Joyride III

There was Hawaiian Punch in a cooler on the boat. It was one of the few times my father took me anywhere when I was growing up. We went fishing, which was ironic since my dad was no sportsman and I didn’t like the water.
I didn’t really get to know my father until I was in college. He was too self-absorbed to think about his children. Frustration and neglect were the hallmarks of our relationship in the early days. After a nasty divorce, my dad reluctantly secured weekend visitation rights. He would drive from Philadelphia to Cape May to pick up my brother Craig and me.
He was always appallingly late and chain-smoking inside his gas-guzzling car – almost as though the car was guilty of the same gluttony. My brother Craig and I would sit around for hours on Saturdays waiting for him to show up, feeling disjointed and angry.
When we arrived back in Philadelphia, we would get little time with him before we had to return home. Much of Sunday was wiped out because my dad would sleep well into the afternoon.
Bitterness pervaded, until college. He moved to South Philadelphia and I went off to Glassboro State College. Just 30 minutes from Philadelphia, I started showing up on his doorstep unannounced. He didn’t like it… at least not at first. His narcissism began to subside because the relationship wasn’t on his terms anymore. It wasn’t bounded by those car rides anymore.
As I went through four years at Glassboro and then another two at Temple University for a master’s degree, we became friends. My new apartment was just five blocks away in South Philadelphia. On Friday nights, I would go over for pizza. He didn’t eat pizza but his second wife Shirley did.
Suddenly, many of his rougher edges became idiosyncrasies. I would tease him about how he constantly said, “the point is” and then didn’t make any point. We had many conversations at his kitchen table – his preferred venue for any conversation of substance. I started asking for his advice. He started listening to mine.
He sat there proudly at my wedding to my wife, Kris. He drove her insane most of the time but she loved him anyway, which gave me another perspective on my dad.
When my son Kameron was born, my dad got to make another transition – one that began with our dog Max. We would often refer to Max as the grand dog. My dad didn’t like at first. But soon he embraced it.
But the way my dad lived his life began to take a toll. Smoking and drinking for much of his life, the effects of his vices began to disintegrate his health.
My wife and I moved to her hometown in northwestern Pennsylvania, near Erie. One night my dad called from 500 miles away in Swarthmore, PA, where he now lived. He was gasping for air but didn’t want to go to the hospital until I arrived. Eight hours later, I found him sitting among the clutter in his office on the second floor of his house. I called an ambulance. He would never see his house again.
He spent several weeks at Jefferson Hospital. He finally agreed to write a will, something had been avoiding for years. We decided that when he recovered he would move in with us in Edinboro. Kris and I started cleaning out his house to get it ready to sell. It was more complicated now, we had another son: six-month old Josh.
My father was transported by ambulance across Pennsylvania. He spent two weeks in a rehabilitation facility in Erie. I picked him up to take him to Edinboro for good on a Saturday evening. He insisted that I give him a quick tour of Erie on the way.
Two days later—he was dead. That was 11 years ago.
Father’s Day is not about perfection; it’s not a Hallmark card. It’s about what we gain and what we lose and what we learn along the way and having the humility to stop once a year and say thanks.
Keith Forrest an assistant professor of communication at Atlantic Cape Community College. His late mother Libby Demp Forrest Moore wrote the Joyride column for this newspaper for 20 years.