My father just turned 83. At Thanksgiving the other night we went round the table giving thanks and he said he would wait for everyone else to say thanks before he said his. By the time we finished people had forgotten about his exemption and he mumbled something to me, and I had to get people back in the room. Then he said he was having the best year of his life. He loves his malaria work and his marriage and his family. My father is often ironical, but it felt like a sincere statement, and thrown off with the freedom the old have, that they could give a shit what anyone thinks.
My father's sense of the absurd is more developed than ever. For instance, he continues to collect ties, though he readily admits he has thousands, more than he could wear for another five or six years if he wore a new one a day. Though he doesn't always stop at one. Sometimes he sports a different tie at different hours, depending on his mood. On Thanksgiving he came out with a white one with pen-and-ink drawings of women's heads on it. Something you would expect Henry Miller to wear when he was chasing girls at Clichy. My mother was against it, on strictly aesthetic grounds. Soon it was replaced by a skinny Armani from 25 years ago he got at a church sale.
My father also bestowed on me the latest shaving system from Gillette. This is another area of interest for him–shaving–and a sacred covenant between him and his sons. I protested that I was completely satisfied by the last innovation that he had given me some time ago, the Mach 3, I think it is, which vibrates and has 3 blades. Oh no, this is far better, it has five blades, he said with his grave/ironical air, where you actually think he's serious.
"This is crazy," I said. "First it was one blade, then it was two blades, I understood that. Then it was three blades. Now it's five. Why not 30?"
"No. It wasn't five. It was four, and then it was five."
"Ok. But they are just trying to sell blades, and the damn things clog."
"These blades last 3 months," my father said. "And you really shouldn't judge it before you've tried it." He showed me how he doesn't have to reverse direction on his neck anymore, it's so good.
I'm concerned about my relationship with my father: it has held me back in life. Irony worked for him, it hasn't for me. Before I left for Thanksgiving I had a conversation with my wife's feng-shui expert about it. Catherine had come to visit. I told her that I had a notebook of my father's and that I was thinking of burning it in the woods in a ceremony that would free me of certain negative influences that my father has had on me. My wife and I once saw a homa ceremony at a monastery in India; and I was actually thinking maybe I'd go back and do a homa ceremony to deal with my father issues. The feng shui expert, Catherine, was disturbed by this. She said it was his writing, and it would be better to give the notebook back to him and say simply, "This is yours." Resorting to her earlier designation of my character, Catherine said I am a snake at the gate, and I must not get entangled in the gate, but pass thru it smoothly.
I did that at breakfast, the morning after Thanksgiving. First I had to tear out all the pages of the notebook that I'd used to make notes on. Appropriately enough they were for a piece I wrote 2-1/2 years ago for the Nation, about Walt and Mearsheimer, not a piece I'd talk about with my father. I tore them out, then I said, "This is yours," and my father took back his notebook.
I'm hoping it's useful to him with his ongoing malaria work. Myself I took the new Gillette. I haven't shaved since Thanksgiving, though I admit I'm looking forward to it.
