Yesterday was my Dad's 88th birthday. He didn't live to see it-he didn't even get close, passing away in 1981. I often thought we didn't get along because we were so different, and I blamed him for that, but in the decades since his death I've come to realize it's because we are very much alike and I've decided all this finding fault junk is foolish, especially since I'd have to be the one to blame.
My dad had a very quick mind and a mouth to match. The laws of probability suggest he wasn't always the smartest guy in the room but I don't ever recall being in a room when he wasn't probably the smartest guy, no matter the subject and no matter the size of the room. He was a natural wonder of the world and while, in hindsight, I realize he was often wrong-he was never in doubt.
I recognized the exact moment I had become my dad, ironically not in any form of interaction with our children (who hadn't even been born yet), but in a work situation many years ago in radio broadcasting with someone who could have been far better than she was, had she made the effort. She explained through tears after an especially caustic critique session that "I can't work as hard as you can!" And though it was my voice, it was my father's words which coldly countered "I don't want you to work as hard as I can; I want you to work as hard as you can."
Where my father and I differed is in our circumstances-I suspect he was far more of a humanist than he was ever comfortable admitting. He was very much a man of his time, born in the years before the first Great Depression of parents who'd migrated to the Land of Opportunity. They had a family of all boys who were strivers, all of them as near as I can remember. In the years since his passing I've thought of them only rarely and lost any means of contacting any of them. I never cared to speak with them since I don't think they knew much more about my dad than I did.
We were six children, two groups of three-two boys and girl in the middle in the first cohort and then two girls and, finally, another boy in the second cohort. We three oldest knew him as a two-fisted force of nature who got up before anyone else in the neighborhood, perhaps even in the whole world, and rode the train to "The City" where he taught the sons of the rich (to little effect as I had opportunity first hand, repeatedly, to discover) and came home when everything was dark. We wanted for nothing and, speaking for myself, I never once considered what it cost him for us to live that way.
Our second cohort had different lives as he died before my middle sister, the oldest of the three, had graduated from high school. By that time, I had gone as far as you can in this world from him, distance wise, only to learn no matter how fast you are you can never outrun your own shadow or your own conscience. When the American Red Cross operator notified me of 'an emergency, a death in the family' I wasn't surprised it was my dad-but my sense of guilt at hearing the news did surprise me. For just a moment I was again that little-too-small and little-too-loud boy who often felt over matched by a father, a Captain of the Universe no less, who never knew what to say to his own children that would sound like the love and encouragement he was trying to offer.
About a year after we married, my wife and I came to the United States. It was very important for me that my father like the woman I loved, even as I told myself it mattered not at all. She wasn't Irish, she wasn't Catholic and he loved her anyway-I had worried for nothing. It was an a delightful relief and a wonderful visit. He and I almost talked but there would be time for real conversation on other visits. When we said good bye at the airport, he was misty-eyed and I thought of my sister Jill and her 'it's very warm, my eyes are sweating' but I didn't say it aloud.
That moment at the departure lounge proved to be the last time I would have an opportunity face to face to ever not tell him something I could, and perhaps, should, have. I spent many years struggling with the burden of that moment and the memories not so much of all the things said but, rather of all the things left unsaid that now will stay that way for all time until memory ends. Happy Birthday, Dad.
-bill kenny
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