06/16/2024
Father’s Day is always a Challenge.
My grandfathers died before I was born.
My fabulous Dad died less than a month after I turned 19. I still miss him and think of him, with love, almost every day.
My older brothers chose to father outside of Philadelphia.
The father of my children is another fabulous man, but his father chose extreme disassociation from our young kids.
And it appears my son may choose to ‘Father’ only pets.
Every year, the celebration of Father’s Day inundates me with many ‘triggers’ and ‘feels’.
Many years, it is so overwhelming I am still processing the feelings long after the day is past.
Most years, I try to center on a thought or theme, and this year,
I feel far enough along in the process to share three thoughts.
1. For me here there would be no Father’s Day without Mom.
2. The relationships that our dog, Brad, has with Larry and I feel like universal representations of healthy parenting.
3. I am lucky in my father and my husband and my son.
My Pop fell in love with my mom when they were children… her, not so fast.
Pop came from a family of short men. Mom told him she would not consider marrying anyone under 5’10” tall. Pop began a regime of diet, exercise and stretching that resulted in him becoming the tallest in his family, and he achieved 5’10” at age 18, and he convince mom he had fulfilled her conditions and they must marry. Pop was 18, mom 15. Their first child arrived when they were 19 and 16. Their twelfth when they were 47 and one month shy of 45.
Today, the ages seem sketchy, but I witnessed a loving relationship that did not end at Pop’s death,
My parents overcame a lot of struggles. Both survived the ‘Spanish Flu’ but lost family and friends. Dad’s birth year caused him to miss a lot of wars/conflicts, and he went from being sad/embarrassed that he was not age-eligible for the military, to seeing brothers come back with PTSD and as alcoholics. He didn’t want his sons to join the military, so of course they all did.
The first TV at our 4324 Larchwood home was in 1958, It had a 9” screen and was a present from Mom’s brother, Uncle Bill.
Dad had his first major heart attack in July of 1958 and Mom broke her leg, catastrophically, in June of 1959, and both began a downward slide, toward death, with neither conceding an inch, as they fought to raise their youngest through to adulthood.
The TV saw a lot of use, and we kids were used as channel-changers.
My brother Bill describes Pop as a combo of Jesus Christ, Santa Claus and Pied Piper. I agree.
We always knew mom was a Saint, and I witness miracles that prove it.
Pop was a great Dad and a neighborhood hero, who carried lots of other kids toward adulthood, with food, and by ‘Fixing’ their problems.
Pop was a bard. He used words beautifully and everyone from babies to barflies was mesmerized by the stories he told.
Pop was the person who promised “tomorrow will be better”, and sometimes told us, “Be Kind”, and “No one can honor promises of a better future, but sometimes a hurting person just needs to hear some encouragement.”
Pop had been sick for so long, and in an out of hospitals, including declared ‘dead’ so many times, that it almost seemed he would continue to power through every crisis.
When mom became a beta-tester for the first Dialysis machines, it seemed to give him new life, but the horror of her treatments began to break us. Happiness was interrupted by Mom’s cramping, (bad enough to cause stress fractures), bleeding (including a few ruptures with abattoir level spraying), and minor heart attacks.
Pop’s will to live was finally broken. He didn’t want to outlive his beloved Mary, and he could not bear to see her suffer.
He stopped eating and went from 220 # to about 80 in a matter of months.
I believe it was a choice, and it took me a long time to accept that he could ‘abandon’ us 3 youngest (all teens), rather than eat.
Now that I am older than he was, I understand.
It seems a very natural and ‘Irish’ choice.
I grew in awe of Mom, who hung on past the loss and through the medical tortures, long enough to get her last ‘chick’ through High School.
Everyone liked Pop. Everyone respected my mother, Mary.
I was lucky in my parents and family.
I realize Brad Pit looks at Larry as if he is “as a combo of Jesus Christ, Santa Claus and Pied Piper”.
And he views me as the servant essential to making his world run smoothly. It strikes a chord. It took me a long time to recognize how much mom was, and that she was not in the shadow of our dad, but the stay and support of our entire family.
When I pray, which is often, I start with “in the name of…” and I often substitute Pop. Larry and Mike.
At the moment, Mike is ghosting me, so it seems quite appropriate, (sad LOL).
I am starting to believe my children might not make babies.
It is something I grieve, both intellectually (they are fabulous and their children might be needed in the world), and emotionally, (I would like to be a grandmother).
I also recognize that it is easier to understand one’s parents through the exercise of raising kids, and I wish them the joy of kids.
I think for both Larry and I, being parents was an eye-opening roller coaster of a ride with much more joy, learning and exhilaration then sorrow.
And so Happy Father’s Day, to Larry Motyka and all who father kids.
