My father’s pony

Not all of us had functional fathers, or parents that were present. Neither of my parents were cut out for the job of marriage, let alone, raising a child. Let’s just say, it’s complicated. Mine was an absentee father who drowned in the belly of a Seagram’s 7 bottle, and never recovered. His heart failed him. It’s heartbreaking that he turned out to be such a tragically flawed individual. From a photo I learned that he loved Big Band music and played the piano. Recently I found a news clipping—very nearly accidentally—where it reported that  his mother had committed suicide using rat poison, leaving him to find the body after school. And a note saying that he should join the priesthood. The only thing I was ever told was that she had committed suicide, nothing more. Finding the news clipping was devastating. Also enlightening. And with that, came the beginning of compassion. No wonder the poor man was so effed up. His father, a San Francisco cop, died earlier of TB. Perhaps it was all too much for her, being a single mother, and it sounded like she suffered from depression. And a sadist uncle stepped in to raise my poor father. He might have been better off in a foster home. I chose this photo of my father on a pony because obviously it was a time of innocence versus the grim reality of what was to follow. My crazy, gorgeous, talented, bipolar mother wasn’t much better a parent. She left me with my grandmother as she went off to design costumes for Frank Sinatra’s showgirls, and to pursue Hollywood dreams—but then, when she came to collect me, I refused to leave my grandmother. I was extraordinarily lucky in that my grandmother raised me. She was both my mother and my father. And I don’t regret that in the least. However I refuse to close ranks for the sake of Hallmark cards or sympathy, by hiding the unacknowledged family trauma caused nearly as much damage and grief as the myriad traumas themselves, that is why I chose to share this story. I’m not one to latibulate. Cormac McCarthy, God Rest his Soul, ain’t got nothing on my family tree! After all that, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. For those of you who had extraordinary fathers in your lives, I wish you all a Happy Father’s Day.

Scanning Photos on the Solstice & Father's Day

For the Solstice and for Father's Day I scanned and posted some photos on Facebook of my father. Some were photos that I had never seen before, as I had packed away his photo album soon after the funeral and never looked at it again (my mother died soon after, in 1994). I never really knew my absentee father so Father's Day is not something I've ever celebrated. Ever.

Photos forgotten until I decided to scan all my family photos. A momentous project I never meant to take on, but when my uncle began throwing out old photos when we cleaned out my grandmother's house, something needed to be done to preserve the past. So I collected and sorted and saved boxes of photos.

Back in March, during the Equinox, I began scanning my grandmother's photos, then I scanned my aunt's photos, then my mother's photos, and finally my father's photos on the Solstice.

I was surprised by the composite five-generational story that emerged from filing the separate photo albums of family members. The first album begins in the 1890s, with my great-grandparents; and the richest albums by far, are the old black & white photos up to the 1960s. My personal favorites are the photos from the 1940s and '50s. That's where I enter the picture, so to speak.