On Father's Day

[thatcrazycajun]

Father's Day has historically been as problematic for me, in its way, as Mother's Day has been since 1995, and for even longer (see earlier post here). 

This is because my father, whose name I will not use here to avoid embarrassing him, was an alcoholic, depressive farm boy from Duson, LA who had not the slightest clue what to do with the skinny, bookish, overly sensitive son who had somehow been plopped down in the middle of his oldest and youngest "normal" boys. (Yes, I was a middle child, and for a long, long time I was utterly convinced someone had switched babies on my poor mama back at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Lafayette, that day in 1963.) Add to that the fact that his disciplinary techniques included whipping us across the backs of our legs or our backsides with his big leather belt (though admittedly, this was only when we were in really serious trouble), and the political arguments we had that increased as I grew older, and the fact that he drove my mother away from him with his moody drunks and his constant absence due to his multiple jobs as firefighter, picture framer and carpenter, and you see why I had a lot of anger at him for a great many years. A lot of anger. (In fairness to him, it must be pointed out, as my younger brother can confirm, that firefighters, especially those with families, usually need side jobs and a tremendous love of the work, because the pay is, not to put too fine a point on it, for shit.)

It has only been in the last decade or so that I have been able to let go of most of the residual anger that remained. (Four years of college and relative independence helped; Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens put it best when he remarked that when he was 18 he had thought his father an idiot, but by the time he was 22 he was amazed to see how much the old man had learned in four years.) It was not that I didn't think he loved me; the look on his face when he accidentally backed his pickup truck over me, back in 1976 or so, full of such anguish as I never want to see on any other human being's face again, convinced me of his love, beyond any tiniest flicker of doubt. No, it wasn't that I thought he didn't love me so much as that I knew he didn't understand me, that we could never be as close as he was with my brothers because of that, and that I could never fully understand him.

This may have been one reason why, when I came across Armistead Maupin's series of stories about a set of libidinous, recreational pot-smoking, thoroughly modern 1970s/'80s urbanites of various sexual orientations, Tales of the City, in a small, funky bookstore near the LSU campus, I ended up devouring all of them by the time I graduated and bought the series as a graduation present to myself. One of the parts of the series that still stays with me, even after all these years, is the letter one of the main characters, a Southern boy named Michael Tolliver (nicknamed "Mouse" by his friend Mary Ann), writes to his unknowingly conservative Christian parents back in Florida to come out to them as the very thing they have been supporting political campaigns against: a homosexual. Because of my own peculiar sexual—shall we say, "proclivities"?—I strongly identified with this courageous declaration of truth to one's closest family. A real-life gay couple has kindly posted it in its entirety here, as well as the letter from home that prompted it, from the second collection of the stories, More Tales of the City. (Yes, these are the same books Showtime adapted for its two cable miniseries a few years back, with Olympia Dukakis providing a delightful turn as Mrs. Madrigal, transsexual landlady and cheerful corrupter of the young protagonists.)

I mention all this on the occasion of the day, and of Maupin's having just published his first new Tales book in over a decade, Michael Tolliver Lives, which updates us at long last on the current status of Mouse, Mary Ann and the rest of the former inhabitants of the house at 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco; Amazon is selling it here. I also mention all this in reflection that my lingering memory of difficulties getting along with my father has made me tend to forget the other people in my life that happen to be fathers whom I cherish, just as my grief and anger over my mom's death made me tend to forget all the other precious mothers in my life. So, a toast and a sincere wish for a happy Dadsday to:

• my father, who still lives in the same house he built with his own hands over two decades ago in Lafayette, LA;
   
• my older brother, Damian John Leger, U.S. Army veteran and father of my oldest niece and nephew, both of whom turned out pretty swell;
   
• my younger brother, Douglas Paul Leger, firefighter, carpenter and great cook like our dad before him, and father of my godson Dayne Anthony, along with three other darling children;
   
• my stepfather, John Holder, who lost a son to murder and a wife to cancer and overcame his own alcoholism and three boys' natural hostility to the man trying to replace their father to become a much-loved member of both sides of the family;
   
• the memory of my sweet Songbird's father, James Mulholland, another Army vet and one of IBM's best and most productive salesmen, who gave SB her lifelong loves of travel and science fiction;
   
• redaxe, filkerdave, tarkrai, darrenzieger, bedlamhouse, osewalrus, billroper and all the other terrific dads on my f-list;
   
• and finally, all the fathers who helped make possible the people I know or know of and have valued over the years as part of my life.

Thanks to all of them, and a day of rest and relaxation; many of them doubtless need it, and all of them have earned it.

Comments

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

That is a beautiful tribute to fatherhood.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

And yet, such is the state of my brain that my reaction is "Lafayette? I wonder if he will subscribe to the muni-fiber ring now that the litigation is fnally settled and the city can do the bind issue."