Adjusting the View

This is how I remember my father—he is standing next to a 1950s-model car with my mother, who, in turn, is holding my oldest brother.  The image is blurry, but I can tell that they're all squinting in the bright sunlight.  They appear to be heading out on or returning from a summer picnic.  My parents were nineteen years old at the time, and their faces beam with joy and optimism, neither of which held up, given that the marriage unraveled within ten years. 

Of course, I don't really remember my father this way at all.  Since my parents separated before I turned three, I have no memories of living with him, but this image is fixed in my mind because of the snapshot, a relic I discovered as an adult while rummaging through my mother's cedar chest, looking for new details about the family history.  Until I was in my thirties, my mom revealed very little about the years she lived with my dad, not wanting to taint my relationship with him or to sugarcoat things either.  Theirs was an unhappy marriage, and over the years I have gotten only glimpses of what it must have been like.

So the blurry image is especially appropriate.  Growing up, my two older brothers and I would occasionally spend weekends with my dad, going on camping or fishing trips or hanging out at his modern split-level house with his second wife (who was always sweet and welcoming).  But even as a child, I never really got to know him.  I liked him.  He struck me as a guy who was really, really cool—in all respects.  He was hip, good looking, and smart, and he was emotionally detached.  He was also a charmer, a quality that stood out in some of the old photos from my mother's cedar chest.  One picture, in particular, always amused me.  It was taken at a costume party.  A leggy young woman (not my mother) is sitting on my dad's lap, and she's wearing mismatched knee socks.  He's smiling bigger than I've ever seen him smile, and his glasses reflect the camera's flash so you can't see his eyes.

That detail about the glasses is revealing.  In all the years I visited my dad, he invariably wore sunglasses, even indoors.  I once asked my oldest brother why that was, to which he replied, "Because he has no eyes."  We both laughed but we knew it was true—not literally, of course—but our father never made eye contact, never connected with us.  He rarely expressed any emotions, good or bad.  He was simply there.  Admittedly, it was an awkward arrangement for all of us.  He was our part-time dad, but we were his part-time kids, and he probably never knew how best to relate to us.

I last saw my father twenty-eight years ago when I was in my mid-twenties.  I had just gotten married and had taken my wife to meet him.  After that visit I decided to let my dad call if he wanted to talk or get together.  He never did.

So here I am, sorting through a box full of old photographs.  Two pictures stand out because they were taken by my dad.  The first was snapped a year or two after my parents got married.

What's striking is how young and pretty my mother looks, and she must have looked equally beautiful to my dad.  There's also something disorienting about the image.  My mother has never been what you would call a lover of the great outdoors, but there she is standing at the base of a mountain in Colorado or New Mexico, doing her best to enjoy the kind of experience my dad most certainly loved, a fishing trip.  She's even wearing waders, perhaps for the first and last time.

The other photo my dad snapped was taken at Christmas, the last one we all shared under the same roof.  My cousin, my brothers, and I are sitting on the floor after the presents have been opened.  My oldest brother is wearing a shiny new pair of cowboy boots and has a transistor radio pressed to his ear. That's me pressing my bare feet against my other brother's new boots.

What stands out most is the hi-fi set behind us.  That stereo was my dad's pride and joy (he was quite the audiophile, especially when it came to his jazz records), and when he moved into his new house not long after this photo was taken, he devoted a room to his stereo.  Don't ask me how I know he is the one who snapped the photo.  I suppose it could have been my mother, but there's something about the blank looks on our faces that tells me our father was on the other side of that Polaroid camera, one knee on the floor, left eye shut, right eye pressed against the viewfinder.