Memorial Day and My Dad

My dad wasn’t in the army but he was my imperfect hero.

Photo by Kvnga on Unsplash

Let’s Go Surround The Place

My dad loved playing slot machines. He took me to Lake Tahoe (Nevada) when I turned twenty-one, so I could sit with him and play the nickel slots. It was the first of many trips. When he had had a couple of strokes, in his eighties, I was the who drove us to Tahoe.

He was a very methodical gambler, at least on the surface. He had a daily budget. He would take his money out of a machine when he was ahead, so that he didn’t put it all back in the same machine. Twenty dollars in, forty out (in theory.) It is pretty much how I play now.

He admitted to me that his urge to play the slots was one of the few really stupid behaviors he had around money, and I have to agree. My parents were otherwise steadfast savers and cautious investors.

One Hot Memorial Day

I was living in San Francisco and my dad drove up from San Mateo (about thirty miles away) on some errand or other. I was broke and about to start law school (in my thirties), living in an in-law apartment in the home of a friend and her son.

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash (not from the actual brunch)

It was also my friend-landlady’s birthday, and she had no plans. I asked my dad if he would go out to brunch with me, my friend, and her son for her birthday. My dad was not particularly spontaneous or social, but he cautiously agreed.

We had mimosas and a great meal and my dad had everybody laughing. I was broke but was prepared to put the tab on a credit card—I just really didn't want my friend to pay anything (she was also broke.) To my surprise, my dad (”I’m-not-cheap-I’m-frugal-Adams”) stepped up and paid the check, just like he did that sort of thing all the time.

I always think of that day every year around Memorial Day.

He was Drafted Three Times, But it Didn’t Take

My dad said he was drafted three times. My parents got married when he was drafted the first time (I think). The Army rejected him for having flat feet. Another time it was because he was very near-sighted. Yet another time they weren't taking married men.

My Hero

I only realized the extent to which he “saved” me during my childhood when I was in my forties. By then, I had begun the long-term “real” job at a university, and I wasn't needing a loan gift a couple of times a year to bail me out.

Me, with my unforeseeable disability dropped in on parents in 1957. I heard from an aunt and a cousin in my twenties that my mother didn't handle my disability well in the beginning. I don't have any conscious memories of that, but I do know I never liked her to do any physical care of me from early as I can remember.

So, my dad did it all, until I was nine or ten. This involved removing excess skin from my feet (with little scissors) and putting various gunk on my skin. There was a month in there when I got nightly vitamin B-12 shots (which didn't do jack, which didn't surprise me.) He gave me all those shots.

In later years, when I had moved out of my parents home, he would help me with a subsidy if I needed it. He acknowledged to me that that my mom and I really couldn’t live in the same house.

When I was scheduled to come over for a visit, he would coach my mom ahead of time to not start a fight with me. My mother was a rabid Republican (who I was a liberal—which I am now, but was not very political then.) Mom had this amazing ability to try and start an argument, and when I wouldn’t engage, would wind herself up as if I was arguing with her. I hated it so much. The older I got, the shorter the amount of time I could tolerate it before saying, “gotta go.”

He tried to protect me and my sister to the extent he could, but lost that ability the last couple of years of his life. I could tell how much the whole thing pained him.

Humor and Resilience

My dad gave me my sense of humor and a boatload of resilience. I was lucky to spent enough time around my dad’s family to know that it was the Adams’ sense of humor—sarcastic, and teasing, with a fondness for wordplay.

I am not so clear on where the resilience came from though. Dad was able to deal with my disability where my mother could not. His matter-of-factness became mine. No pity-parties happenin here.

Thanks, Dad.