When I try to remember my father, there is no image or action that froze him forever in my mind, no particular memory, nothing warm or sad or anything else. He was just there.
My brothers and sisters, all older than me, might have more concrete memories. By the time I came along, the last child, five full years younger than my nearest sibling, Dad was pushing fifty, and had lived as much of a life as he intended. He was set in his ways, did not go anywhere except to work. Before long, he would start working at home, and would never have to set foot off his own property again.
Celebrations were not things he cared for, so Father's Day was a meaningless ritual to him, as was his birthday. As, for that matter, were all other birthdays, or even his own wedding anniversary. Life, it seemed, was something to be endured, not celebrated. In my childhood, he wasn't a cold presence so much as a passive one, floating anonymously in the background while my mom celebrated and encouraged my eccentric tastes, which Dad wouldn't have understood even if he'd cared.
That was the impression as a kid, one I continued to hold as I grew older. Looking back now, twelve years since he died, it still seems accurate, if not entirely fair. My perception was always that Dad was, essentially, a very simple man. Now I realize he was anything but.
The details of his life only emerged to me in bits and pieces. As a kid, I knew he served in World War II, that his parents died before I was born, that he was of Swedish descent...and that was about it. Never did it occur to me what horrors he must have seen in his military service, and not until I was in my twenties did I learn he had been one of the first people to stumble upon the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp. Not until later still did I try to piece together the details of his childhood, a grim existence spent in a mid-Iowa coal mining community, in which everyone, even kids, were expected to perform dangerous, tedious, soul-crushing labor.
And not until it was too late did I realize Dad's way of dealing with his demons was to simply ignore them. He was of a generation that didn't talk much about their feelings, and in his case, he simply chose not to feel. He loved his wife, he loved his kids, but he wouldn't allow those emotions to the surface, because something dangerous could also erupt. With everything buried, everything was safe.
There are photos of my dad from the forties and early fifties, with my mom, with my oldest brothers. His ruddy features and receding hairline are prominent, but so is a rather incongruous feature: a smile. When I was a kid, he'd laugh--he loved corny shows like Hee Haw and truth Or Consequences--but rarely smile, not for any sustained amount of time. He didn't frown much, either, and I don't remember him ever getting really angry. It was like he'd spent all his emotions getting to where he was, in a corner of the world he could claim as his own, where all pain could finally be kept at bay, and all pleasure, too.
