Family

Building A Room With My Dad

Seven years ago today I lost my dad and I find myself looking back on how a project we undertook symbolizes the relationship we built.

Everyone else is looking at the camera, my Dad is looking at me

My Dad and I were not particularly close during my childhood. The experiences of his childhood haunted him and he did everything possible to make sure that mine would be different. Unfortunately, in doing so he left his own minefields for me to negotiate.

Growing up in the poorest parts of the South Bronx, my dad had a difficult childhood. At times he had a close relationship with his father and would look forward to planned adventures. Unfortunately, these plans would often go unfulfilled, especially if his father was sidetracked by the local bar. This unreliability took a toll on my dad.

In many ways, I grew up in a single-parent household, even though my parents were still together. My Dad worked a lot; seven-day workweeks were not uncommon and he often came home after my sister and I had gone to bed. There was a snowstorm in 1978 where he worked long past anyone else only to find he could not get out of the driveway of his workplace, never mind negotiating the way home. He spent the night and most of the next day at the job, working without interruption.

This hard work paid off. My family moved from the Bronx to the suburbs into a house with a huge yard. We took marathon cross-country road trips for vacations. My Dad coached my little league team. He had exorcized one of the demons from his childhood, replacing them with others.

While my Dad wanted his family to be more comfortable, he did not want us to take it for granted and he worried that we were missing the lessons that he had learned in his childhood. This was compounded by the differences in my parents’ child-raising methods.

My sister and I had a comfortable relationship with our Mom. When we did not agree with her decisions, she allowed us to present our opinions. This was foreign to my Dad who was used to a life where the parents’ decisions were followed without question. However, he had delegated the child-rearing to my Mom and his attempts to enforce his methodology when he was with us did not go well.