I wrote a play in 1988 about my mother. Although my father is talked about a great deal in Mother Tongue, he never actually appears in the play because I always thought he deserves a play of his own and that, one day, I would give him his due. I still want to, but every time I think about him now, all I hear is his silence.
In December of 1969, seventeen months after I left the Philippines for the United States, my father died. I wrote about those first seventeen months away from home in a short story called “Flight.” The story was published in 1970 and has been included in a number of anthologies, but I must admit that I haven’t read it, not since I wrote it, until just moments ago.
Here are bits and pieces from “Flight.” It begins with my family seeing me off at the Manila International Airport.
I kissed my mother goodbye and told her to stop crying….Then I turned to my father. There were so many things which I had wanted to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. They never do, when you most need them. And then they sound false. Luckily, my father understood….He grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously. The strength of his grip surprised me. I realized with a start that I had never shaken his hand before! I withdrew my hand quickly, but he grabbed it again. And this time he pressed his calendar-watch and amethyst ring into the palm of my hand. The actual physical contact was brief, but his touching me like that brought back a load of childhood memories, many of them unpleasant as well as embarrassing.
Again I did not know what to say. I could not imagine my father without his old calendar-watch and amethyst ring. He had worn both for as long as I could remember and now he was giving them to me!
The calendar-watch had hands which glowed in the dark, so you could tell the time all the time. It made no difference whether you were in your bedroom at 12:00 midnight or inside a darkened movie house at 12:00 noon—you could still tell the exact time because of those big luminous hands. As for the ring, it seemed almost too large and ostentatious for anyone’s hand except my father’s. The enormous purple birthstone was flanked on both sides by tiny white diamonds, and the whole ring sparkled with life every time light fell on it.
I fastened my father’s old calendar-watch on my right wrist and slipped his ring onto the ring finger of my left hand. I wanted to embrace him, to tell him that I loved him, but I checked both impulses as I disappeared into the departing lounge that hot and humid day at the Manila International Airport. I vaguely heard my father’s voice ringing after me. “Don’t forget to reset the calendar date on the watch when you get to America! Be sure to turn the hands back. You gain a full day when you cross the International Date Line!” Those were his parting words.
They were also the last words he ever said to me. My mother called me the night of December 6, 1969 to tell me that my father had died. He had not been well for a couple of years, and now he was gone. It was Sunday afternoon halfway across the world. My father had died ten minutes past midnight on Sunday. Mother said many of the people from the church were at the house. They were a great comfort to her. No, she didn’t want me to come home for the funeral. She said my father would have wanted me to stay in school because it was the week of final exams, so I can graduate after just one more semester. “You can come home in May, after you graduate.”
I went to the kitchen and poured myself a Scotch-and-water. Back in the living room, I remembered with a start that, seventeen months ago, my father and I had been drinking Scotch-and-water at the bar in the airport. It was the first time we had ever drunk together. I thought it ironic that the first time also turned out to be the last.
The living room was uncomfortably still. Left to myself, I decided that I wanted noise, clatter, music, life. I looked through my records—flipping through Liszt, Chopin, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart—rejecting one and all until I chanced upon the “Farewell, Angelina” album by Joan Baez.
Joan Baez. Her voice has an airy quality about it which reminds me of lofty rooms and high ceilings, rainy mornings and windy afternoons, snowy evenings and cold December nights.
“You must leave now—
Take what you need you think will last;
But whatever you wish to keep,
You’d better grab it fast.”
I poured myself another drink in the kitchen and turned off the lights in the living room when I came back. The house plunged into eerie darkness. I looked at my watch. Its hands glowed luminously in the dark. It was only 11:30 P.M.
Then it dawned on me.
I realized with a start that I had been staring at my father’s old calendar-watch. I was wearing the watch he had pressed into my hand the last time I saw him! What had I done with his amethyst ring? Why wasn’t I wearing that, too? Again I stared at the watch, my eyes following the voyage of the second-hand as it overtook the minute-hand and then the hour-hand.
I remembered my father’s parting words at the airport: “Don’t forget to reset the calendar date on the watch when you get to America! Be sure to turn the hands back! You gain a full day when you cross the International Date Line!”
Saturday night was nearly over in Lawrence. Then I realized with another start that, soon, it would be midnight. Soon it would be Sunday. Soon the luminous hands of my father’s old calendar-watch would indicate that it was ten minutes past midnight, in mid-America. Technically speaking, right here, right now, my father was still alive, and he was going to die all over again, for my benefit–in Kansas!
“Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out! The saints are coming through.
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.”
I swallowed the rest of my drink and held back my tears.
Forty-one years later, I still haven’t wept for my father. Perhaps because I wasn’t with him when he died, perhaps because I did not go home for the funeral so I never actually saw him dead, for whatever reason, there has never been any closure for me when it comes to me and my father. In my mind, he’s still very much alive, although these days I no longer remember what his voice sounds like. He never spoke much, to begin with. And now all I hear is his silence.
Today is Father’s Day. Bless me, father, for I have been remiss.
The fathers of our lives are always with us and the silence is their way of telling us that. My father was separated from me as a four year old child by divorce, and then later by distance of states…California and Montana. He lives in my mind’s eye and I see him just as I knew him as a child. He died when I was in high school in Montana. Before that happened, however, my mother took us to the nursing facility where she was to show us what he had become, and that I will never forget because it was not the vision I had kept of him. He was a victim of dementia and kept pleading with me and my sister to take him away from the place where he was. I was a junior in high school and only understood that my father was gone from me even though he was standing before me. A year later he passed away, and his ashes were scattered out over the Pacific by my Mother and Sister. I was not allowed to attend because he passed a month before I was to graduate. I don’t remember his voice but I do remember his touch and his smile, and that stays with me.
Your father is still with you or your couldn’t write about him so eloquently.
Ione
Dear, dear Paul,
Why is it that whenever I read (anxiously) what you wrote, I have to cry? Is it because you have the ability to bring up to my consciousness my deepest feelings? Or is it because everything you write is so special that it shakes me up and brings back my own memories on the subject?
If the latter, then I have to admit that I had the most wonderful parents ever, and that the image of my father (especially today, on the anniversary of his passing) is that of a gentle, intelligent, creative, hard-working and totally honest man who loved me dearly. Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you, as it allows me to recreate (and thus honor) him in a way that I never thought possible.
Love you, anita
As you know, this is my first Father’s Day without one I can call up or send a gift to, and it has been a rough day. It’s one hour and three minutes from being over, and I’m glad for that. This was very touching to read, and probably something I needed today, so thank you. And coincidentally, since I couldn’t buy a gift for my dad today, I bought one “from” him. Guess what it was….a watch.
Paul…
I’m very glad I get your blog. Thank you for today’s entry.
As you may know I could not write something like that. My parents were an elective affinity whose compound was lethal to them and disabled contentment and important emotional capacities in their children. It is hard to state this without sounding self-pitying but that’s the way it is. As the Germans say, however, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I do not feel defined or determined by my past. Life has been very good and every experience has served to enhance perception and compassion. My epitaph: Amor fati.
I grieve for the very idea of a loving parent. Anger pollutes every memory of them. Controlling that corrosion is now my chief emotional task. So it is that I cry at any movie, play, music or story whose subject is the spontaneous and autonomic love that parents naturally have for their children.
Fathers Day is a day of gratitude for a gift that must never be taken for granted.
You’re a good man.
Jerry
Eloquent and lovely. You honor him with your memories and your words. Thanks for sharing.
Dear Paul,
Thank you for sharing this moving reflection of your father. You have such a gift for painting with words the details of what is and was.
Though many of my own parental flashbacks (and therefore, flash forwards, right?) are (I imagine) similar to Jerry’s, not those about my father.
From my earliest memories of my father, it was clear that I was cherished. That I was worthy of his sparkling smiles, his encouraging words, his gentle corrections and guidances, his corny jokes, his encouragements. All of those weekends on the farm, me at his side soaking up all manner and layers of life as we patched fences together, cared for animals, planted and harvested, used tools, interacted with others, fished, stewarded the land. Whenever life got bumpy, I learned by his example not to (at least immediately – ha!) panic. Instead, to assess the damage, and then try to move forward using whatever strengths and gifts we have (between us), and to gently allow ourselves our many weaknesses. Nature was his religion, the Golden his rule. When he was 92, he and my mother, both in failing health, reluctantly said goodbye to the farm and their small KS town, and moved (along with my sister) to Lawrence to be closer to Chuck and me. Mother died first. cancer. After dad’s second stroke he was able to tell me, through labored, stroke-impaired speech, that he was grateful for his life’s blessings, including me. He said that his shell was worn out, that he was ready to go, and that he hoped I understood. With a crooked smile, he told me that whenever I see a penny on the street, it would be him winking at me. He winks at me a lot.
Hugs from Beth.
I was terribly moved by your memories of your father and your effort to understand what the memory of him meant to you. I can relate to that, having had a relationship with my own Dad that was loving and stormy at the same time. But I would give anything right now to relive the good times with him and make up for the bad times.
I hope you will find the time and the inclination to write a play about your Dad the way you did about your Mom. It is not easy but something that needs to be done. I wish you comfort and peace in your memories.
Ray