The Record: Snap
I’m at school working on a photo essay. Applied photography. Portraits.
I go home to California for Thanksgiving. I convince my father and his wife to dress up for a photo shoot.
They get home from work, and I tell them to get changed. I bring them out back and make some suggestions.
It’ll be good if she smokes. It’ll be better if he looks at me with that severe look I know everyone in our family knows.
I develop the film. It’s one of the best, one of the truest, photographs I’ve ever taken. He scowls at the camera, at me through the lens.
I lay the photographs out over the dining room table, and the whole family gathers to see the work I’ve produced. They seem excited, and he does, too, until he sees his portrait.
He hates it.
I wonder how he imagines himself.
The Record: Mary
He arrives home from work, and before he even has a chance to take off his tie, he’s in the kitchen mixing himself a drink.
Two fingers of vodka, four of tomato juice, and a splash of mixer.
There are a few of these every night, though I’m not sure how many. One morning I see a leftover drink from the night before on his bedside table.
Did he expect to finish it in the morning?
Four fingers of vodka, two of tomato juice, and a splash of mixer.
Six fingers of vodka, no tomato juice, and a splash of mixer.
He’s a white-collar alcoholic, able to function at his high-stress job no matter how eager he may be to make it home each night.
He hires and fires people; that’s his job. He’s perfect for it; unforgiving, hard, and heartless. I can hardly imagine what it must be like for someone to lose their job and have a man like my father managing them on their way out the door.
There’s a bridge outside his office window, the Bay Bridge.
People don’t jump off that one.
The Record: Cheerios
My father is not a bastard forever.
He and his wife move away right around the time that he starts to soften. They hate each other; there’s no getting around that. They yell at each other so much that their pet parrots learn their names and mimic them, screaming out in frustration just like they do.
But they stay together. Two hard people.
He likes me, though. And I sort of like him these days. But not enough to visit another country, where he now lives, with any regularity. With the kids, we are saddled, and two grand to visit Grandpa just isn’t happening.
But he can’t help but crack a bit with age, and that little bit of light within him, stamped on for so many years that now he’s almost completely empty, begins to leak out.
There are some who are born bad.
I’m sorry, but it’s true.
But I don’t believe he was born bad; I believe he was made bad.
His belief that he was the result of a torrid affair is unfounded; he looks exactly like his father. Exactly.
There is a picture of my three-year-old son sitting on his nightstand, my adopted baby who looks nothing like me or him. Maybe it’s easier for him this way, knowing that it’s literally impossible that my little child was a product of his blood family’s terrible lines.
When he comes to visit, he brings a big box of sugary cereal for the boy.
I told him what to bring, but it’s nice anyway.
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Dear Readers,
Life is hard. It just is, and it’s hard for pretty much everyone in one way or another. When we’re young, we take it all in, all of the difficulties that our families go through affect us in ways nobody ever planned for. Sometimes there is joy, a lot of times there is pain, and whether we like it or not, those early experiences follow us, often for the rest of our lives.
But there are survivors everywhere, those of us lucky ones who make it through the inevitable difficulties of life and find a new life on the other side.
Growing up with my father was no picnic. He was extremely difficult and clearly traumatized in his own way. Those are secrets I may never learn about now that he’s gone, but maybe I don’t even need to know what they were to make him turn out the way he did. In his retired life, he softened. That doesn’t mean I forgot all of the pain, but it does mean that I was able to have some good times with him, times that I never thought I would get to have.
Some people might not like to read these essays today, but they are simply my truth. I encourage you all to share your truth, either here or somewhere else, to find some outlet where you can let it all out and eventually let things go. Finding joy on the other side of trauma is not easy, but it is possible.
Thank you, as ever, for reading.
Jen
