I have always been in love with my pops. He, the father of my father, towered at 6’4”, taller than he was wide- but barely, and white haired for as long as I could remember (think Colonel Sanders for a good visual). In a mix of messy memories that resurfaced later in life, I recalled that his touch was my first recollection of playfulness. Often, he would grab me by the waist, pull me to his large lap, hold me in arms, and then tickle me vehemently and violently. My body shook with glee receiving his loving attention, followed by a soft kiss on the head, and a gentle and laughable release- his own body’s response to this magical and memorable moment.
When I grew older, he knew that this behavior once playful would now be inappropriate, so instead of the tactful tickles he would invite me into his lap and sing sweet nothings into my ear. My head rested softly on his chest so large it felt instrumental as he pushed air through his vocal chords to produce a great and untrained barotone sound. He was a constant reminder of the play in love and I always looked forward to sharing in his presence.
Once I became a woman, there was no more lap sitting. But as he was also known as the great story teller, there was still much to share between his lips and mine. Often, he would pull up a stool and I, surrounded by my siblings and many cousins, would gather cross legged on the floor at his feet and take in his humerous and heroic narratives of wartime.
At one point, I had disapeared in El Salvador for awhile. I didn’t communicate with him much as I was busy studying and volunteering in the local community. Upon my return, he and other family members invited me to dinner in what was supposed to be a celebration. But, by this point my love for justice had made me an outcast in a family system that desired for my womanhood to be one of silence, surrender, and a false sense of serenity only achieved by Catholic women who have mastered the art of self-denial. One of my three brothers said something painful that reminded me of my status as an exile, and in tears I fled from the restaurant to seek solace in my lonely, but slowly liberating new state of being. I needed just a brief moment to process the pain of leaving a community abroad that I found so wholesome and returning to a family who left me in a constant state of starvation. My awareness of my demeaning desperation only recognized recently.
I exited and found a seat on the curb, as the restaurant had not prepared for their guests to need a place of refuge outside its doors. With little to no delay, there he was next to me: Pops, the 6’4” father of my father, risking his delicate knees and fatigued back to sit at my level as best he could as a man who had 10” on me.
Tears dripped down my face as he testified, “Annie, I know how you feel.” Surprised by his confidence, I sat bewildered as I lacked awareness of my own emotional language. I had not in fact expressed how I felt, nor could I have. He knew me and he shared my experience. He relayed his transition from being a deployed marine to a returned civilian. He admitted his inability to even communicate to his family for the first two weeks following his return, as he just traveled on trains with no where to go and with so much to mourn. He was lucky to have had never encountered much violence in his time in Japan. As an engineer on a construction team, he helped build structures, but more importantly plastered bonds of security and belonging with his new brothers, not by blood but by the bounty of freedom. He recalled those years as tears also filled his eyes. I had never seen him cry; he had never known better friendship and had forever been lonely since his return. His wife, life, five children, and 17 grandchildren never filled that void. Truth tickled my skin from the inside out: he gave name to what I couldn’t name.
By the time he was ready to pass into the next stage of existance, we had to meet in secret. The memories of incest by my father, uncle, and maternal grandfather had resurfaced and the lack of safety in my family system was ever present. We hadn’t spoke in years. I didn’t have the courage to tell him what happened and he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t speak to my family. I chose to protect him and distance myself from his love. A habit I have since learned to break, but at the time I worried that telling him the sins of his son would expedite his death.
So when I saw that big man finally shorter than me and nearly as thin, confined to a wheelchair and dying of cancer, we both wept in tears. He held me long and tight, as I dreamt of falling back onto his lap in gleeful grief and letting him tickle me until all my sadness erupted into laughter. I still didn’t have the courage to tell him what happened, so he just looked at me with a concerned curiosity as we caught up and shared all that we had missed out on, trading stories one final time. My intuitive mind knew he would understand after he passed into a different level of consciousness. And he did.
For three days following his death, two feelings subsumed my being with a certianty that I had never before experienced: one, that I am unconditionally loved, and two, that I am never to return to my family. I assumed these messages were from Pops, validating my instinct that he now understood me deeper than his capacity while still on earth. In the next realm, he was my greatest cheerleader.
But of course his story is more complex than my experience of him. Although my beloved grandfather, he did not honor his own children or his wife with the same playful persistence that he did me. He beat them, he screamed at them, he attempted to control them. He was terribly misogynistic and rudely racist.
It is strange to admit that the man who raised my rapist was also the man who taught me what it felt like to be touched appropriately. It is impossible to deny that there exists a strong possibility that my father’s abusive nature originated as a coping mechanism from his own victimization under the hands of the same man who tickled me into love. The man who honored my body, bruised his. The man who reminded me how worthy I was of love, robbed my father of the same experience. The man who taught me to honor my intellect, my love for art, and my fierce independence, also may have contributed to birthing a beast in his very own son.
My grandfather was given a second chance with his grandchildren. I can’t speak for all of us, but at least from my own experience, I know he had the humility to say yes to it. In all the ways he had been absuive, he became affirming. In all the ways, he had been demeaning, he became delightful. In all the ways he had been harmful, he became happy.
Today, I often find myself sitting on curbs as I await buses and remember him. I, too, am being offered a second chance at life, as more and more the consequences of incest and illness say goodbye to my body. I fear taking this chance: living a life that makes my past cease to matter so much, arising everyday in gratitude for the gift that is healing and happiness, living in the consequence of his love and that of so many others. I, too, commit to doing better this time. To releasing all the coping mechanisms: the critique, the picking, the scratching, the doubt, the isolation, the projection. It all must go now.
On this Father’s Day, I choose to embrace the truth of being fully known and wholly loved by Pops. His example has helped to heal the damage done by the man who I no longer call father. Thank you, Pops, for saying yes to your second chance. Thank you for loving me so much that there is no longer room within me for any other memory of fatherhood but that which you showed me as my beloved grandfather. You would be proud to know that I have become quite the story teller. I have a pretty powerful story to tell, so I’m going to keep telling it. Otherwise, I spend a lot of my time these days tickling children. It’s fun. But you already know that...