There has never been a closer bond as the one between me and my father. A real daddy’s girl, he was the older, male version of me, born on the same day, and slave to the same cursed disease.
But it meant that he knew me better than anyone else – he always knew what I was thinking, and how I was feeling, without me having to say it. Because he had thought, and felt the same way. He knew me better than I know myself. And I hated admitting it, but he was always right.
Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you enough. You were CONSTANTLY trying to give me advice. Always with me, at my side, and as engaged in my life as I was, even if only over the phone.
My father had an amazing way of getting right to the crux – be it the humanity or the humour – of situations most of us wouldn’t even notice. Virginia Woolf’s approach to fiction won her a firm place on his bookshelf:
“Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as the fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old.”
I think one of the things that made my father so interesting was that fact that he was interested – in life, and those he loved. My father’s video tape collection – a collection that extends well beyond a few thousand video tapes, ranging from the latest teen flicks he’d recording for me growing up to the classics, obscure foreign films, bits and pieces of the news for James, our journalist friend, dog stuff for my mother, and hours and hours of me just, growing up. Footage shot as if for national geographic, documenting a new and unfamiliar species – the teenage female.
In the late 90’s I was just starting to discover raves, and one night my father decided to join us. As the sun came up the next morning, he was still shuffling around on the dance floor. Of course I later found out that he’d taken an ecstasy tablet – he wanted the whole experience.
My father taught me almost everything I know about advertising. I remember many a frantic phone call during my first few months on the job: “Dad! Quick! How do you write a radio ad?”. And not once did he let me down.
Daddy, I can’t tell you how much I regret not spending enough time with you over the last few months. I thought we’d still have years to spend together. But I’m so grateful for all the time we did have…
When I think back over the last 30 years, I’m overwhelmed – there are so many memories! Hours spent sitting on my bedroom floor playing with Barbies and My Little Pony (he was always Apple Jack). Messing around in the darkroom. Watching ridiculously inappropriate movies. Making green custard, just to irritate my grandmother. And the way he so coolly escorted a blushing 11 year old me to my first ever beach party, and made us fit right in. Not many fathers could have pulled that off. But coolness was never something mine was lacking in…
Having grown up without a father, the young Steve modeled himself on his hero – James Dean, with whom he bore a striking resemblance – very serious; curious, yet aloof. And always with a book.
His curiosity didn’t wane over the years. My father read his way through an intimidating range of authors, on an equally wide range of subjects, from textbooks and medical journals to film scripts and Vanity Fair. His intellect, together with his unique brand of cynicism, bordering on distrust, and his dry, even dark sense of humour made for valuable contributions to any conversation. But it also had its down side.
John Updike, another of his favourite authors, best describes what I imagine it might sometimes have felt like to be my father:
“To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death- foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives. ”
Over the last few years, dad got weaker. His emphysema progressed until he was put onto 24 hour Oxygen, which left him unable to do the things he’d always done – the things we all take for granted. And though he was not in pain, he was bored, and boredom, to a mind as active and willful as his, was probably worse.
As Updike puts it: “It seems to me that once you begin a certain gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it.”
My father lived fast. And he left the world as swiftly as he made his way through it. But the impression he made on so many people will not easily be forgotten. And I can’t help but feel that a personality as great as my father’s, a heart as big as his, couldn’t possibly just disappear, and that he must be somewhere, watching us.
Dad, I know you didn’t believe in spirits, and life after death. But I really I hope it’s the one thing you were wrong about.
A final thought, again best expressed by Updike:
“The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.”
Daddeo, I hope your next adventure is just beginning. You were, and always will be, my hero. To borrow your words: Thank you for being. And for being you. And for all the joy you’ve given me.
Recovering Writer 