What I Now Know

On my dad’s 70th birthday, I think about legacy and the people who shape us.

Our relationship hasn’t always been an easy one, a function of two souls who view the world in differing ways, but are aligned in our stubbornness. Yet, as I sit in this new spring of my life, I think of Robert Hayden’s poem, Those Winter Sundays, an account of a father’s quiet and thankless work to keep his family warm, “Speaking indifferently to him, / who had driven out the cold / and polished my good shoes as well. / What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?”

He has been there for me as the bass line, a steady, immovable beat that I’ve melodically bound around, supporting my mom and me as I went through active cancer treatment. He picked up my broken pieces as I crumbled, driving my car across the country, sitting on a perpetual hold with call center agents, booking and rebooking flights, ferrying all manner of things - lord knows, I love my things - across land and sea.

Well before I was diagnosed, he was doing this work. While on a boat I insisted on captaining despite his prowess, he quietly saved me from nearly capsizing when I caught a rogue 40-knot wind by the Golden Gate Bridge. He got on the winch without emotion as I panicked, sailing us in on his stillness.

I have wondered what makes a person and what shapes us into who we are. We are made up of layers of sentiment, compressed over time, like the rocks my dad loves to study. You think you can run from your past until you realize it’s ingrained in you, a carved channel through which life flows.

For years, I focused on my dad and my differences, yet have come to reconcile our similarities. We are two people doing the best we can, joined by our rebellious spirits, love of adventure, and the ocean. I have him to thank for my love of probabilistic thinking, trained for years over terse games of backgammon after dinner. I come by my whimsical proclivities honestly. He would pretend to crack eggs on my head, the yolk dripping down my shoulders until I lost composure in a fit of giggles. He taught me to surf by pretending to be an alligator underwater in the pool, whose back I had to stand on to survive. The majority of stories I’ve memorized come from him, illustrious campfire sagas of impossibilities.

In this last year, my mind has often drifted back to the idea of legacy.

Right after I graduated from college, when I was working in investment banking, one of my mentors died. I sat in a pew at his funeral, listening to the speakers recount the deals he closed and the acquisitions he made. I quit the next week.

I have desperately wanted to be my own person and make my own way. But the dichotomy between the inherited and the earned – a notion that wholeness only counts when you’ve gained it outright - has always bothered me. I’ve come to realize this isn’t possible. I can’t have this without acknowledging all that has shaped me into being.

How can I ask anyone to remember me if I refuse to remember them?

I have always been proud of my mother’s German heritage, passed down through baked treats and holiday traditions, the slicing of strudel on a cutting board. Her family lived with unlimited possibility because less was expected of them. In contrast, I always felt somewhat ambivalent about my father’s side. His family helped shape America, came on the Mayflower, signed the Declaration, held multiple roles in office, and controlled key natural resources. I’ve paid rent for apartments in blocks my family used to own and walked down streets with my forebears’ names, rolling my eyes at any attempt at ‘ancestor worship’, deeply intimidated by the shadow I was born into. I’ve struggled with some of the dark traits, the penchant for scotch (I no longer drink), and a stiff upper lip in the face of emotion, a genetically encoded politeness that pervades the East Coast.

But it’s easy, far too easy, to focus on the superficial and lose sight of the fact that these were all just people, humans who loved, lost, had hopes, dreams, and disappointments. My dad has held this legacy, thanklessly and tirelessly carrying out the wishes of those who have passed. He’s done his best to insulate us from the same expectations. The quiet keeping of others’ memory.

He has spent a lifetime driving out the cold for me, my mother, my siblings, and for those long gone who can no longer thank him. What did I know, what did I know.

In your seventieth year, Dad, what I now know is this.

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Thank you for reading!

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More of my writing can be found on my website here: www.livenowclub.com

Love,
Lou