Night, Part 2 (Father and Son)

To begin again with the past within the past...another repost from the alt blog. From 21 Sep o6:

How My Daddy Taught me to Swear

He would scream in the middle of the night. Shouting names and obscenities.

I was just a wee lad, maybe 4 or 5 when I first became aware of it. I would crawl out of bed and creep down the hall to listen.

I didn't realize he was asleep. I thought he just chose the early morning hours to get mad and sad. He seemed so happy the rest of the time, jocular and such. I thought he yelled in the night so my brother and I wouldn't see him.

He would scream names sometimes. Victor and Charlie. I thought they were two guys who were bullying him at work the way the bigger kids sometimes bullied the smaller kids at school.

Sometimes he'd sob.

But a lot of the time he swore. Fantastic strings of expletives. I'd crouch outside his bedroom saying the words to myself in a whisper.

I felt like I was getting away with something.

Eventually he'd wake up...or the yelling would become so violent that my mother would wake him. I would retreat to the bedroom I shared with my brother and peek from behind the door. My father always woke the same way on these nights: arms clutched across the shiny skin on his chest as he went into the bathroom for enough time to let mom go back to sleep.

When I was older...I figured out the shiny skin was scar tissue. It covered his entire chest and wrapped around his left side.

Even then...I didn't know how it came to cover him. When I was eight I asked him. He laughingly replied "A German girl nearly captured me once." I knew he'd been in the Army...but my whole frame of reference was World War II movies. I pictured some blond Bavarian Fraulein with a Luger pistol herding him into a POW camp in Berlin...before he made a brave escape like Steve McQueen.

It wasn't quite like that.

My cursing lessons continued for years.

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The present, Oct 2007

My dad and I grew up with an edge of competition between us. It was more like friendly competition than the stereotype of the son trying to surpass the father. But...I may have been doing a little chasing. Chasing that elusive acceptance and approval of my always stoic dad.

He played three sports in high school...I played three. He enlisted right after high school...so did I...choosing the same branch. Dad was a paratrooper...so I did my best and worked my ass off (almost literally) to pass the physical test and get accepted to the airborne school. Everything he'd done...I tried to do as well. With every new emulation of his past dad would just shake his head and chuckle. I knew him well enough to read the approval, the flattery he felt.

At age 24 he went to war. The son went at age 22.

My dad taught me more than how to swear. He taught me that even strong men can be afraid. That sometimes the fear comes back to visit in the dark of night. He taught me that it's OK to ask for help.

My dad said nothing about it but he finally saw a psychiatrist to talk about his nightmares. Just having that chance to talk helped immeasurably and the night terror stopped. A generation later I'd do the same.

It was those unspoken lessons...the example my dad set...that lead me to reach out and get help when I most needed some.

My father and I never talked with one another about our experiences in war. It's hard to explain to people who just don't know. It's not stoicism or humbleness or avoidance. It's just that type of shared experience...needs no talk. We never spoke of our troubles afterward either. But it was those experiences...those in fire and those in night...that showed me that I truly am my father's son.