I’ll Focus on the Positive This Father’s Day

My father died over two decades ago after a life lived hard, in a body that was scarred by war, famine and years of alcohol abuse, haunted by a mind traumatized by all of those same things.

These are my positive childhood memories of him:

• He called me “Cookie.”

• He would let me sit behind him on the back of the couch and comb his oily, thinning white hair.

• When I showed him a photograph of a piece of furniture I admired and wanted for my room or later my apartment, he glanced at it and immediately built it, perfectly. He would sign his name to the back of anything he built for me, as if I might forget who had made it. He used his carpentry skills to feed our family but also to show his affection. Hammer and nails were his love language.

• He stopped smoking cold turkey on the day he had his first heart attack when the ER physician told him to do so. He never stopped drinking, as I’m sure he was advised to do many times throughout his life, but I’ll still put kicking the cigarette habit in the positive category for his sheer willpower and strength.

• He had a beautiful singing voice, which he passed down to me (my mother was tone deaf), and he helped me fall in love with the great American songbook. I can still hear him singing along to vinyl albums, the greatest hits of Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and Tony Bennett. One of his favorites was “I’ll Take Manhattan,” which is ironic since that’s now where I make my home.

• His command of the English language wasn’t great, and he would often jumble together his native Ukrainian with English, creating new funny words that our family would mimic. Instead of saying “don’t worry,” he would say “don’t Waterbury.” Waterbury is the name of a town in Connecticut.

• He took Polaroid photos of my first child, his first grandchild, and the only one he would ever briefly know, and hung dozens of them on the wall next to his recliner. He may not have been able to verbally express pride and affection very well, but the way he displayed his photography isn’t the behavior of a person who is indifferent.

I won’t go through the negative memories because it’s Father’s Day and really, what’s the point?

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can be hard. They are “holidays” that were arbitrarily created, ostensibly to honor the mother- and father figures in our lives, but they often end up being minefields of grief, longing, regret, and disappointment. We can acknowledge the fact that not everyone has a father, and even if they do, they might not want to honor him. We understand that father figures come in many shapes and sizes, and “fathering” (as with “mothering”) can come from many sources both within a family and outside of it.

As I sit here on Father’s Day weekend thinking of my own father, whom I called Tato (Ukrainian for Dad), I am making a conscious choice to focus on the positives. I haven’t given him much thought in the recent past, consumed as I am with my own mid-life concerns, but I told the “Waterbury” story to a friend recently while I was describing the myriad worries that are currently overwhelming me. As I scroll through Father’s Day messages on social media and post my own to my lovely husband who is an outstanding Dad to our kids, I’m remembering Tato.

Many old photos of my Tato resurfaced while I cleaned out my childhood home after my Mother passed two years ago. Here he is as a 26-year-old newlywed, standing next to his barely 18-year-old bride who is pushing a massive pram, my oldest brother nestled inside. Here is the passport-style headshot taken for his US immigration and naturalization papers. Here he is carrying the Ukrainian flag in a parade. Here he is smoking a cigarette, a glass of scotch in his hand, sitting at the bar of the Ukrainian National Home around the corner from our church, the same bar where he sometimes took me when he was meant to be “babysitting” me, and where the bartender gave me a Hershey chocolate bar to keep me happy and occupied.

The happy memories, of which there are few, are all intermingled with the sad and traumatic. It’s hard to fully let go of the negative but it’s clear that holding onto any of it is pointless, robbing me of my peace and joy. It’s ancient history now. I’ve broken the cycle by marrying a man who delights in his children and is committed to raising them with loving support and wise counsel. I’ve surrounded myself with wonderful male friends and role models who understand that fatherhood is more than sperm donation. Perhaps most importantly, I remind my children, none of whom remember my Tato at all, that I would not be here with them, they would not be here at all, if my father had not survived a famine, a war, a journey to a new country and a difficult life, to give me the gift of this life, this opportunity to be their Mom.

Nothing is inevitable. The series of events that made me who I am started with my parents and their unlikely journey through life and toward each other. So perhaps that’s the point of Father’s Day — not to mythologize men who may or may not have been what we needed, but to acknowledge and honor the humanity of the perfectly imperfect men who brought us to this day.