The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt. ~Max Lerner
WHAT TO LEAVE BEHIND
Carolyn B Healy
There I was, two years old, crazy about my father (I’m told, because of course I can’t remember), and he dies. Over the years in waves that come years and sometimes decades apart, I launch into projects in an effort to get to know him and figure out which parts of me are linked to him. As a child who can’t remember her parent, I am a walking advertisement for ethical wills.
Here’s what I’ve learned about him: he was a great guy, more a poet than a salesman (he worked for a book publisher), talented musician who had his own band in high school, who fell hard for my mother when they met at a Christmas party and found a way to send her roses while she visited her family in the North Carolina mountains the next week. His boss told me 50 years after his death that he might well have become president of the company and I believed him since he still had my dad’s picture on his office wall. I read the stack of condolence letters from colleagues and clients that poured in after his death, describing his intelligence and good will. I read narratives his sisters wrote about their growing up in Chicago. I memorized the photos of my early life. Since he took most of them, he rarely appears, which allows me to see through his eyes, in a way. MORE . . .
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STRAIGHT UP
Ellie Searl
It started as a game I’d play with my father, a hard-nosed drinker and long-time alcoholic, although it took years before I came to understand that. Dad would give me tastes, laughing at the faces I made, and quiz me on their names. Manhattan, Rob Roy, Daiquiri, Whiskey Sour, Gimlet, Old Fashioned, Black and White Russian. I learned them all. Early. Perhaps Dad believed in the Forbidden Fruit Theory: Become an educated drinker while young and avoid the abuse of alcohol as a teenager. But it’s more likely he wanted to share his shame with someone who wouldn’t judge him. And judge him I didn’t until years later when I realized abuse was the operative word when it came to my father's drinking habits, an observation he chose to ignore. His relationship to liquor is an ambiguous legacy left on my soul, like an unattractive callus I can't scrape off but occasionally keeps the stones from hurting.
Dad's three-shelved liquor cabinet was above and to the right of the sink where clean dishes should have gone, alcohol being far more essential than any immediate needs of the kitchen. That cupboard was my father's savings and loan of satisfaction. He stocked-piled all kinds of liquor - scotch, rye, vodka, gin, whiskey, bourbon. Mixers and supplements - bitters, tonic, club soda, maraschino cherries. Stainless steel accessories - ice bucket etched with a penguin, cocktail shaker with a spout and handle, like an elongated coffee pot, strainers, slicers, stirrers, tongs. Everything necessary for the art of mixology. MORE . . .
