My Father

 So, two more packages from my father in the mail today.

Now, I have to give you some context.

I was two weeks old when my mom and dad split up. I’m pretty sure what happened was she split,
with me, possibly with another guy. Over the years, I was told a lot of bad shit about him.

When I was nine, I got a box from him. I remember there being a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull amongst the contents.

When I was seventeen, I flew to Alaska, where I got to meet him for the first time.
Now, this was an interesting experience.

Bob was a Marine. He volunteered for the Marines, for the Infantry, and he served in Viet-Nam. He ran long range patrols, weeks in the bush. He came home with a Purple Heart, a case of trenchfoot, and a lot of other things. Things you don't talk to people about all that much.

He came home without the name he left home with.

The Marines, like war, bring out the best in a man. They also bring out the worst.

My father and I spent two weeks together. I learned to drive a stick, I learned to shoot. I’m not sure if he learned much from the experience. It is possible he did, he never had an opportunity to be a father, maybe he got a taste of it. Maybe not. It’s hard to tell. Plus, he’s set in his ways. Any lesson he learns takes a few years to set in.

Bob came out to Buffalo when I was twenty-two. That visit went even less well. He managed to fight with every single person in the household.

While he was in Buffalo, I lost my job. I only misplaced it, it turns out, but at the time it looked like it was definitely missing, probably for good. When I was about two weeks unemployed, I received a check in the mail from one of my clients at the hospital. She had been dying, I had been taking care of her for years, her family didn’t care about her, she mailed me a check. The check happened to be for the same amount as I made in two weeks.

Well, Bob was in town. Fathers day was coming up. His birthday fell right around the same date. I went to the mall, and I saw a framed print. Odds are you have seen it. It depicts the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. It’s a print by Lee Teter. My dad fought in Vietnam. He was a volunteer, not a draftee. He looks a lot like the guy in the print. I bought it for him.

I didn’t have a job, which no-one knew yet, but I had the money my client had given me.

I wrote a note on the back and left it in the basement where he was staying. His response, to my grandmother, was, and I quote “Too Little, Too Late.” That print is still hanging on my wall in my living room. I am not one to forget, or forgive, a slight.

There were a few other things. My father and I are _painfully_ similar. We are both _right_. ALWAYS. We aren’t know-it-alls, we just know it better. See, for some reason, we both genetically have a sense of “rightness”. We are unbearably sure of ourselves. It makes us insufferable to people who don’t like us, and sometimes makes us capable of doing things others would not expect, or sometimes even believe possible. But we believe. Down to the core, whatever it is that we feel, or know, or are, there is not a shred of doubt. One of us can be annoying, provoking, difficult, arrogant, illuminating, amazing, daring. Two of us is guaranteed to be a disaster.

There are other problems. Men who are very confident and believe in themselves attract women. And are usually attracted to women. Soooooo, maybe it’s best we didn’t live in the same household. That being said, his visit when I was 22 was rather difficult.

I think I saw him once or twice since then. I think when the boys were young. I have this weird glitch in my memory, things beyond three years are really vague. Have had it since I was a kid. I suspect a cause, but have never been certain. So I am pretty sure I’ve seen him once or twice since then.

Well, a couple years ago, I was going through a bad time. Which is like describing a hurricane as a “spot of bad weather”. I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have much of anything. I had lost custody of one of my kids, gone bankrupt, lost a lot. I needed something. Maybe I needed a purpose. Maybe I needed a reason why I couldn’t see my kid, so when he asked why I didn’t see him, I could say “Because I was in Afghanistan” which is _so_ much better an answer than “Because of your mother”. Maybe I just needed to die. I was really close. So I stopped at the recruiters office, and talked to the Marine recruiter.

They called back, and said I was too old, would I be interested in having my info passed on to any other branches? I said sure, give it to the Army. And when the Army called, I demanded infantry, demanded combat, demanded enlisted. See, I remembered talking to my father. I knew a man who hasn’t seen combat has no business leading soldiers in combat. So I knew I wanted Infantry, and I knew I wanted enlisted. And I knew I wanted combat. After all, there was a war on: if there’s anyone who can use a man who isn’t afraid to die, it would have to be the Army, wouldn’t it?

My scores were rather high. By rather, I mean “so high I had to argue to get into the infantry because they wanted me to design rockets or some shit like that” rather high.

And now I’ve been in the Army for almost four years. In the Infantry, combat arms. Enlisted. A Sergeant. Like my father. I’ve deployed twice. I’ve been shot at, with machine guns and with RPGS. I’ve been blown up. I’ve shot back. Effectively. I’m a soldier, an Infantryman. Want to know what I do for a living? I walk around. I eat stuff. I talk to people. Sometimes people try to kill me, and I try really hard to not get killed, and I try to kill them back. I’m really good at my job.

You wouldn’t believe how much knowledge and training and experience goes into something so simple.
My father started sending me packages this deployment. I talk about getting healthy, and cutting down on candy, the packages include healthy snacks. The packages include things to disarm an IED. They include socks. They include knives, and flashlights, and multi-tools. They include external hard drives, and scarves, and earplugs. They include magazines and supplements and a lot of other things. I am an Infantryman. There are tools to my trade, and the name brands on the things he sends me? They are the best. And, incidentally, the most expensive. His packages, each and every single one of them, are loaded with the very best tools of the trade that he practiced and I practice. I know this: like any professional, I know what works, and what doesn’t. His packages usually don’t include letters.

My father talks to my wife sometimes, but he and I rarely speak, or directly write each other. We have a lot in common these days. We have each had a son taken from us. We are each hard men. We are each solitary men by nature. We both still believe. I doubt we could be together and get along. But sometimes, it’s easier to get along with someone when they are a little further away. And Afghanistan and Alaska are pretty far away.