Tag Archives: father’s secret life

THE LETTERS

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I received a call last night. I was informed that my father had passed away. And I had a week to clean out my father’s apartment, or all his worldly belongings would be disposed of in the nearest dumpster. I knew this day was coming, but I kept putting off the unpleasant task of emptying my father’s place of whatever meager things my father had left behind.

My father and I had lost touch long ago. After my mother passed away suddenly fifteen years ago, my father just disappeared after her funeral. I never heard from him again. My parents hadn’t lived together for years. And when they did live together, every day ended with them yelling and screaming at one another. When I was a kid, I thought everyone’s family was like ours. I can’t remember a time when they were happy together. I never brought my friends over to my house. And once I became a teenager, I made it my goal in life to spend as little time at home as possible.

The day I graduated from high school, I got on a bus and never returned to my hometown. I called my mother occasionally and let her know that I was alright. But I didn’t give her my address. Since I didn’t want my father to show up at my door unexpectedly. Looking for a handout, or worse yet, drunk and angry at the world and wanting to take it out on me. Like he did when I was a kid, I was his punching bag. I never wanted to see him again.

I had difficulty locating my father when my mother died of a heart attack when she was fifty-six. Finally, I was able to get in touch with an old friend of his who still occasionally kept in touch with me. My father and I used to go to the track together to bet on the horses. And they played cards for money. My father was a gambler, and his favorite place in the world was the casinos in Atlantic City.

Anyway, the night I called him, I said, “Hello, dad, it’s me.” And he answered,”what do you want?”

“Want, I don’t want anything from you. I doubt you have a pot to piss in any way. I’m calling to let you know that Mom died on Friday; she had a heart attack. I thought you might want to know. Anyway, the funeral is being held at Brown’s Funeral Home since Mom hadn’t been to church in years. It will be at 10:30 in the morning.”

“Well, you didn’t give me much warning, did ya?’ I don’t know if I can come. I’ve got my own life to live, you know. I just can’t drop everything on a dime .”

“Dad, like I said, she died suddenly, and I had trouble finding you. Your friend, Freddy Myers, finally was able to track you down, and he gave me your phone number. It’s up to you whether you want to come or not. It doesn’t make any difference to me one way or another.” And then I slammed the phone down. And hope I will never have to see or hear that old scoundrel again as long as I live.

Anyway, he showed up at the funeral late, but not too late. He looked rough. He had a suit on that looked like he picked it up at the local thrift store. But at least he made some effort. If I had met him on the street, I might not have recognized him. He looked like he hadn’t eaten a decent meal in years and spent his time drinking night and day. It kind of made me feel bad, but he lived the life he wanted, and there was no changing the past. I walked over to him and offered him my hand to shake, and he looked down at it like it was a rattlesnake or something. I said, “Hello, dad, I’m glad you came. Why don’t you go up and say your goodbyes to Mom. You did come all this way. I wouldn’t want it to be for nothing.“

And then he turned and headed towards the casket where my mother laid. My father stood there in silence, and then he reached down and touched her hair and hand. I saw his shoulders rise and fall, and I could hear him sobbing quietly. I felt a tear slowly make its way down my cheek and fall to the ground and then another followed.

My father turned and walked slowly out of the chapel and out the front door. He never turned around and waved goodbye or anything. He just walked out of my life again, probably for the last time. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. A friend of mine came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. He held me for a moment, and then he stepped back. He looked down, and then he said, “it’s hard to lose a parent even if they weren’t the best parent. They were the only ones we ever had. Come on, why don’t you come over and say hello to some old friends from high school. It’s been a long time.”

I never heard another word from my father. I had no idea how he kept body and soul together all those years. I never married for fear that I would just repeat the mistakes my parents made. And god forbid bring children into the world to suffer the same empty, lonely childhood I had.

And the next time I heard anything about him was the night I received a call that my father had passed away, and he had left my name and address, and phone number to contact upon his death. I have no idea how he knew where I lived or how he got my phone number. In a way, I was relieved that I had heard about his passing. It gave me some peace of mind that he wouldn’t show up at my door someday. And also, I could finally put the past behind me. Anyway, I told my father’s landlord that I would be over that next day to clean out the place and take my father’s belongings away. I wasn’t looking forward to it, not at all. I was dreading it. But I knew it would finally close this unhappy chapter of my life, and I could finally move on.

The next morning I woke up at the crack of dawn. I kept obsessing about having to go to my father’s place and how it would bring all the bad memories back to haunt me. It turned out he only lived about an hour and a half away from me. When I arrived at his address, I looked up and down the street, and I thought what a terrible place for someone to live the last years of their life, all alone. There was trash up and down the street on the curb and blowing up and down from one nasty, sad place after another. There was a homeless man asleep or high or dead lying next to the door of my father’s building. I couldn’t help but wonder if my father had ever slept on the curb after he went on a bender.

I stepped around the homeless man and walked up the steps, and rang on the door to be let in. No one answered, so I tried the door, and it turned out it wasn’t locked. So, I just pulled it open and stepped inside. The smell was horrendous. There was trash up the steps, and one step had what looked like blood on it. I took a deep breath and made my way carefully up the steps to the second floor of my father’s place. The door was locked, so I had to go down the steps again and knock at the door that said, Superintendent of the building. I almost laughed aloud, thinking this dump has a superintendent. It didn’t look like anybody had cleaned this place up since the depression. I rang the bell, and a middle-aged, balding fat man answered. He said, “Yeah, what do ya want?” I told him who I was and that I was here to clean out my father’s apartment. You called me yesterday. “Oh, yeah, that’s right; here’s the key. Go ahead and bring the key back when you are done. Your father was in apartment 2 B; he lived here for a long time, never had any trouble with him.” And then he slammed the door in my face.

I made my way to the apartment. I unlocked the apartment and stuck my head into the room. I don’t know what I expected. But I was surprised to see it was clean and neat. There was an older TV, a raggedy but clean couch, and a single bed that was stripped clean of sheets and blankets. I looked into the bathroom. It was also clean and neat. I thought I must have the wrong room. My father had never been clean or neat. He had never picked up his clothes and hung them up. He had just thrown them on the floor and yelled at my mother, get in and clean up this mess. Before I make you sorry.”

I looked in the drawers, and there were some clothes all neatly folded. I looked in the closet, and there was an old suit. I think it was the same one that he wore to my mother’s funeral. There were a couple of pairs of shoes. All that had seen better days. I looked up, and I saw a wooden box. It was the nicest thing in the whole place. I took it down from the shelf and looked inside. There were old letters inside the box. And they were in my mother’s handwriting. And there were several in my father’s handwriting. I was so shocked that I almost dropped the box.

I decided to go sit on the couch and read the letters. They were addressed to my father and the dates indicated that they were written before my parents had gotten married. I was shocked. I knew nothing of my parents’ lives before they got married. I began to read the letter with the oldest postmark. It was a love letter from my mother to my father. In it, she declared how much she missed my father and how much she looked forward to being reunited with him again. And how she knew they were going to have a wonderful life together.

I was absolutely flabbergasted. My mother and father were once deeply in love? I felt tears run down my face. I looked through the letters for the last post-marked letter. It was from my father. He wrote to my mother that he had been injured and would be coming home soon because he wouldn’t be able to continue to fight any longer. Since he had suffered some severe injuries. He told her he was no longer the man he used to be, and maybe she should find someone else.

The next letter was from my mother saying that she loved him dearly and she wanted him to come home to her and she would help him recover. She would wait for him, and she didn’t want anyone else. And she ended the letter with, “I will wait for as long as it takes, and I will love you forever.” And she signed it, “all my love, I will be waiting for you for as long as it takes.”

I could hardly believe my eyes and understand the words I had just read. I know I would spend the rest of my days trying to understand what went wrong between them. And wish that they had experienced a better life together than they had. I can only imagine that my father had suffered both physically and emotionally from whatever he suffered during the war. I felt broken-hearted for the young couple they must have been and the unfortunate life they lived after his return. But in the end, I was happy to find that at one time, they had been in love and hoped to have a happy life together, but I felt sorry that it did not work out the way that it should have. That is what happens in life sometimes. Our plans for a happy and fulfilling life doesn’t always turn out as we hope it will. I held the letters next to my heart for a few minutes. I slipped the love letters back into their box, and I knew that they would forever remind me that life is short and to make the very best of it that we can. And if we find someone to love and who loves us back, we should never let it go.

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THE BASEMENT

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The Basement in my childhood home held a certain fascination for me. Whenever my parents weren’t home, I would quietly make my way down the cellar’s stairs and snoop to my heart content.

Why? You may ask because that’s where my father spent most of his free time when he was home. He wasn’t home all that much. Well, that’s not entirely true. That is where he spent most of his waking hours. During my childhood, my father worked as the Head Dispatcher for PTC, the Pennsylvania Transportation Company (the bus company) in Philadelphia. It was later called SEPTA. He worked there for over forty years, either on the second or third shift, which meant he often slept during the day and worked at night.

Carberry Home Maple Shade, NJ 1950

His daytime sleeping schedule meant that everyone who lived in our house had to be quiet while my father was sleeping. No one wanted to risk waking my father up. Believe me. My father’s nickname was the Grouch and sometimes, the Old Bear. You know how you are never supposed to wake a bear in hibernation. It was the same with my father.

I was so curious about the basement that I wanted to know what my father did down there for all those hours. My father was a brilliant man. He had many hobbies. He was a voracious reader, interested in many subjects, including religion, although he was an atheist. He was fascinated by all things related to the Asian Culture, although he was prejudice against Asian people and called them all Chinamen regardless of their country of origin. My father was prejudiced against anyone that wasn’t white or Irish, for that matter.

He was an accomplished woodworker and builder. He had every type of woodworking tool that was available in the 1960s in his basement. My father took me for a ride one time and showed me a house that his friend Dar and he built. It was a Cape Cod Cottage which was similar to our house. He used to repair and replace electric wiring in our house. However, later after he passed, I learned that he always used lamp wire which wasn’t up to code. He painted our house inside and out. I have to admit that his choice of colors and his decorating taste were somewhat Avant Guard at the time. He was a gardener, and we had a beautiful rose garden in our backyard. I believe his love of gardening led me to become a gardener when I grew up.

And then there was my father’s private life. My father was a gambler. He had a group of friends that he played cards with every week, although I never met them. He was a regular at the Cherry Hill Race Track. He had a different group of friends there. I never met them. My older brother told me that my father had taken him to the track on several occasions and introduced him to his friends.

He had a bookie in Philadelphia that he placed his bets with on the phone, and occasionally he would take my mother and me with him to make bets we waited in the car. It was a treat for us since we rarely took a ride in the car. The only place my mother went was to Mass every day at the Catholic church, which was two doors down from our house, and she walked there.

My father also had a part-time job working at Johnny Marrow’s Auto Supply Store, located on Main Street in Maple Shade, where I grew up. So, as you can see, my father had a full life. Most of it spent outside our home. Much of it unknown to me until I was a teenager or older.

As a result, I was inquisitive about my father and all his activities. I would snoop in his basement to see what he was up to all the time when he wasn’t home. I knew that my father was a perfectionist. And he knew exactly where everything was in all his tool drawers, and cabinets, and on the shelves. And most importantly, on his desk. I, too, was somewhat of a perfectionist and was able to open all his drawers and look inside, and put everything back the way I found it. I inherited my father’s great memory.

The day I decided to look in his desk, I knew my parents would be out for at least an hour. The top of his desk was pristine. He only had his favorite pens and pencils all arranged in a line. Then there was a file drawer with all his papers. They didn’t really hold any interest for me. In the middle drawer, I found several magazines. I was about eleven years old at the time. And had never seen anything like them. They were Playboy Magazines. I was shocked by the pictures of the mostly naked woman. I had never seen any woman in my neighborhood that looked anything like these women.

But the thing that drew my curiosity and held it was a cartoon called The Naughty Granny. I was shocked by the depiction of an older woman barely clad whose intentions were clearly not anything I could imagine at the time. But somehow, I found it to be so shocking and funny and disturbing at the same time. I wanted to talk to someone about my discovery. But really, who could I ask? Certainly not my mother. I was sure she would not understand it. At least that’s what my eleven-year-old self thought. I couldn’t ask my father, obviously, since I was sure he would cut my head off for sneaking around his basement into his sacrosanct desk.

After I discovered the Playboy magazine, I looked at my parents in a whole new way. I no longer looked at them as just my parents. I looked at them as people separate from me who were individuals. People I didn’t really know as well as I thought. People with friends of their own and interest of their own. People who did more than go to work and come back. People with flaws.

It seems strange now as I reflect on this experience that the discovery of this magazine changed how I looked at my parents. They weren’t just my parents; they were people. My father wasn’t just the grouch who seemed to be mad at the world all the time. He was a man with friends and a job who went places and did things I didn’t know anything about.

And my mother was more than the person who loved me, and washed my clothes and cooked my meals, and went to Mass every day of her life. And she probably had friends too, even though I never met them.

And that is when I started talking to my parents and asking them questions about what they were doing and where they were going? I ask my mother one day,” Mom, what do you do for fun?”

My mother just stared at me. I realized that she didn’t really do anything just for fun. That her life was not as complicated as my father’s appeared to be. Her life was mainly taking care of the family and the house and going to church. But I knew at some level at one time during her life; she too had friends and siblings. And I hoped that somewhere during her life, she had the time to have some fun. My mother was nineteen when my parents were married, and she proceeded to have ten children in twenty years, six of who survived. I knew my mother had lost her parents. So, I knew she had loss and sadness in her life. I hope she had happiness as well. I rarely saw her laugh; she didn’t joke around. She rarely mentioned her childhood or her parents.

I think it was the first time I thought of my parents as people as individuals, not just my mom and dad. It made me start thinking about my life when I grew up and what I wanted to do with it. And I knew I wanted it to be more than getting married and taking care of kids, and cleaning a house. Although as I grew up, I knew I wanted to have children someday. But I wanted more than that.

I was a quiet and thoughtful child. I kept my thoughts to myself for the most part. Most people interpreted that as me being shy. But I wasn’t shy, just quiet, but always listening and trying to understand people and the world around me.

I never talk to my friends about their parents because I didn’t really know how to ask them. I thought they would think I was weird or something. But here I sit many decades later, trying to discover and understand the person I am now in this moment. And I know evolved over the many years trying to understand myself and the world I live in, and I fit into it. I am a part of the world, but I am also an observer.

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