Father's Day

When you grow up mostly without a father...I had a difficult time letting this one go...

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Making Up Father

My father, biologically speaking, was Leonard (Lenny) Zeitz. He was born without a right hand, with tiny nubs where his fingers would have been. His parents and grandparents mostly ignored his obvious lack of a hand. But they also thought it was a curse.

I remember thinking his hand was odd, but it wasn’t scary or yucky.

And sometime after that, he acquired a hook. It wasn’t quite a Captain Hook sort of hook. He opened and closed the two parts of it using his back, shoulders, and upper arm muscles. Here’s a link to see how such a hook works: from Arm Dynamics.

My mom and dad divorced or started the process shortly after my brother was born.

And by the time I was 4, I knew I only saw my father sometimes.
Once, a girl I knew was scared of some bad kids on the block. I told her, “My father has a hook for a hand and he’ll protect us.”

I added, “But he can’t be here until the weekend.”
She looked disappointed.

My hook-wielding father was my imaginary hero. But that flew in the face of kid logic since I knew bad guys, certain pirates for instance, who menaced kids like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys — bad guys wore hooks!

But my father, even though he was “home” only on weekends (and that was only certain weekends) was good, wasn’t he?

He was my father, he was supposed to be good! So I had this fantasy scenario that there was a good Captain Hook. And he was mixed up with a “bad” Peter Pan. Now, the good Peter Pan was always in danger from the evil Captain Hook - like always, but I sometimes dreamed up stuff where the good Captain Hook had to rescue Wendy because the “bad Peter Pan” had captured her.

And so…my father, as it turns out, was not just absent, he was bad…

The only thing I want to write (today) about my father is that, because of his absence and his “badness,” I often found Father’s Day a crappy day.

In subsequent posts, I’ll say more about Lenny, my dad, but right now, I just can’t.

And until… Scott and I had a baby I didn’t know how a good father behaved. And then my brother Paul had a baby and then another and wow! Here are these kids with dads who don’t leave them.

And, although they make mistakes because they’re only human, my husband Scott and my brother Paul are the two best dads ever.

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