My father left when I was 6 years old. The age my son is now.
I don’t remember my father leaving. Did he walk out with a suitcase? Did they engineer it so he left while we were at school? I remember an argument, in the back bedroom with the door closed. I remember doing my little-child Saturday chores as the spring wind blew through the house. But his exit, days or weeks afterward, is not something I recall 45 years later. I don’t remember a day when he was suddenly gone.
But I do recall some things.
And I recall missing my father as the years passed.
♦◊♦
I recall missing him so much I thought I would simply give up and die. The missing was a vast blank space of yearning, of wanting his touch and his smell, so big, so huge that I felt lost in it for years. I remember a scratchy call from overseas from him one Christmas that we kids waited up for late into the night. I remember how empty that call was.
When children are forced to release something they hold dear, it cements into their memories the moments preceding it — the way of the world before that change, the smells and sounds. They hold onto what is gone with a feverish intensity. When a child loses someone or someplace dear to them, you had best be ready to replace it with something warm and real, or you will haunt your child with loss.
Before he left, my father would sit up nights watching TV. My mother usually went to bed early, exhausted by the work of raising four children. She was unable to find the energy to be present with her husband after her children went to sleep. My father watched TV alone.
My bedroom was just down the long straight hall. I shared it with my brother. My brother was a sleeper. I was a listener. There in my bed, I listened to the house growing quiet. As my older sisters were put to bed. As my mother retired. Until my father sat alone watching TV. Some nights, he would get up and make a milkshake. I could hear the blender in the kitchen. It would shut off and then, rising on bare feet I would go to the bedroom door, careful not to wake my brother.
I would ever so carefully open the door and peek around the edge of the door frame. There, down the hallway, he sat on the couch, a lamp beyond him, the warm glow backlighting him. And to this day I can see the warm glow there. I can see his silhouette. And as I peeked out, silent, he would turn and he would gesture to me. Then, I would enter the hall, quietly close the door, and race up the hall to join him on the couch.
There it would sit on the side table next to him. The extra glass. The extra vanilla milk shake. For me to sip as I nuzzled under his arm to watch TV.
Growing up in Houston in 1966, they had this thing called The Late Show. It wasn’t a national show. It was a local. It came on after the news. They showed old black-and-white movies. And as the show began, a jingle played. It went like this:
The Late Show,
Nothing could be finer than the late show.
Nothing could be greater than the greatest of stars,
Right on your own TV.
♦◊♦
Those moments with my father carried me through some very dark times. He loved me. His warmth and his charm wasn’t enough to quell the demons that wrecked his marriage, but he left me with a sense that I was special. And that I was loved. Even now, when I sit with my son, after a divorce and after moving him out of the house he was born into, I remember the lesson my father taught me. That the love of a father can heal wounds and fill the emptiness of loss. Even when that very love itself is what is lost.
And so, I hold my son close. I’m not leaving him. I’m with him. And I try to remember to be the man on the couch that wants him to peek out his door. And I think back to my father, young and strong and full of confusion. Still finding a moment for me.
On the couch as The Late Show began, there was a black-and-white graphic of a city with a big moon above it. A magical city where my father and I sat drinking our milkshakes. In those moments, leaning against my father, I felt the world couldn’t be more perfect. It’s funny that all these years later I can still sing that song. I still can see down into that glass, where the vanilla milkshake floated in chunks.
But I can’t see him leaving.
About the author
Emmy-winning animator and author Mark Greene writes, speaks, coaches and consults on the challenges we face as men, women and non-binary people impacted by our dominance-based culture of masculinity. He was a senior editor of The Good Men Project. You can follow him on BlueSky at @remakingmanhood.bsky.social. A different version of this story was originally published on our NYC Dads Group blog with permission from him in 2014.
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This post is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com. Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.
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