My father and I are on a ferryboat in 1959. He sports a white sweatshirt and square sunglasses. I am not yet two. Curls peek out around the edge of my cap, accenting a classic doll face. Dad holds me in his arms as we beam for my mother’s camera.
Years later at a family reunion, a relative describes my father as “movie star handsome” when in his youth, and I wistfully recall that morning on the boat.
Another memory crowds in. It is my twelfth birthday. Dad is leaning over the bathroom sink, splashing his face with Aqua Velva. I have stopped in the doorway to give him a message, but a deep sneeze erupts instead.
“Yeah,” dad barks sarcastically. He continues patting, eyes on the mirror. “You always have been allergic to me.”
That was rotten to say on my birthday. Then, many things my father said were. It bothered me, for example, that he rarely talked about his mother, who died years before I was born. He merely dropped hints that she abandoned her family, preferring instead to dance in shadowy honky tonks with flyboys. That is all he would tell of the woman he named me after.
My mother once whispered to me that when my father was a teen, he beat up his stepfather—but did not add more. I later heard grandmother died on a motorcycle with a pilot when my dad was 16.
Growing up, there was little contact with my father’s relatives. One visited once for a few days, but conversations among the adults never landed where I wanted. My resentment over the mystery was well in place by the time I turned 12.
My father died of heart failure in 1995. With him, it seemed at the time, went my only chance to know more about his mother. Even in his death, he annoyed me.
Seven years later, one of his cousins stumbled across my address and invited me to a family reunion. It was 2002; grandmother had died in 1954. I pondered the chances of running into someone who had known her. Again, I was annoyed with my father.
I accepted the invitation.
The reunion happens every two years in a one-room schoolhouse where, I eagerly learn, my grandmother attended class during the Great Depression. “She was a free spirit,” continues an elderly woman holding a plate of ribs and potato salad. “She had red hair, just loved to dance.” The relative eyes me closely. “You remind me of her, matter o’ fact.”
Over homemade iced tea, more people tell me what they remember of her. A great aunt talks of my father, too, how he was trouble, was born trouble. “Handsome, though,” she smiles wryly. “The kid was movie star handsome.”
A group photo session is organizing outside, ending the storytelling. We stand against an aging brick wall in various configurations, the photographer making sure to represent all branches of the family tree.
The ritual caravan to the cemetery is last. It is a few miles away; a ride is offered. Passing through the gate, I feel welcomed into my grandmother’s family. I kneel on her grave to pay respects—finally, grandma!—and in the granting of this respect, I am surprised to find within my reach a forgiveness of her son, as well.
The Blue Angels, for better or worse depending on who you ask, roared into San Francisco today and are whooshing over my neighborhood (North Beach) as I write this post.
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