My Father

I don't ordinarily blog about highly personal matters, but here goes.

I had a great time with my father, Murl Peterson, until around the age of three.  I remember the exact moment that everything changed.  I told him he was the greatest dad in the world and, instead of telling me that I was the greatest kid in the world (which is of course what I was fishing for), he looked out the car window.  I figured there was something wrong with me.  Only much, much later, did I learn of the deep scars my father carried from his own childhood, of being tied up and beaten by his own father and constantly criticized for becoming a working man (mill worker, longshoreman, fisherman) instead of a minister.  My dad was the life of the party with lodge members, co-workers, and hunting buddies.  But family made him really nervous.  He carried around so much hurt and anger, and he knew that this anger could be very damaging.  So he tended to keep his distance from those he most loved--though he was great with babies and dogs.

I was too frightened of my father to challenge him directly, so I punished him in suble ways.  I became a vegetarian.  I steered away from carpentry or other practical matters that he excelled at--and wanted me to excel at--and focused on the arts and humanities.  One of my more diabolical digs at him was giving him a  very complex book on the history of black families in the U.S.  It was my way of saying "I am not you.  Deal with it."

But many years later, when helping my widowed mother to move, I found the book, saturated with tobacco smoke, the first half heavily creased.  My dad had tried to follow his youngest and most peculiar child for about 200 pages before giving up.  But he tried, even when I did not want him to.

Thank you, dad, and I'm sorry I didn't know you better.