Chapter 8: Are you more like your father or your mother? In what ways?
Originally written February 8, 2021
Go Terrell Tigers!
My father left home when I was only two or three. Although he sent me a couple of letters, and sent me a couple of checks, during my college years, I didn’t see him again until I was 29 years old and had a child of my own.
The circumstances were strange.
Although I basically had no contact with my father all those years, I did maintain a friendly relationship with my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Haven — my father’s brother — through the years. They lived in Santa Fe and had two kids about my age: Sue, who is a year older than me, and Edwin, who was a year younger.
Edwin died in the early ‘80s while climbing a mountain in Nepal. But between then and high school I’d usually see him exactly once a year, walking around the Plaza with our respective group of friends, after the burning of Zozobra on the first night of Fiestas.
Sue was and is a member of the Baháʼí faith and she helped lead me there for a brief time in the early ‘70s. Though I left the religion, I always respected the faith as well as the Baháʼís I know — especially Cousin Sue and her husband Nury Khozein.
One day, in the summer of 1981 I believe, I got a call from Aunt Peggy. “Steve? How would you like to meet your brother?” I wasn’t sure what she was talking about and thought she might be talking about my brother Jack, who I’d “met” not long after he was born. I joked, “I already know Jack and I’m not impressed.”
“No, I’m talking about your brother Eric,” Peggy said. “He’s in town and he’d like to meet you and Jack.” Eric and his sister Lisa are products of my father’s second marriage. I think I might have heard —probably from my grandmother because my mom would never talk about my father — that he’d had children. But I had never known their names or knew anything about them.
So I agreed to meet Eric on the Plaza in a couple of hours. I called Jack, who also went to this momentous meeting. He wore a T-shirt with the logo of the Terrell Tigers, the football team of Terrell Texas, a small Texas town’s high school. It was a fun time and I’ve been close to Eric — who might have still been in his teens then — ever since.
Skip ahead to December 1981 and I got another phone call from Aunt Peggy. “Steve? How would you like to meet your father?”
There had been a time in my late teens and early 20s when I would have scoffed at such a suggestion. I remember once, when listening to John Lennon’s “Mother,” (“Father you left me / But I never left you ...”) imaging spitting in my father’s face if I ever saw him.
But by the time Aunt Peggy called, my angry-young-man bitterness had largely subsided. And most of all, I was curious. So I agreed to meet to meet him at Peggy and Haven’s house. Peggy and Haven would look after my baby, Molly while my father and I, along with our wives, would go out to dinner at La Tertulia. (I honestly don’t remember why Jack wasn’t involved. He might have been out of town.)
It was a very pleasant dinner. From the moment I met her, I was fond of my stepmother Julie. And my father actually turned out to be a real nice guy.
But, right after we picked up baby Molly, he gave me a hug and told me, “Steve, it’s been too long.”
I held my tongue, but inside I was thinking, “Been too long? You missed my entire childhood, my teenage years and most my early adulthood!”
Now I realize now that this was just awkwardness on his part. We were both hesitant about addressing the proverbial elephant in the room, his abandoning us when I was little.
We would see more of each other through the years, especially after he and Julie moved to Santa Fe in the early ‘90s. And though we were friendly and always got along, I never really looked at him as a father. I already had a great father figure in my grandfather, who died when I was in junior high. Instead, I considered my father more like a good natured uncle. I always called him “Bob,” not “Dad.”
And we never did talk about the major issue dividing us.
My mom made it obvious that she was not happy about me finally meeting my father. Partly out of jealousy, I suppose, partly just freaked out about this part of her past, which she’d tried so hard to bury, coming back to haunt her.
So I wrote her a letter in which I said even though I’d enjoyed my dinner with my father, the experience had taught me to appreciate her more. Her sense of humor, her creativity, but especially the fact that she was always there for me. She didn’t pack up and leave me. It wasn’t always easy for her, but she was there to take care of me and love me. In that letter I told her, “I’m glad I was raised by you.”
Mom died in 2013. Bob died in 2019.
So despite my mom’s flaws and my father’s good qualities, I’d have to say I’m more like her. Especially when it comes to raising kids. Like my mom, I’ve been married — and divorced — twice. But I was never more than a few minutes away from either of my kids and made sure I was an active part of their lives, even if I wasn’t getting along with their mothers at certain times. I’m still very thankful that my mom raised me instead of Bob.
And here’s a song I never played for either parent:
Your journalist's thrift and evenhandedness make this a powerful story. The elisions thunder.
Did you know Jamie Foxx played quarterback for the Terrell Tigers?
I think everybody I know would agree I'm more like my mother. She was verbal and bookish, and a voracious reader of fiction. Also a passionate Liberal her whole life.
But my dad had many qualities I deeply envied and wished I possessed. He was a whiz at math and engineering, could break down and repair a V-8 engine, and was a skilled carpenter who could build anything out of wood. He was fairly conservative—He voted for Eisenhower—but switched to the Democrats out of a loathing of Richard Nixon.