For Dad on Father’s Day

My birth father was a violent, unpredictable man. After he and my mother finally divorced, the last thing any of us kids wanted was another man around. So when Mother remarried, we weren’t the most welcoming to our stepfather. But he won us over with his quiet steady caring, his reliable responsibility, and his willingness to take on all five of us, to become Little League coach and Scout leader. Eventually we were calling him “Dad.”

Mother died first. Years later, when Dad was facing a protracted end due to cancer and had to be in a nursing home in a town where none of us kids lived any longer, my sister and I divided the week between us to go stay in that town and spend each day with him, our brothers pitching in when they could. When Dad’s end was near, my sister called, and I packed my kids in the car and drove like a drag racer to make it to that town in time. We all did. Dad died in my arms and my sister’s while the boys all stood around him as close as they could get. Afterward, one of the nursing-home aides said to me, “Surely, that man was loved!”

This poem is for Dad on Father's Day.

CONVERSATION WITH MY MOTHER’S PICTURE

You and Dad were entirely happy here—

you in purple miniskirt, white vest and tights

(you always wore what was already too young

for me), Dad in purple striped pants,

a Kansas State newsboy’s cap

made for a bigger man’s head.

You both held Wildcat flags and megaphones

to cheer the football team who,

like the rest of the college, despised you

middle-aged townies, arranging for their penicillin

and pregnancy tests and selling them

cameras and stereos at deep discount.

But you were happy

in this picture, before they found

oat-cells in your lungs.

After the verdict, he took you to Disneyland,

this man who married you and your five children

when I was fifteen. He took you cross-country

to visit your family, unseen

since your messy divorce.

He took you to St. Louis

and Six Flags Over Texas and to Topeka

for radiation treatments.

I don’t think he ever believed

you could die. Now he’s going

the same way. And none of us

live in that Wildcat town with the man

who earned his “Dad” the hard way

from suspicious kids and nursed

your last days. For me, this new dying

brings back yours, leaving me only this image

of you both cheering for lucky winners.

Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)