Fathers and Sons

I just got a letter from my “student”. He wished to know how to draw, so his father, a Baptist Minister from down the street, came knocking at my door last January. The reason that it was his father that came was because my student is in prison. The kid has the eye, he can recognize value, and he had a fair concept of reproduction so I agreed to help him. Little did I know that I was going to become his father confessor for all the angst that goes with a young 20 something year old, who just happens to be in prison. Art seems to be the last thing on his mind. He wants to talk about girls, He wants to get his GED, he wants to go into the Military and see the world, he wants to join the CIA, how he feels about the world, what he wants to do when he gets out, his beliefs and his opinions on things. At 21 he hasn’t got an opinion on anything, but like most 21 year olds he thinks he does. During our initial correspondence he claimed to be a born again Christian,(obviously succumbing to his fathers desires) having left his heathen ways of Wicca behind him. Recently he has decided to return to his Goddess worship and informed me of this change in great detail. Well, it seems to go against the grain with his father and in the last letter I read he included a letter from his father denouncing this decision. And {GEE! Imagine THAT…!) it read like a sermon. I was slightly implicated as a possible bad influence.

I refuse to discuss the subject of religion with anyone. The people that ask are either looking for the secret handshake of their particular cult, or if they don’t get it, they try to convince you that what you believe (no matter what it is) is so wrong and ridiculous that they are going to make it their mission to attempt to steer you to the proper path, namely the one they’re on. But there’s more at work here then just the conflict of Faiths. There’s the ever present clash of a man who sees his offspring as a 6 year old who can barely use the toilet on his own no matter what age he is, and a man child attempting to achieve his own beliefs and his own life.

I figured I’d share my version of this conflict concerning my father and myself. My father is of the old school, he was pre-Elvis. I recall him seeing the Beatles on the tube for the first time, raising his finger heaven word (I always thought he was attempting to get better reception between himself and God) and announced that this was the end of civilization as we knew it, and that those Assholes needed to get a job and a haircut. My father likes control. My father doesn’t like surprises, and he doesn’t want to try anything new. My father thinks in absolutes. My father feels that everything you buy should be functional-everything else is junk. My father believes that a man should have a job, either in business or have a trade. When I announced to my father that I was going to art school he thought I was insane. I’m not using that term lightly: My father thought I had literally lost my mind, that I should seek professional help of the mental variety. It’s almost humorous when I recall that he took me to my first art museum. We were killing time in Boston, doing Thanksgiving-My Grandmother had recently passed away and my mother and her siblings were still in mourning. My sister had done a world history class and all the pictures in her book claimed to be from the Boston Museum of Art....SO He took the kids to the Boston Museum of fine art, where he managed to embarrass himself by asking a guard if the El Greco’s he saw on the walls were reproductions. The Guard looked at my father like one might look at a dog that had just pissed on the carpet and said “Sir, This is THE Boston Museum of FINE ART, there are NO reproductions here.” Now My father isn't stupid, he took a western culture class in college. He reilizes that somebody in history did these pieces of artwork and they are in museums...And in my father’s mind, that is what art is and where art belongs.

During one Christmas trip home after I had Graduated from Art School and done quite well there, my mother began to nudge me in the direction of the Family portrait. She had been bugging me about this for years. She wanted Rembrandt. She wanted her in her house, her husband and her children in browns and Golds…I kept putting her off, I had to make a living at this point. So I listened to what she had to say and made a few suggestions. My Father over hearing this conversation harrumphed his dissatisfaction. Now My dad can harrumph with the best of them. He’s a world class critic, and can show disgust with the twitch of an eyebrow. Noticing this I commented that I knew how he would want to be portrayed: His best blue suit with his hand on top of the German WW 1 spiked helmet that sat on top of the family bible. I noticed a sparkle in his eye, momentary but definite. Now a bit of History, a spiked German helmet was the Holy Grail in our family. IF you found one and brought it home all would be forgiven no matter the crime (I did find him one and gave it to him a few years later…and we’ve gotten along better ever since.) It was the one thing that he always wanted ( I still haven't figured out the funtion of one yet.) Later in the week after this conversation my father and I found ourselves in yet another debate concerning some social issues, and although my arguments were sound and logical, my father claimed victory because he was the “Autocrat” of our family. He then asked me if I knew what an Autocrat was…my response was “Yeah, Caligula, Hitler, Mussolini…all autocrats.”

My Father’s Birthday falls about a week after Christmas and for the life of me I could never remember the date. But that year I had a plan. I was going to fix him. When I returned to Boston (I had moved there a year after I graduated from college) I got out all the books I owned about the History of Posters, IE WW 1 posters and got my Cousin Lisa to stand at attention with a broom. I drew my father’s serious look from memory (Not difficult, I had seen that face many times pointed at me) and drew him in a WW 1 German Uniform with an Iron cross and various other medals over his heart, on his head a spiked helmet, and he was saluting with a sword. Under it I wrote “My Father- Autocrat”. It took me a couple of hours including the oval Mat. I put it in an envelope with a birthday card and waited for the shit to hit the fan.

My Mother was very Ill at the time. My father doesn’t call anybody that doesn’t include his business. He’d say “Get that asshole on the phone and let me talk to him!” SO a week later my phone rings. “Albert K. This is you father.” I am just sure he is calling me to tell me that my mother has succumbed to her illness and to come home for the funeral. “Hi Dad, what’s up? Is everything OK?”

“Yes” he says, “Everything is fine here. I called to say thank you for my birthday present. I want to ask you a question. How are you able to do that?”

“Do what, Dad?”

“How are you able to look inside me like that?”

I instantly realized that I had inadvertently pushed one of my father’s buttons, and not a little one either, I had pushed one that was one of his secret buttons.

“Dad, that’s what I do, that’s why I went to Art school, that’s what they taught me to do.” It was half true, but it was an answer he could live with.

“Well I just wanted to say thank you, here, talk to your mother.”

My mom got on the phone and the only words that I could muster was “What in the Hell was That?”

She sounded confused and excited at the same time.

“He brought that envelope in and opened it, and then sat there silently and looked at it for about 10 minutes and then demanded my role of dimes…” (another piece of the puzzle, my mother kept a role of dimes in the house, Why, no one ever found out. But God help you if you touched her role of dimes.) “When I ask him what he wanted them for he said he was going to go the Post office to make copies of the picture you sent him and then he was going to send them to everyone so that ‘those assholes will know just who they’re dealing with!”

And he did. He also took it to all his business meetings and instead of the wood grained plastic sign in front of him that had his name, he put the picture that I drew.

A side note; about a year later I told him that if he loved the picture so much I’d be happy to frame it for him (He had it wrapped in a piece of Plastic wrap) He thought that was great. I told him to send it to me and I’d frame it and either bring it with me next time I came or I’d send it to him. He absolutely refused. “You want to frame it, fine. You come here and frame it, that picture never leaves me.” And that was the end of that. So I framed it for him the next time I went out and now that he's retired I have it on good authority that the minute you come into his house he steers you to that picture and then shows you the house he lives in. He wants you to know just who your dealing with.

I think that that was the first time that my father believed that maybe I wasn’t insane for wanting to go to Art School, that maybe I did know better what to do with my life, and that maybe Art didn’t belong just in museums. I think that eventually every father and son have a moment like this, the son realizes that his father is just a man, scared and as unsure as the son is. And the father realizes that the son is not a child, that he is unique to himself and that although he might look like the little boy who wet his pants, he isn’t.anyway good luck, and maintain.