My Two Dads

I have two fathers, both very different than each other. No, not like the cheesy sitcom where one was an accountant(?) and one was an artist and we lived in a cool loft in New York. I have the first father, who gave me his brown eyes, long limbs, optimism and silliness, his creative geniuses and wander lust. My second father gave me his last name, discipline, structure and dedication to long hard work.

We called them both ‘Daddy’ which never seemed to confuse the siblings, parents or grandparents, but has been a constant source of confusion when telling stories at dinner parties. There never seemed to be much competition between the two for our affection or for being the REAL Dad. The first was happy to let the second cover the financial and disciplinary responsibilities of parenthood and the second was happy to let the first take care of the long creative talks.

Father number one is Dennis. I think if he were a young man today, he’d be a metro-sexual. He was an expert angler, but was somewhat prissy. He studied psychology, was a DJ through college, wrote romance novels under a feminine identity, had several patents, and several more mistresses, and paid most of his bills as an independent mudlogger. He was the best harmonica player I’ve ever heard, better than Toots, and had a gentle soothing voice like Dean Martin.

Most of my memories about my dad involved being in a row boat in the swampy bayous, going to arcades, eating corn dogs (it was his specialty), living in air-stream trailers across the country, and playing the moon when he would sing I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. He once convinced me that the Denny’s restaurant was his, and that alligators would eat me if I stuck my hand in the water at Liberty Park. In Salt Lake City. UT. I believed him on both accounts until I was older and realized Denny’s was a chain and we just ate there because he couldn’t cook anything but corn dogs, and alligators don’t live in Utah. He was a gentle gregarious but unguided man who passed away a loan pauper.

Father number two is Raymond. He was definitely not prissy. He was a man’s man. A Louis Lamore man. The oldest of four hilly-billy boys trying to raise four girls and a dainty boy. (We probably considered him to be dainty because he did seem frail with his small little body and white hair and blue eyes and his inability to exist without being glued to our mother’s side. But he grew up to get a third degree black belt in Kempo. I wonder if it has anything to do with us putting dresses and make-up on him?) Raymond was a tough and rough man. Not one for open affection or words, but he was perhaps one of the most honorable men I’ve ever known. He worked hard and honestly, was truthful, and raised countless number of other men’s children.

It was a difficult relationship for him and me. I wanted to play the violin and write poetry and wear pretty pink silk dresses and have all the farm animals be my pets. He wanted to teach us how to work on cars and weld and build fences and haul hay. I was an emotional gentle-hearted strange child, unlike his first children or my siblings or his brothers and their kids or the neighbors down the road. But he held to being my dad to the end.

He had more energy than ten normal men. He worked overseas mostly. Month on/month off, and the month off was never off for us. It meant being up before the sun, and to bed longer after sun down. And when we did play, it was too was always active. Once we all went to play tennis, five kids on one side, him running around the court in cowboy boots on the other.

Our greatest bonding moments came when I decided at 16, out on my own, that I wanted a motorcycle. My Dennis- dad had sent me a few hundred dollars I wanted to buy either a motorcycle or xylophones. (This is why children should not be given large sums of money.) Raymond-dad was elated, took me bike shopping and pushed me around the parking lot of the dealership like a dad and daughter on a bicycle without training wheels.

I didn’t have much opportunity to talk with him over the years. My mother and he had long ago separated. I lived several states away, and he wasn’t one much for letters or phone calls. A few years ago he became terminally ill. I went to stay at the hospital for a few days. He told me in one conversation that he never worries about me because he knows I’ll always think things through before deciding to do something. I wish I could capture how important and meaningful that statement was to me.

As I would rub his feet, callous thick from years of being free and outside, I hoped his bedridden stay in the hospital wouldn’t be that long. It was almost a year. I felt much more peace at his passing, than at my first father’s. Selfishly, I’m happy that now free of his mortal body and bounds of geography, he can watch over me and see the child he shaped into a young woman and feel proud and know that he did a really good job.

I have two fathers, and I am a perfect mix of both. Long limbed, brown-eyed, gregarious and eccentric, hard-working and structured. And in my own nature I do think things through and still chase after impracticalities like motorcycles and xylophones.