Father's Day is coming, and even though he's been on the other side of the pure white light for almost eight years now, I still think of my father often. When it comes to writing about my dad, I've composed sentences, then asked myself, "Is that really true?" Not factual things like his given name, George, or the year he was born, 1915, or the color of his hair, jet black, then salt and pepper, then eventually white, but who he was, what he was like as a person. No one's the same all the time, people are complex, sometimes even contradictory. Character development is as tricky when you're talking about a real person as it is when creating a fictional one.
When writing about other people, there's a fine line to walk. Tell too much, it's disrespectful and other people in your life wonder if they'll be next, tell too little, there's no grit and juice for the reader. And the story of my father is full of grit and juice. I've rewritten the following story many times so as not to make a bad guy out of either one of my parents, because everyone has strengths as well as weaknesses, that's just how people are, fictional or real.
When my father was a young chaplain in the Royal Air Force in India and Africa during World War II he officiated at countless funerals, some for his closest friends. I'd heard my mother say how hurt she'd been when he went back into the service at the end of the war voluntarily, telling her he had to go, leaving her and my oldest sister to stay with relatives, and I had a hard time understanding how he could have done that.
Many years later, when my dad was about eighty, one day out of the blue, he started to tell me what happened to him in Africa. A group of friends, among whom he was meant to be, got into a small plane. After waving a cheerful goodbye he watched the plane take off. Then he watched it crash to the ground, killing all on board. My dad recounted to me that when he was sent home for nervous exhaustion following the crash, he felt such terrible guilt, his only desire was to go back and take their place. He did go back, against my mother's wishes. Every story has many sides.
If I were to pick one story of my own to recount about my dad, I'd pick a happy one from my childhood. Let's jump from World War II to twelve years and four more kids later, myself being number four of five. It's 1957. We're living on the outskirts of London, in a parsonage made of brick with leaded glass windows. I'm waiting by the front gate in a thin cotton dress and a homemade sweater, socks falling down, hand-me-down shoes on my feet, looking up the street. I see my dad on his Vespa come into view. Then I'm allowed to run up the block to where he has stopped, waiting for me to climb onboard. Now I'm standing on the floorboard just behind the windscreen and handle bars. We take off and slowly coast along until we get to the house.
This short ride home with my dad at the end of his workday is a vivid memory, and one of my last of our home in England. At four years old, I had no way of knowing my father's plan to leave England and come to America was already in the works, that this was the reason my mother was selling most of what we owned and why they'd taken in a boarder, an American WAC named Mo. All I knew was there was a new baby in the house and when my dad let me ride on his Vespa, I felt like I was still special.
On the whole, he was a good man and a good father, taking us to the drive-in theater on Friday nights, and every summer we went camping. He made us laugh at the dinner table with silly puns, and taught us to appreciate music. He said, "I just need five minutes", code for a short nap on the couch, then he slept until we jumped on him to make him get up. He loved my mother.
There are lots of stories I could tell about my dad. He had blue eyes, and crows feet that crinkled when he smiled, he played the piano and the accordion, all self taught. He had a sharp wit. As a Methodist minister, he spoke honestly about his own beliefs and questions regarding religion, resisting the temptation to give people the simple answers to the big questions they often preferred. He made people think, and refused to preach anything he didn't believe himself.
He dedicated his life to serving others. Perhaps that's why he valued his solitude so much, sometimes above all else, even the needs of his wife and children. In order to do his job, sometimes he had to close the door on us, literally. Wherever we lived, there was always one room designated as my father's study, not his office, his study, because that's what he did in there. He studied. Religion of every kind, Greek and Aramaic, scripture, modern theology, the crossword.
But lest you think ill of him, and even though my sisters and I recall having to be quiet and not bother him when he was in there, he was a good father, although he didn't always think so. Late in his life, realizing how much of our childhood he'd missed, he admitted to each of us, his shortcomings and his regrets. Not an apology, just honest reflection. For he was an honest man with great integrity, an ethical person. Both my parents were. As honest as they could be, for everyone is blind to some things.
It's the inconsistencies in my father I sometimes find most interesting. He was both humble and proud, selfish and generous, funny and serious, the life of the party and a solitary man. He was disciplined as well as occasionally undisciplined. A man who believed in the notion of peace on earth, but who could pitch a fit if my mother burned the toast. He often understated his own abilities, but in truth was a gifted writer.
When my father died in 2002, aged eighty-seven, I bought a small medal that bears the likeness of St. George slaying a dragon, the symbol of courage and chivalry. I don't see my dad as a saint, nor would he want me to. But I do put that medal on whenever I have to do something requiring courage. It reminds me to live with integrity, that I have more courage than I think, and that I was loved. And am loved still, that's what I believe anyway. It's just a feeling I have when Father's Day is coming and I remember my dad.
© M.E. Rollins
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