Image by Daniela Dimitrova from Pixabay
Today,
Father's Day, is a bittersweet holiday for me. It has been more than
ten years since my dad died, on his eighty sixth birthday. Oddly, I
feel his presence today far more than his absence. I've come to
understand, during the time since his passing, that he'll always be
with me, in my memories and in my heart.
Dad
lived a long, joyous and fruitful life, including more than a year
that was grace, pure and simple. After a serious cardiac incident, he
was sent home to hospice care, not expected to live more than a few
weeks. He confounded the prognosticators by recovering significantly
and thriving (relatively speaking) for another seventeen months.
I
want to talk about my dad at least partly because he, more than any
other individual, inspired me to read, and to write. He had the gift
of words, and passed it on to his children. I recall him reading
aloud to my siblings and me, folk tales, fairy stories, adventures
like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. He told his
own stories, too, invented worlds and characters for our pleasure.
There were the Gulkons, terrible demons who lived in the fire on the
hearth, and Houligan, the god of snow. (I grew up in chilly, stormy
New England.) I still remember sitting spellbound (almost sixty years
ago) while he recounted the story of the hapless wizard Thomas Carl
Sefney who had to touch his wand to every one of the monster's
thousand tentacles before it consumed him.
Both
my parents encouraged me to write. My first poems date from about
third grade. During my childhood I wrote fantasies about Martians and
ghosts, and plays about the Beatles and politics. In my adolescence,
too shy to speak to any of my crushes, I poured out my adoration in
anguished free verse. In my twenties and thirties, I wrote science
fiction and first tried my hand at romance. Finally, in my forties, I
actually managed to publish something (other than in my high school
newspaper). My first thought was to send a copy to my father.
My
dad and I shared favorite books, characters and authors. When he
and
I got talking about Sherlock Holmes or Frodo Baggins, H.P. Lovecraft
or Edgar Allen Poe or Anne Rice, the rest of the family would roll
their eyes and leave us to our obsessions. I never had any difficulty
figuring out what gift to get him for his birthday or Father's Day.
There was always some book that I had seen or heard about that I knew
he'd love.
I
never did introduce him to my erotica, though. I was so tempted to
show him the pile of paperbacks with my name on the cover and
the anthologies volumes I had edited. I wanted to autograph him a copy of my
first novel, telling him how much he had contributed to my literary
endeavors. I wanted him to be proud. However, I didn't want to make
him uncomfortable. I recalled the way he reacted when I gave him Anne
Rice's BDSM classic The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty - an
embarrassed grin and a "oh, that's interesting". We didn't
discuss that book much. Though I would have welcomed the opportunity
to open up to him about my fascination with the erotic, I sensed that
he would rather not know.
I
guess that there are just some things you can't share with your
parents, no matter how close you are.
Do
I regret that he never knew about the my risqué alter ego Lisabet
Sarai? Not really. The only thing that I regret is that I didn't get
a chance to wish him a Happy Birthday one last time. I was just about
to pick up the phone, on that May evening many years ago, when I got
the call from my sister telling me that he was gone.
Still,
in some sense, he’s responsible for every one of my books.
