Surrogate Fathers

We hold our holidays to impossible standards. The right gifts must be chosen, the food must arrive on time, and everyone must get along. But celebrations like Father’s Day often fall short of our expectations. For those who are physically or emotionally separated from their families, they are often a crushing reminder of loss.

Our Sunday paper was filled with memorials to fathers and grandfathers, their pictures lovingly displayed along with special notes written by loved ones still grieving.

In our hearts your memory lingers, sweetly tender, fond and true. There is not a day, dear father that we do not think of you.

Another: Papa it's been 17 years sense (sic) you been gone. I still miss you Papa.

Some spent Father's Day coping with emotional separation from their families. Yesterday, I received an email from a friend in Los Angeles whose family cannot accept the fact that she is gay. “On a sad note," she wrote, "I was not invited today for Father's Day."

She called her dad to wish him a happy Father's Day and asked when she could see him and give him his gift. Her stepmother told her to stop by after 8 p.m., because they would be busy before then. They had already made plans to go to the beach with her brother and his family. “I said nothing and waited. I was not invited,” she said. She later left the Father's Day gift on her parents' front porch.

After talking it over with a supportive friend, "I realized my real family is all my amazing friends. I have to start making the distinction if I am ever going to get over this and be happy," she said. "The fact is, since I'm not living the life they have chosen for me, my parents are not supportive. I must let go.”

*****

On Saturday, while watching my children at the pool, I heard a relentless, high-pitched scream. I turned and saw a small crowd moving quickly from the playground. In the front, a man comforted a small boy in a towel who had received some sort of terrible injury. The boy cried as blood dripped from his mouth. He had taken a tumble off the slide and bitten through his tongue.

The man helping him began giving directions in a surprisingly calm voice. “Can someone get some ice?” he asked. "Does anyone know his mother?" To the boy he said, “it will be o.k.”

The woman from the snack bar rushed over with ice. A lifeguard ran over with his first aid kit and wrapped up the boy's tongue. Someone grabbed a pediatrician who was doing laps. Another found the boy’s mother and little sister. The little sister was so upset that she started crying and ended up biting her own tongue, which also started bleeding. Everyone was taken care of, the situation calmed, and the mother and her children headed towards the parking lot.

Over the Father’s Day weekend, I reflected upon the man who had helped the little boy. By his care and concern, I had assumed he was the father. Apparently, they didn’t even know each other. How reassuring to know that there is within us something instinctive that enables us to care for one another as a parent, when the real parents can’t be found.

*****

Over the weekend, people around the world began receiving the shocking images from Iran of a young woman shot to death at a rally. According to reports, 27-year-old student Neda Soltan had been attending a protest on Saturday when a sniper shot her in the chest. I haven’t watched them, but understand that cell phone videos capture the horrifying moments as two men gently help her lie down on the sidewalk as they try to stop the bleeding. One of the men, since identified as her music teacher, was at first believed to be her father. On one video, as she begins to lose consciousness, he is heard offering her comfort in her final moments.

"Neda, don't be afraid…"

The world grieves for this young woman, whose death has become a galvanizing force for Iranians opposed to President Ahmadinejad. Protestors around the world now hold posters with her image and name, which means “the call” or “the voice” in Farsi.

As the world watches and waits, in the White House, another father, one who seems an exceptionally moral and intelligent man, contemplates the extent to which we are our brother’s keeper.

Happy Father's Day and Bon Appetit!

I was blessed to spend the week before Father's Day with my dad and stepmom, who were visiting from Florida. During that time, my dad (with my stepmom and youngest daughter, the patient co-chefs) insisted upon making dinner every night. My dad is an amazing cook who enjoys preparing meals for our family. Even before he packs to come up here, it's on his mind. My dad once hauled a 10-pound hunk of prime rib in his luggage.

Eating a nice meal is important to him, perhaps because he grew up with the poverty and rations of World War II Aberdeen. He views food as a necessity for which you should always be grateful.

Voilà! Garlic chicken.

When visiting us, my dad goes with the flow during the day, but when mid-afternoon approaches, it's time to get down to business. Around 2 or 3 p.m., he will begin to show a little antsiness in his manner and assume a look of focused intensity. He will begin opening cabinet doors in the kitchen, and peeking in the refrigerator. If I haven't picked up on what's going on, if I have missed the signs, he will ask me directly, "O.k., NOW--what are we going to have for dinner?" Because I am usually a last-minute, fling something together type of cook, I usually have no idea. I usually haven't given it the first thought.

Ah, amateurs. He comes up with a plan for dinner and, before long, he is pulling out pots and pans and organizing any necessary runs to the grocery store. A couple of hours later, things are really happening around the kitchen. Ingredients are being mixed, steam is rising, butter and garlic are crackling from the frying pan. My stepmother darts around the kitchen, moving boiling things. My dad, his face now sweating, takes a brief sip from a glass of wine before deftly chopping some herbs. The door swings open, and who is there standing before him but his adult child.

"Need any help?"

*****

Father's Day was fast approaching and we were running out of time. My girls wanted to find something special for their dad, who they both love so dearly. Though he works such long hours, he still finds time for swim meets and basketball, teacher conferences and just hanging out with his family. One of the things he enjoys doing most is making spectacular meals for us.

Thinking about that gave my youngest daughter an idea. "He's been looking everywhere for a crepe pan," she said.

A challenge! We went to the mall and, after looking around a bit, struck gold at Crate and Barrel. The next morning, we gave my husband breakfast in bed and showered him with an array of small gifts. Among them, the little round pan that had so eluded him.

He had not much time to lounge about aimlessly when our youngest asked if he could show her how to make crepes. Soon, he was in the kitchen, stirring batter and then warming it up in his new pan.

I watched as, with a spatula, he expertly folded the thin pancake over some strawberries. "You're not supposed to be doing all this work on Father's Day," I said.

"This is how I wanted to spend it," he said.

Within a couple of hours, he had to head to the office again--though we all knew he'd much rather be at home with his girls, flipping crepes.

*****

Happy Father's Day to our family's two special chefs!

Model childhoods

Not long ago, a story appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about a retired engineer who is reconstructing his childhood neighborhood in miniature. Carl Kersey, Sr., 73, grew up in Happy Hollow, a neighborhood of about 50 homes in eastern Richmond. The homes were bulldozed more than 30 years ago by the local redevelopment and housing authority, but the neighborhood lives on in his mind and in his scale replica.

Kersey's miniature Happy Hollow is rich in detail, from the tiny sheets that flap from clotheslines to the swimming pool that recalls the one that his father made from a fuel tank. In the article and accompanying video, writer Melodie Martin records Kersey's memories of an enchanting, working class community, where children bought penny candy at the corner store, swam in water-filled gravel pits, and whiled away afternoons "in the grassy lots between homes where they played baseball, cows grazed and tent revivals were held."

Reading the article, I feel a nostalgic tug for Mr. Kersey's neighborhood. It is interesting to me that the most modest of living conditions can often glean some of the richest of childhoods.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/KERS06_20090505-223203/266005/

*****

My 13-year-old was intrigued by the pictures of Mr. Kersey's model of Happy Hollow. "It's like the one in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," she said. Both of my children have a fond appreciation for that quiet, slow-paced show. One of their favorite parts is the opening, when the camera pans a model of the neighborhood as the themesong begins.

The model is used in other parts of the show. When the kindly Mister Rogers visits his neighbors, his journeys are traced down its orderly streets. Everything that Mister Rogers needs seems to be within walking distance.

I would love to be able to walk a few blocks to check out some books from the library, buy a gallon of milk, or say hello to a friendly fireman. But my neighborhood is considered "car dependent," at least by the folks at http://www.walkscore.com/. Our community is safe, and abundant with natural beauty. The trade-off is that, unlike Mister Rogers, we would have to walk a couple of miles and cross some pretty major roads to get to the nearest store or library.

*****

My grandparents lived in Toronto for most of their lives, and, while there, they never owned a car. Everywhere they wanted to go was either accessible by foot or mass transit. We lived in Toronto when I was very young, and Gram watched me during the day while my parents worked. I still have vivid memories of my time in their very walkable neighborhood. I remember pushing my dolls in a little pram when we went to the playground down the street. On the way home, we'd stop at a corner store where Gram would treat me to a soda, a comic book, and ketchup potato chips. My grandparents lived on the second floor of a three-story walk-up, and the halls and stairwells always seemed to smell like fried food.

My grandparents have been dead for a number of years now, but, last fall, I returned to that old neighborhood. Lacking a child's dramatic sense of scale, everything looked so different. The buildings, especially, seemed so short. I did not recognize the playground down the street where I had spent so many hours. I wondered how many years it had been since they had replaced the swings and slides on which I had once played.

The older I get, the more I miss my grandparents. Perhaps I thought that by going back to their old neighborhood, I could somehow replicate what it felt like to be three years old and walking to the playground with my Gram. I found that I could no longer connect to what was, and would instead have to hold on to the memories of what had once been.