While checking out at the grocery store today, my father and I both grabbed for the most recent Time simultaneously upon seeing its stark image: a shadowed solider performing what was most likely taps with the caption "One A day."
I brushed past his hand and reached instead for some bullshit magazine with an unhappy Kardashian revealing how terrible her love life was while watching my father of the corner of his eye as he flipped through each glossy page of the article carefully, trying to decide if it was worth the $4.99 price tag. The woman at the check out, now done with our groceries, held out a wrinkled palm for the magazine which my father handed over. Curiosity won.
The drive home, like most of our drives, was a quiet one. The two of us contemplating what we would read once we got home. After making lunch, my father announced he'd be taking his normal afternoon nap in which I saw my opportunity to take a cold glass of sweet tea and settle into one of the many rocking chairs on the porch with this solider of ours.
Following the death of my dad's youngest sister in January, it was decided that an impromptu family reunion was in order. At first I was excited at the prospect of meeting my father's family that he had left behind after purchasing a one way greyhound ticket shortly after his 18th birthday and that he refused to let into our lives. He instead watched quietly as my siblings and I embraced out Puerto Rican heritage, ignoring my father's lineage completely aside from our last name. But as the months passed and the time for the reunion was upon us, I had a change of heart: why now? Why under these circumstances did we feel it acceptable to meet people who shared our name but nothing else. I had never even been to Cleveland, nor did I have any desire to. Yet here I was, on a redeye flight out of Oakland and still a 6 hour drive out from the Outer Banks, on my way to this family reunion.
On the way down, I asked my father all I could. There wasn't to be nearly as many people there as we had at first anticipated, so I simply focused on the aunts and cousins who would be present for our short stay. All together it would be dad, the three of us, my aunt Donna and Kim, and our second cousin Tony (son of my Grandpa Dom's brother, Tony) and his two daughters, Anna and Dania. Chris, my father's other sister, had recently fallen back into another Heroine stint and wouldn't be around to make it.
More than anything, I wasn't sure how to accept these people.
When we arrived, my aunt Kim was the first to greet us. I was the most excited to see her (since the last time I had was when I was 7), but because I knew that like my Titi Dulci on my mother's side, she was the keeper of records, photographs, birth and death certificates, stories, legends, myths, and truths. She held the answers I needed and that I would hopefully find during these few days together. She hugged my father first, kissing him gently to avoid transplanting any lipstick to skin and then approached me next. I hesitated momentarily, letting my eyes drop to the crab grass riddled lawn until I felt her arms around me. She was much shorter, her face resting on my exposed clavicle until I relaxed and returned the embrace. I'm not sure how long we stood there holding one another, but in only a few moments, years of distance were suddenly erased and we knew we could move forward.
Over the next 4 days, we spent hours exchanging information. I hadn't before thought of my father's side of the family's perspective in regard to the distance placed between us. I admitted I had believed them to be indifferent, possibly even borderline insulted, at having never heard from us during that time. But Kim shook her head, her neat A-line cut tossed from cheek to cheek in earnest disagreement. She, too, had left at an early age when she found her out and understood my father's reasoning and dilemma perfectly: he wanted to escape years of pain and never look back again. And he had succeeded. He put himself through school, became a successful officer the Coast Guard, married my mother, had the three of us, and went about his life as if his childhood had never happened.
I asked her who he had been before he had been our father. She smiled sadly, staring into her glass of wine. She said that he had always been an avid reader, that he loved animals, was a complete sci-fi nerd, and did well by everyone. He worked hard even if he hated what he had to do, and never complained to anyone. He had always been one to keep to himself, even from a young age, and kept a somewhat calloused perspective of life given his circumstances growing up.
Where my mother has always been an open book, my father has been tight-lipped about his life, sharing only the occasional tid-bit following a few drinks or a moment of clarity. I hadn't before that moment knew very much of my father aside from what he allowed us to see growing up and tried with all my strength to absorb that information into my very bones. And I realized in that moment that it wasn't my father's intention for us to never know, but rather for him to never have to remember.
Later that evening after Kim had gone to bed, I pulled out an old email my father had sent me while he was stationed in Iraq in 2008. He hadn't told us that he had contemplated taking the job until the paper work was finished, his physical exams all completed, and a plane ticket purchased. At this point my father had been retired from the Coast Guard for a few years, passed over in 2005 after it was clear he wouldn't make admiral, and had become a civilian contractor for the Army. With my brother struggling to find work, me in my last year of college, my sister just starting out on her own and a failing mortgage, I'm sure my father felt obligated to take the offer to do some contract work overseas.
Caught up in the midst of trying to graduate on time and write a thesis I was proud of while also being emotionally and financially supportive of a severely depressed brother and sister, I didn't reach out to my father much. Of course I had no idea the danger he would put himself in daily as he omitted information often to keep us from worrying. A technique I practiced myself for the same reasons, never relaying information of Marco's abrupt disappearances following a fight with his then girlfriend or Kalena's on going talks of suicide. I thought I was protecting him if I pretended to be happy, to show how grateful I was for his love and support. In reality I suffered from multiple panic attacks, calling my mother at all hours of the night in hopes to find some peace myself, afraid that I wouldn't be able to finish at all let alone time.
It was during an all night editing session that I received an email from my father explaining why he had given me my name: Mariel. I sat at my computer, re-reading the email's contents repeatedly trying to find some hidden message. Why send this now, I thought to myself.
Don't be misunderstood. My father has always shown his love for us. But as we grew older, me more rebellious and cold, the affection exchanged between my father and I became rare and forced at times. It wasn't until I was out of the house and 3,000 miles away that I had realized my mistake, but by then the damage was done. Too much time had passed, making the two of us unsure of how to cover lost ground. So, naturally, the email - albeit incredibly kind and welcomed - was also equally off-putting. I responded immediately not wanting him to believe I had brushed off the gesture, proclaiming it to be a great honor to have been named by him and that I would carry that with me for the rest of my life.
I found out some years later that my father should've been killed the night I received his explanation during a routine check of some facilities which he bypassed to complete a report. The humvee carrying his coworkers and solider transporters hit a land mine, killing all on impact. I can't imagine the devastation my father felt, nor the survivor's guilt that followed and continued to haunt him as PTSD. I'm not sure if it was that incident alone as there were many that ignited a desire to reach out to the three of us, to determine his worth and in the process regain a sense of purpose, nor am I sure if I helped him to fulfill that need as a daughter. I'm still not sure, I will always be too afraid to ask.
A few months later, the five of us reconnected in California for my graduation. My father, who had always been a clean cut man, wearing a shaggy beard in some attempt to hide his face. My father, who had always been quiet, now only a few steps shy of being a mute. My father, who had always been my example of strength, now became startled at a plastic bag floating out from behind a car when crossing the street. Eyes shifting constantly, body never able to rest. He had been changed in some irreversible way and I couldn't fix it. No one could.
Despite his best efforts, my parents lost their house in Florida. My dad left Michael Baker in Arizona and took up a job in Winchester where my mother would transfer to so the two could be together again. After years now of living apart, they had their chance to begin again, and not without struggle. I saw the marriage tearing at the seams, my mother working to patch up each new tear as deftly as possible, but not without some mistakes. My father was a regular at the VA, constantly changing prescriptions for the pain and images that now wracked him night and day. At times I was afraid to be in the same room as him for fear he might revert, falling into a fit of sobs or worse a blind rage in which we were all to blame for what he had suffered from. I would rather be away from him and hold fast to those images I had of him as a child, carefree and happy, then to stand by his side and watch as he unfolded before our eyes only to become nothing but a desolate and lost old man.
Eventually the fits subsided and my parents found their footing. I was grateful to return to phone conversations about the weather and how the Indians were playing. Life for us would never be normal, not by any standards, but it was close enough.
While visiting over Christmas, I woke early to find my father pacing around the kitchen, looking confused. When I asked him if he was OK, he simply stared at me. It was 6:30 in the morning and not able to sleep, I thought I'd make coffee and read for awhile before everyone was up. After a few minutes of a silent stand off, my father eventually shook himself awake and mumbled a good morning. He was looking for his car keys, he had an appointment at the VA to get some blood work done. I offered to drive him and keep him company, which he agreed to. I remembered thinking how beautiful the Shenandoah mountains looked in fresh snow as we drove through sipping on our still steaming coffee. At the VA, we flipped through dilapidated pamphlets on health care, eavesdropping on the Vietnam Vets exchanging stories of the bush. I smiled at him as he walked back, not sure if I should ask if he wanted me there with him or not.
Later on the drive home, he asked to stop by McDonalds for breakfast. "I remember when you were little, you were obsessed with the pancakes from this place. Not anymore, now you're too good for this sorta shit." He chuckled, taking a bit of his sandwich.
The drive home took longer with more drivers on the road, unconfident of their technique with the slick black ice. I bit my lip, watching the road carefully. We had grown quiet in my concentration, my father sitting back straight against his seat with his eyes closed. When we were through the worst of it, I sighed with relief and resumed a normal pace, patting my dad on the arm to let him know he could relax.
"Do you still need me?" He asked suddenly, his hazel eyes shining fiercely from behind his bottle cap glasses.
"What?"
"Nevermind." He knew I had heard and understood.
"No, what do you mean? Why would you think I don't need you?" I felt my heart catch in my throat. Was this because I didn't offer to go back with him when they took his blood? Fuck. I should've asked.
"I need to hear you say it. I need to know that you still want me here."
My eyes switched rapidly between his gaze and the road ahead as I tried to make contact.
"Yes. Yes, I still need you here. I'll always want you here."
He sat back, his head against the rest, eyes closed. We didn't say anything again of the conversation, nor did he ever ask again. A conversation I've tried hard to not over analyze until after finishing the article today.
I had believed that with pills and therapy, he would overcome Iraq and what he had been subjected to there. But trauma like chronic pain never truly goes away. It gets better with treatment and practice, but can and will sneak up at any given moment of weakness, ready to strip you of what character you have left. I'm grateful that although he never truly expressed his desire to give up to me, he did to someone. And unlike the men who succeeded in ending their misery themselves because of lack of compassion and treatment, my father was able to move forward and continue to fight.
I'm not sure what the future holds for him as I will never know what my father wants for himself, or for the millions of others who suffer daily. Those with the invisible scars. Each of us needs a purpose, each of us need to be needed. But first the desire to continue must be present, ending the war with oneself. As he wakes from his nap, stumbling into the kitchen half blind without his glasses hoping there's some coffee left in the pot from this morning I wonder where within this he stands and if he's still on the front lines of that place I can never reach.
No comments:
Post a Comment