My Daddy, Crying

"I cried when I saw you marching in, because I knew you weren't a baby anymore." My father wrote this in my high school yearbook on the day I graduated. He was dying of cancer. I knew that he had it, but I had not in any way comprehended he was dying, even though it was lung cancer and he was a 3-pack-a-day smoker.

Maybe part of the reason I hadn't understood was that I was a teenager. But mostly it was because I had absented myself from his stays in the hospital, his radiation and chemotherapy treatments, any discussion with anyone about his prognosis. I stayed away because I hated him.

My mother and my sister X kept trying to convince me that year to visit my father in the hospital. "Later, you'll regret not doing it!" But I couldn't imagine I could possibly regret it. Or that any cancer could somehow be enough to make me want to see him. I hated my father because he hit me for most of my childhood. Also, I was terrified of him. I hated someone who would make a small child afraid, someone who would make me feel fearful about my bodily integrity when he was four times the size of me. I hated someone who would cause pain in a smaller person, deliberately.

Now here he was, ill. I was 17 and he was 49. I myself was much bigger and stronger than I had ever used to be — puberty, attaining my full growth, and my early sexual adventures had made me feel powerful, maybe indomitable. In fact, my father had stopped hitting me at least four years previous. He did not yet look sick or weak, although certainly that was coming.

When I read his note in my yearbook, I was surprised that he said he'd cried. I had never seen my father cry, had hardly ever seen him express any emotion but anger. He simply hadn't ever spoken many words to me, or expressed much at all. My father was violent, but in other ways he was one of the most reserved and inhibited individuals I have ever met. I almost never knew what he was feeling or thinking. Even when he yelled at me or smacked me, I rarely knew what he was angry about. An important thing to note is that my mother was the real power in our family, my father was just sort of her pet monster who obeyed her and was occasionally allowed to go on rampages.

A generally silent and sad monster.

Daddy, as I called him, had very rarely signed letters or birthday cards to me, or personally bought me presents. Mostly my mother had just written in his signature on cards, gift tags, and correspondence, along with hers. It was really different for him to write a personal note in my yearbook himself. But when I read his entry on that day, all I was aware of was that I found the note "sentimental" —both the mention of crying, and the allusion to my ever having been "a baby." I think I was perturbed that he had finally written a personal note to me, after so many years.

But after he died, whenever I returned to my high school yearbook and read the note again, I felt a pang. Crying also comes up in my very last encounter with my father, when we are standing together on an Amtrak platform, where I'm about to board a train back to college after my Thanksgiving break. It is my freshman year, and my parents have relocated to Baltimore even though my father is so ill.

This Thanksgiving break has been different— the first time I've seen my father since my parents dropped me off at school in September. He is noticeably thinner and frailer, much less frightening. My father has always been a big, fat man, but now he looks like a sweet little corn husk I could wrap around myself. It's odd, feeling something like affection for him.

Back when I was four years old, I felt affection for him, too. He used to waltz me around the living room, his hands on the small of my back, and I loved him so. Or he would twirl me around in the air, my legs lifting off the ground, an impossible delight. He was so handsome then, his short hair clipped and his face beautifully clean-shaven, smelling of Old Spice. I loved his Old Spice. Once during this time period, I put shaving cream on my cheeks and attempted to shave, because I wanted to be like him.

I lost him for the first time when I was seven, when my mother got cancer. He began hitting me for the first time ever when she was in the hospital. She might have been going to die.

My mom was in the hospital for six weeks, and when she came out, everything was weird. She had a permanent hole in her neck from what was going to be a lifelong tracheotomy, and she had to eat baby food. My father continued to hit me. My mother, who had narrowly escaped cancer, started having affairs and telling my sisters and me about them in detail, making her children tell her she was sexy.

My father, for many reasons — not just what was going on with my mother — became more depressed, stopped bathing and often stunk to high heaven. He continued punching me.

Now, it's Thanksgiving weekend, and I, on the cusp of adulthood, stand on the Amtrak platform in Baltimore, waiting for the train to take me back to Yale. My family is waiting with me, and I see my father, looming suddenly next to me, suddenly tall again. Looking right at me, he weeps. I don't know it's the last time I will ever see him. I do know it's the first time I have ever seen him cry. In my mind, in my body forever, I have the image of my father looking at me with his eyes full of tears. His tears fall like diamonds, and I grab his hand, and it is the most precious memory I have of Daddy.