didn't really care.  He was, of course, waiting for me, to call him.

Finally, some time over the summer, he called to scream at me for not calling.  The exchange was something like:

Marc:  "I'm sorry I didn't call.  My cat died and I was heartbroken."

Marc's Father:  "I'm sorry your cat died but you were supposed to be with your father."

How the hill grew more steeply sloped upon commencement of that dial tone.

Jump ahead to Easter of my Junior Year.  A small family gathering, including my Grandmother Rose who had just moved back home after a four month hospital stay.  Finally, tired of not knowing the story, I asked about my father leaving.  Much of the history above, comes from conversation that night.  But, the moment I cherish most of all, is this exchange:

Marc:  "But why did he have an affair?"

Marc's Grandmother Rose:  "Because variety is the spice of life."

Rose, who just weeks earlier had convinced herself that she was on her deathbed, spoke this in a way I had never heard out of her.  I still laugh about it now.

About a month later, after not speaking for a good six months, my father called again, to chew me out about not calling.  After a few minutes of this, I decided to lay my new-found knowledge upon him.

Marc:  "Dad, why did you have an affair?"

Marc's Father:  "…"

Marc:  "Dad, why did you have an affair?"

Marc's Father:  "…"

Marc:  "Was she good Dad?  Was she a good fuck?  Is that why you had an affair?"

You can imagine how the next ninety minutes, his unwillingness to talk about it or admit to anything, would have progressed.

We talked very little after that.

My family always tried to convince me that I should make amends with him.  My stock response was, "It is not my responsibility to provide him with forgiveness and absolution and a Hollywood reconciliation ending to his movie."

After four years of constant badgering, I decided I would - not because I had much interest, but because I wanted to get people off of my back.  Again, the good kid, trying to appease everybody…even if it means a waste of my own energy, time, calm, and joy.

So we tried.  Rules were pretty simple.  Don't expect regular visitations.  Don't pressure me for visitations.  See me for who I am, not what you expect or want me to be.  Sadly, that side of the family was stunted, couldn't see me past being twelve years old.  Certainly, I didn't want to be a teenager again in any eyes.  Finally, I just flat out refused to speak with any of them.  This was Fall of 1997.

Jump way forward to May 2010, because this tale is getting too long for my liking, far too much to re-read and edit, and needing too much build up to get to its own redemption.

By now, I had been living in Houston TX for six years.  And while I rarely, if ever, thought of my father in specifics, the irony of having found home, and joy, and a place of belonging, in Texas…was never far from my mind.

Not much of a Facebook user at the time, I woke up to an email that told me I had a message on Facebook.  It was from my father's brother's wife.  Oddly, I can't find the message anymore.  But it stated something to the effect of "I think you are Bobby Moorash's son, your father was found brain dead in his car."  The message was written in all caps.

I debated whether or not to respond.

Finally, I chose to write back, because it seemed the right thing to do, not to ignore contact from a relative reaching out after not having spoken in…fifteen years?  Probably closer to twenty.

Long story short, the next two weeks became that side of the family trying to get me to pay for my father's funeral and to bitch about him while also trying to make him into the good person he never thought of being.  At one point an aunt called and frantically told me that if we didn't have the money in four hours the hospital that had his body was just going to cremate him.  Sensing bogus, I called the hospital and they told me they would hold his body until we found the money and made arrangements.  The aunt's phone call was all a ploy.  Finally, when I threatened to just donate his body to science (which I learned, by the way, has to be done in the forty eight hours immediately after death and couldn't have been done with him), the family put together the money and had him buried in the plot his mother had purchased for him years before.

Over those two weeks, I learned numerous things.  He had married again.  He had married on the promise that when his mother died he'd get her posh condo (he wound up having to split it with his brother) and then ran through the money from the sale of it.  His brother said "he ran my mother into the grave."  His sixth wife had died six months earlier.  He just dropped dead, in his car, outside of his lawyer's office after having picked up a disability check.

*sigh*

It isn't that he was a bad man, nor necessarily a mean man.  He was just not intelligent enough to be anything other than entirely self-centered.  It takes a certain amount of willingness of cognizance to see past the end of one's own nose.  He just didn't have it.

The last time I saw him, he was living in Chicopee MA in a small apartment, that one reached by going up a fire escape on the side of a house.  He had a girlfriend (who wasn't there).  He had two cats named "Red" and "Loverboy".  Sometimes, the theatre writes itself and as a writer, you just let the hand record the tale.  Maybe one day those pages will see the light of day.  But, it doesn't seem important anymore.

You see, I am not one to celebrate holidays.  Just, not a fan.  To me, life is a string of days, and being tied to calendrical events and post office closings…bothers me.  But, it is interesting to note that this will be the first Father's Day in which I have a son.

And so I write, not to demonize my Father, but to begin a list of stories, to remind me that there were one thousand days of my youth in which I spoke aloud…

"If I ever have a child, I will never do *this*…"

For the only legacy my father may leave to me yet, is that I will take these lessons and be a far better parent than he ever was and a far more sought-out friend and confidant than he ever desired to become.

And so I start a list, just from this condensed version of my childhood's tale, so that I can go back and read, in case I ever forget…and goodness knows I do forget sometimes - and for sometime in the future when the children at my feet read this...I am sorry for not remembering each and every day.

1)  Never insist that Lucian (who usually in this pages is referred to as The Little Man) go some place, attend some event, or do some activity…just because the I want them to and in doing so, keep him from a place, event, or activity, he wants, especially with friends.  Planning, out of ego, is just cruel because it treats a child like an object, rather than a being.

2)  Refer to Lucian by his name.  Not as "my son" or his children as "my grandchild".  Children are their own creatures, they have a name.  They are not a placeholder or a pronoun.  As mentioned above, he gets a nickname in these pages, and that will continue, but I think it time he evolves from The Little Man to his more proper nomenclature The Archer of Light.

3)  Again, they are their own creature.  There was nothing worse than being thought of as too stupid, young, or unlearned to make my own decisions, or have a say in the path of my life.  See the child for who they are.

4)  Encourage the child for who they are - put down the ego, and the opinion - and allow them to thrive at whatever path they choose to take.

5)  Understand that love can exist even when not fully expressed or that one person's expression of love may be different from your own - do not judge quality of love based on some unmeasurable quantity.

6)  Learn to respect the person, not the station.  May I be a good enough person to be loved even as Marc, not only as Papa.

7)  Let them have their space, and time.

8)  Do not make them feel as if life is lived to please me.  Life is lived to respect yourself.  May they feel as if compassion and goodness toward all creatures is the path to that.

9)  Don't ever lie.  All children always find out the truth.  Why prolong the lie?

10)  Always be willing to put twenty five cents into the merry-go-round in front of the grocery store and go for a ride.  This is the mystic's way to never forgetting youth. 

11)  Allow them to be fully familiar with this list so that if I become the hypocrite I never wish to be, they are learned and confident enough to call me out on it.  And may I see through to becoming, with the love that they speak with and the compassion that their confidence entails, an even brighter light.

12)  Relax.

13)  Apologize.

14)  Believe that through encouraging their amazement in the world, my own adult contrivances and stiffening-of-the-joints can fade away.  Heal emotional arthritis with the balm of beauty-in-everything.

15)  Tell them stories.  Lots of stories.  All stories.  And encourage them with tales that they, too, can be a part of telling, then experiencing, and then in their enthusiasm, re-telling.

16)  Know that more than anything a child wants to love and be loved and that it is instinctual and as rolled into the fabric of being of youth as is imagination, wonderment, and the desire to understand the world around.  Try to do nothing to ever diminish that fine line between fairy and folly, fortune and fallacy, inspiration and the annunciation of being that comes from wanting to hold on to youth as long as one possibly can.  Remember, I once spoke "I am youth, disillusioned and proud" - let them hold on to their dreams for only then will they learn the perseverance to see them through to something even greater - not reality, but perception.

***

This list grows, it changes, it wants to shift and be added to and subtracted from and re-examined each year.  It should be a tradition.  It should be family.

Much of the above was actually written in 2011 which was, for me, my first Father's Day as a father.  The words never really saw much light of day, and only to a select few did it reach out from the glow of the monitor at night.  It seemed, with this space a bit more public, a bit farther reaching, it was worth dusting off the pixels and the paginations, making some minor reassessments, and putting it here for the world to see.  Hopefully nobody minds that this isn't something that has come entirely out of the recent past and is, instead, a culmination that is both reflective and also proactive to the life that still comes before us.  With promise.  With love.  With hope.

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