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Well yesterday was draining. Not bad, but draining. My father, who miraculously is still working remotely part-time despite his 77 years of age and his terminal cancer, needed me to drive him the 40 miles south to get his computer fixed specifically for his job. (I’ll keep the actual job blurry but he works as a civilian contracted with the U.S. Navy.)
So, after puppy-sitting at a house just off Carrillo in Santa Barbara, I charged the Leaf and picked my father up. He grabbed his things and walked rickety-like, his face old and red, slowly down the stone steps of he and my mother’s house in the Riviera (S.B.). It took him a few frustrating (to both of us) minutes to figure out how to pull the chair handle to get his seat to recline. But he finally figured it out.
It was a gloriously gorgeous day in Santa Barbara. After the days of rain last week, everything looked positively clear. Light, clear blue sky; deeper shade of blue for the ocean, and perfectly flat and calm, the bright sun’s rays reflecting along that deep blue; some soft bubbly white cumulous clouds above. Highway 101 was not busy; cars were relatively sparse, and we moved along fine.
My father and I quickly fell first into silence, and then into our safe mode: Politics. If not politics, then economics, or Wokeism. (He’s a moderate Democrat, always has been.) When I was young, my father and I would argue vehemently about politics/economics, not so much from different sides of the political spectrum—I, too, am a centrist Dem—but from a generational gap. The chasm between us lay the foundational understanding of “capitalism,” that vague word which, like many others in contemporary times, has been overused to the extreme, sort of like the word “literally” or “like” or “narcissism.”
The argument always circled around our vastly different views of people versus profit. My father always felt that corporations were “not charities.” I, on the other hand, felt that private companies owed something (dignity, respect, a decent wage, benefits) to human individuals. We’d clash around these topics nearly every time we faced each other, which for a long time was once a year, at Christmas. Since then, however, our views have merged much more. Despite his 37 years seniority, we have mutual understandings, more or less, of the reality of American power.
Driving along 101—paralleling the Pacific Ocean in all its flat, calm splendor—always brings back deep memories. As a child my best friend and I and our mothers would drive from Ojai up 101 to Solimar, Bates Beach, Mondos, etc. In my teens my friends and I became serious, indefatigable surfers. My mother must have 50 hours of recorded VHS videos of myself and my friends carving green, lurid, luscious waves at Rincon, Solimar, Pitus Point, Emma Wood, etc, all along the Ventura, Carpinteria, Oxnard coastline. Those are warm, soft memories.
In my teens a few of my friends and I actually took it to the next level and became sponsored, competitive surfers. I was never any good. I never even placed. I surfed best when dancing solo with nature. Like now, same then: I was always a solitary person. An artist, if you will. Alone. Fragile. Sensitive. Eager to prove something to no one but me. Just like my father.
We arrived at the pickup spot. The guy who was going to fix my dad’s computer was already waiting, sitting in his old-school black VW bug, engine purring, shaking the whole body of the car. Dad grabbed his bag and approached the man. They did the exchange. Then it was back to just the two of us. We were parked along the curb. There was a body of water behind us. A shop renting boats out. The long road we’d driven down. Sand dunes beyond that. I’d spent so much of my youth around here, angry alcoholic punk rock: Best times of my whole damn life. (I never said it wasn’t fun!)
Dad and I talked briefly—awkwardly—about my relationship, about the woman I loved. I felt glad he was still alive to see me with someone and happy. That meant a lot. He asked some basic questions about it. I answered. We looked away from each other. Then ahead, at the wall of the store we were parked by. The silence stretched and was uncomfortable. My father and I have always, in a sense, been strangers. Similar to each other in so many potent ways, we are nevertheless incredibly different. He was born in 1945.
My father is nothing if not stoic, practical, simple. And cognitively brilliant. He has two Master’s degrees, one from Cal Tech and one from U.C. Santa Barbara; he got his undergrad at U.C. Berkeley. He taught chemistry and math at the college level for years before becoming a computer scientist. Then there’s me: From the jump weird, odd, different. Disinterested in money. Disinterested in the practical or the conventional. Disinterested in real estate and sports and the stock market and all things traditionally “masculine.” (Yet I also surfed and skateboarded and was obsessed with BMX as a kid, and I have possessed a certain “toughness” all my days.)
The man returned a half hour later. Dad got out and, hunched, slow, retrieved his computer. We headed out again. We ended up stopping at In-N-Out in Ventura, off Harbor. Again, many memories: My surfer buddies and I after hours in the water getting chocolate shakes, fries and burgers; my punk buddies and I doing the same a couple years later; the Ventura P.D. dropping a very drunk 17-year-old me to parents in the In-N-Out parking lot at 4am one night after I’d blacked out after too many Mickies forties and had passed out on someone’s driveway. In-N-Out fries—like Highway 101—brought back the most visceral, sensory recollections, the freshly sliced fries dipped in oil. Delicious.
The drive back was easy. Even fewer cars now. It was around 2:45pm. Dad and I ate in silence. I shoved fries into my mouth in lieu of speaking. Every second that ticked by I yearned to talk to my father, about anything really. More than anything else I wanted to connect with him emotionally. But it was just too awkward; it felt “risky.” The truth is it isn’t risky; it’s just strange and uncomfortable. I know my dad takes in what I say, even if he doesn’t respond verbally. And I wanted to remind him of memories, of the nostalgic past: Surf sessions; the time he backed his car over my surfboard, crushing it; the car crash I got into in Ventura in 2007, when I was 24, multiple-roll; The glimmering, desperate feeling I’d had forever of wanting to hold my father, be held by him, make him understand me.
But I couldn’t do it. It’s me, not him. I’m insecure. Nervous. Afraid. His judgment has always terrified me. For so long I think he saw me as childish, naïve, crazy. There’s some truth to some of that. And angry, don’t forget that, especially in my teens. He never got the whole punk rock rebellion thing. Or the tattoos. Or the hitchhiking. Or the dropping out of college. Or the constant moving and quitting jobs. Any of it. I lived a very bohemian life for a long time. He had lived the safe life. Practical. You go to college, get a good job, get married, settle down, work until you croak. That’s my father and his generation. But I’m a Millennial. And I have my mother in me, too, her intensity, her creativity, her lust for the unconventional.
On the way home we picked up my dad’s new meds. Oral chemo. We’re still waiting to hear from the one doctor in California who will risk doing “clinical trials” with my father because of his past reactive history to immunotherapy a la Myasthenia Gravis.
We wound our way up my parents’ steep road. I pulled up into the driveway. Dad got out. He thanked me again. I nodded, tried to smile. He walked, sluggishly, to the black gate, opened it and started walking up the stone steps. His stomach peg (feeding) tube slipped out from under his sweatshirt and dangled against his hip like some surreptitious weapon.
I breathed, sighing, long and slow and deep. For a moment I watched the old man who I loved and both knew and didn’t know. Then I drove off.
A few hours later my mom texted and said he’d taken the chemo and had thrown up during dinner. The oncologist had said the adverse effects were “mild.” We’ll see. My dad has had both good and terrible luck the past 18 months since his diagnosis.
I felt anxious last night. So instead of reading I threw my gear on and did a 3-mile run in the deep cold night in my neighborhood. I kept listening to Paul Auster’s stupendous memoir, “Winter Journal.” I ran and ran and ran, until my face flushed red and the blood pulsed in my veins and I could hear only Auster’s words told in his own, old voice. He is my father’s age. (Born in 1947.) I went home. I felt calm. Released from something.
I relate so closely- scary, good close - to your relationship with your dad. Thank you for writing this.