Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Maryl asks: O Father, Who Art Thou?


My question, as we approach Father’s Day, although I have been thinking about it for a while, is how well do we or did we know ours fathers? I mean not just know them as a dad but also understand them as a man. I was beginning to see my own father (that's him and me in the photo above) outside his head-of-household role and through my second life lens. But then he died on me - at age 92. You can’t quibble with that kind of longevity but it’s never enough. 


I came upon three women who were evidently asking the same question and more. I met Karen Fisher-Alaniz online through this blog actually. She had just written “Breaking The Code,” a memoir of a man she knew only as her father. On his 81st birthday, Murray Fisher gave his daughter two notebooks with 400 pages of correspondence he had written home to his parents in Washington state during WWII. There was a lot in those letters that her dad had tried to tell her over the years. Karen admits now that her life was so busy then she didn’t listen or catch on that his stories and their revelations were worth the time. She has now learned that her father was a code breaker in the Pacific theater. That generated many more questions, one in particular would decipher the secret that had overshadowed Murray all the years inbetween. Karen felt her father’s pain amidst his newly discovered heroism and wanted to understand and help him even more. 




I met Maxi Cohen recently at a NY Women in Film & Television gathering. I learned that we both started making video in the ‘70’s when you threw a Sony Portapak on your back, even though it weighed over 18 pounds, grabbed the camera and started shooting. Maxi started shooting Joe, her father. She had felt distant from him, at times even afraid of him, and couldn’t express her feelings that ran from love to anger to hate. Then her mother died and Maxi was adrift and had no sense of herself. She was scared that if she lost her father, she would feel nothing again. So she filmed Joe as a way to get to know him for the first time. “Joe and Maxi” is that film. Joe Cohen is a kind of movie character that doesn’t come from “central casting.” He is fascinating to watch on the big screen but difficult to understand and to love in real life. Maxi accomplished both and in so doing got to know herself better too. 



I met Marcia Rock decades ago as we were starting out as video and film makers also. She went on to receive many awards and recognitions for her documentaries and became a professor and Director of Broadcast Journalism at New York University. Her father Manny Rock was also quiet and distant in his family interactions and Marcia wanted to understand perhaps how this first man in her life may have had some effect on her subsequent male relationships. In order to do this, she quickly found herself tracing her paternal grandmother’s heritage back to Slovakia and then Cleveland, Ohio where Marcia grew up. In her film “Dancing With My Father,” Marcia reveals the struggles her family overcame and the effect it had on her father’s guarded demeanor. And she picked up a few Mambo steps on the side.

Marcia and Manny
As I think again about better understanding my father, producing a film is no longer feasible as Maxi and Marcia have done. But Karen’s story prompted me to look through my dad’s personal files that are now distributed among mine and my siblings’ attics. Either my father, Jim Floyd,  wasn’t as prolific as Murray Fisher or my grandma wasn’t as sentimental as Karen’s since I only came across a few letters written to his parents during wartime. I know there were more but the ones that I found were the sweetest. My dad was one of the last to return home from the European theater and he had apparently already proposed to my mother but was unable to be there in person to make it official. In these letters he has made arrangements to have his “Dear Mother and Dad” present the engagement ring to my Mom. My father relays in one letter that Gen, my mother “has been quite enthusiastic about her ring...." You can read more below if you like but I see that my father had a cordial and adept writing style, precise penmanship (he was a graphic artist) and a dutiful and caring relationship with his parents. 

As Karen read her dad's letter, she discussed her findings with others. And people shared their guilt and disappointment over not getting their fathers to talk about themselves. Sometimes their stories would "come after death, when letters or memorabilia were found, leaving the child with the unbearable burden of always wondering if there was something they should have said or done to encourage their loved ones to tell stories of their past.”

I understand what Karen is saying but I don’t believe guilt or regret have to be the consequences. She had a hard time getting her father  to open up and talk; it became painful. For those of us whose parents were members of The Greatest Generation, we’ve learned that when WWII soldiers returned home they wanted to just move on with their lives. They were modest about what they had sacrificed for their country and weren’t particularly interested in talking about it. In addition men of that era didn’t reveal their feelings that easily if at all.

My daughter did an oral history with my father for a school project and when she showed him medals we found in his home, he didn’t recall receiving them and thought they must have belonged to someone else. After his death we found a Diplome from the French Ministry of Defense and an accompanying letter thanking him for the part he played in the liberation of France during WWII. They were tucked in with a pile of old advertisements and bills but are now framed and next to the flag the military honor guard presented to me at his grave site.




My father would have been colorful subject matter for a documentary or memoir but he wasn’t an enigma. I don’t believe he had any demons that kept him awake at night. I have questions now I’d like to ask him but I would have had them anyway.  If you already cherish someone just the way they are, do you really need to know more? On the other hand, one of my brothers tells me there’s another old trunk we’ve yet to delve through. A little more decoding can’t hurt.

16 comments:

  1. A year after my father died, I found letters my parents had written (my mother had died when I was 16) to each other. They record their meeting, his shortly thereafter departure for the for the war (WW2), and their entire courtship in 1945. It revealed 2 people falling in love and getting to know each other. 2 people I never had the chance to know. There are over 300 letters and they are one of my dearest treasures.
    Thank you for this post.

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    1. Oh my, Laura, I'm close to tears reading your comment. I'm still digging and am almost afraid to find the letters, if they still exist, between my father and mother. I'm sure that will do me in but warm me at the same time. I wonder when old letters are kept if the author imagines they will be read by family? It's part of a legacy that is so nice to have. Thank you for commenting and Happy Father's Day to our Dads!

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  2. Maryl - this is so moving in its honesty and brilliant writing. Thank ]you for sharing. I intend to share it with my Dad - also 92 and a WWII vet - this Sunday on Father's Day. Aren't I the lucky one that, even as medically challenged as he's been lately, he's still of sound long-term memory and mind. It's always right to look for the blessings in life - not the what if's!
    -Karen

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    1. That's why I wanted you to read this, Karen. You are the lucky one. Your dad is still with you not just physically but mentally right here and now. And the here and now is all that's important. But you're also lucky because you know your dad and he you and that you will always have. Great to see you today.

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  3. Maryl - Thank you for mentioning my experience and book. You pulled together the experiences of the three of us, and you, so beautifully. I guess our message is to talk while you have the chance. You know, there didn't used to be so many distractions. We didn't have to compete with television, internet, video games and on and on, just to have a conversation. I think every now and then, we just need to remind ourselves to slow down and start a conversation. ~Karen

    http://www.storymatters2.com

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    1. Karen, Glad you liked my post. I truly enjoyed writing this one and honoring your and others' fathers as well as my own. It's really never too late to get to know your dad. I like your web site too encouraging us all to tell our stories. I have a friend who is starting a business of recording oral histories. I'm going to feature her as soon as she gets her web site up. Let's stay in touch.

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  4. Maryl,
    My father died almost twenty years ago, so long I can't remember the actual year. My mother died in '99. I inherited their love letters, but when my mom handed them over, she told me they were private and not to read them. I never disobey my mom, dead or alive! I'm not sure why I still respect their privacy, but it's a very strong urge. I think I knew my parents so well and they are still such a part of me, accessible for a little psyche-mining, that I don't feel there is anything to be gained by reading the letters. Or maybe I don't want to sully my memory of them by behavior of 20 year olds.

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    1. That's a tough one, Jane. There's something kind of enduring though about keeping that part of your parents' life unknown, like keeping at least part of them alive. And I agree with you....what is it about not wanting to think about our parents as sexual beings? TMI, I guess. Thanks, Jane.

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  5. No, it's not enough - especially when we think we have all the time in the world, and we don't. Sometimes we only find that out when it's too late.

    I think we come to know our mothers more easily than our fathers. But by understanding both, we may find ourselves capable of leading more informed lives in our choices, and the way we relate to our own children, especially as they grow into adulthood.

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    1. I'm starting to identify traits I have as those I saw in my parents. And I can't tell you how many times I wish one of them was around so I could check in about a behavior I see in my daughter. I'd like to ask "was I like that when I was that age? Is this normal?" I kind of wish my mother-in-law was around for a similar reason...to ask about her son! Thanks.

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  6. To know a parent outside the role of mother or father is often quite difficult, and there are likely some dimensions that we only glimpse, so powerful is the parental role. I read the letters which I inherited, written over four years of wartime, from my father to my mother. Never thought of it as a violation of privacy, as my mother deliberately left them to me; however, it was an eye opener to see how he longed for her, and for his home and family.

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  7. Yes, I saw the longing for home in Karen's book and in the somewhat more formal writing of my father's letters. Were they overshadowed by the reality that they might never see home again? Of course these were letters to their parents and not to a sweetheart. You've all got me thinking that I don't know what I'd do if I found the letters back and forth to my mother? Where to look?

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  8. This was such a sweet thing to read! I too, have my parents' letters to each other during WW11....and I have not been able to untie the ribbon that binds them. My father would not talk to us, his 4 young daughters, about the war....other than to say that he "fought the war with his hammer in one hand and his trumpet in the other." He was in the SeaBees stationed at Pearl Harbor helping to re-build and in the evenings, he played in the dance band at the Officer's Club. I've researched a little, and I've read Unbroken....the amazing account of spirit and tenacity of Louis Zamperini. My father, one of 10 children, would have been over 100 years old had he lived. He was killed in a car accident 40 years ago. I have always wished that my children could have known him. He was such a character and always found the fun and the humor in life and tried to pass that on. I draw on that example as much as possible. Thank you for this blog. I truly enjoy reading it.

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    1. Thank you for your sweet and kind words. I too just finished "Unbroken" and have become curious about the Pacific theater as my father only talked about Europe when he did talk about their War at all. It sounds like you did get to know your father despite his shortened life or how else could you be emulating him? I still feel their unread letters represent an unknown piece of our parents and in that way leaves something still to discover if we so choose and keeps their spirits alive. Thank you again.

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  9. Maryl,
    My Father is 85 and I need to re-create a book that I made for my Mother a few years ago. My Father raised a family of 7, he was himself one of 9 and the last living man.
    Like fine wine, he has aged, mellowed, full of flavors, love, hope, energy and enthusiasm for this wonderful life.
    I need to go down to Kentucky and visit with them.....so thanks for the reminder for me to savor the time together.
    pve
    pve

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    1. I could say I'm jealous, Patricia, but I would never. I'm happy to know that you can still get to know your father even more although it sounds like you've accomplished a lot of that already. I will picture you in Kentucky with your dad, laughing and for some reason I see horses and a fine Bourbon? Of course you'll find a post in it with some photos. I'm already smiling. ;-)

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