The Tug of Father's Day

For the first time in a quarter of a century, I'll be celebrating Father's Day. It'll be the first time in twenty five years that I'll have to split the holiday between my husband and my father.  For years I've felt excluded by the tugs my friends' felt, splitting the day between the two men in their lives. There has always been lingering sadness on this day, a feeling of profound loss and loneliness, despite that my kids have a terrific father. And although I have always tried to make it special for him, the day only served to remind me of all I had lost.


Families are peculiar. Some are like dysfunctional clumps of personalities moving together in an amorous mass, changing, evolving, growing, and constricting, but also coming together when faced with a birth, an illness, a death; others breaking apart, drifting in different jet streams, seemingly unconnected until an event brings them together.

Ours was always an atypical family, and if they had reality TV back then, we'd be pioneers, be the first family of reality series.

We motored in a sea of dysfunction, not close, not distant, somewhere in between,  circulating in a world of scripted privilege, unaware that our family was breaking apart, until I found my mother at the foot of the staircase, her arms and legs splayed across the marble floor.

It was a little after 4.00 on a cool May morning, and somehow I had heard her garbled yells calling for help. Only moments before I had stumbled in after celebrating a friend's impending marriage. She'd been shuffling around the kitchen looking for aspirin. I told her to go to bed.

I went upstairs; she never made it.

She begged me not to call the ambulance. She'd been in and out of hospitals for the past year, her health had been gradually declining, and she didn't want to go back.

"I won't come out one day," she had said.

I think she wanted to die at home.

I sat on the floor and cried. I was alone.

I rode in the ambulance with her, holding her hand, dressed in one of my father's shirts that I grabbed from his closet, watching the life fade from her chestnut eyes as the sun rose.


She died two days later, with my sister, my brother in law, and her childhood friend Liz, taking turns stroking her arms, wiping away her tears, in between bouts of reminisce fueled laughter and grief so strong it took our breath away.

"Remember when she crawled on her belly up Dad's driveway, wearing a bandana and black clothes, and rolled off to the side into the brush when his car came racing up the long steep drive?"

"Remember when she ripped up the carpet in the family room when she decided she'd had enough of that shag?"

For a skinny little woman, with arms and legs so delicate you could probably snap them like a dried twig, she, at times, surprised us with her strength. 

When Mom died, the thin bonds that held our family together snapped.

One event triggered an avalanche so destructive it took 25 years to rebuild.

But this year, I'll be driving to New York with Sissy where we'll be cooking dinner for our father. We'll have a tri-sister sleepover with my other sister, Karen, and then we'll head back home to celebrate with our own families.

Yes, her name is Karen, too. 

And that's another story.


I'm not even sure what my father likes. People's tastes change. He used to love donuts, fresh home grown tomatoes with a sprinkling of salt, and crusty Italian bread that my mom's friend Agnes made. She'd drop off her bread, still warm from the oven, and within minutes, the entire loaf would eaten, with only a few scattered crumbs dusting the counter top.

But I can't remember if he prefers crullers or jelly,  how he likes his steaks cooked, or if he still eats fish, or has had pesto before.

These are the simple questions that I'll ponder while putting together a dinner menu.

I'll feel the pull of Father's Day this year, the gentle tug of wanting to be with two  fathers.

Finally, after twenty five years.