I recently had one of those Dad Talks with my girls. It’s not lost on me that my Dad Talks bring glazed eyes and bored yawns at times, but that doesn’t stop me. My dad used to give Dad Talks, too, and I was the one rolling my eyes in, say, 1977. I was not a perfect child. The thing is that I could roll my eyes far enough to see the wrinkled gray matter of my frontal lobe, and Leo was still going to get his message across. He must have known that all the pained expressions in the world can’t shut off the ears, and a captive audience will listen and absorb a lesson, even one that it wants to reject. My dad is important to this piece because fathers will do what fathers must do.
So, this recent speech of mine was pointed at the idea of dedication, and though I have girls, the thing I said in the car was something like, “This is where the men are separated from the boys.” I was referring to the fact that Macey had passed auditions to perform in two consecutive musicals, and rehearsal times for the second play were going to stretch to 10PM on a nightly basis. At some point, any human being is going to decide if the late hours and lack of home time are worth it. It’s a question that must be answered with passion: will I sacrifice precious sleep, and dinners, and what might be perceived as fun outings with siblings, in order to be a performer?
I know this question well because I answered it myself when I was fifteen. It didn’t take me long to realize that playing the guitar in bars and grimy clubs was worth any sacrifice: I needed to do that work. And at some point, even leaving the comfortable climate of Cambria County was worth it. A departure from Nicktown, Pennsylvania and my parents’ safety zone was not just worth it: it was necessary. So when I peeled out of the driveway one day and drove to New York City with an intention to stay there, it was a choice to leave behind precious Sunday dinners. The football games in our front yard. The games of Risk or Monopoly at the kitchen table. The noisy regular gatherings lorded over by my dad’s self-assured voice. My mom’s Sunday spaghetti: garlic in the pan, sizzling meatballs, and polkas on the radio.
As I toured around America, a pay phone at some restaurant or hotel became my only connection to Nicktown Sundays. I’d call collect and hear the noise. A joyous reveille over miles of wire and dimes of time. It was never easy to hang up. Those calls made me happy because I could almost see my dad at the kitchen table with his glass of brandy. My mom’s apron splashed with tomato sauce. But they made me wistful, too, because I knew I was missing something important. Those moments wouldn’t be replaced.
The other side of the coin was that I wanted to be on tour, in Wisconsin, or San Francisco, or Battle Creek, Michigan. I was fulfilling some purpose that made me whole. I was never one to be homesick, and I never doubted my choices. Still, I knew exactly what I was missing. And my dad knew, too. And my mom. That’s what this little story is really about, especially since my mom and dad are both gone now.
Part of the reason we roll our eyes at Dad Talks is directly related to the sneaky suspicion that our dads might be right about a few things. The eye rolls were an indication that my understanding of the world might be a bit narrower than my father’s. He’d been around the block a few times, and he’d even been fifteen. That is, he understood me. As hard as it was for me to believe, he’d probably felt things that were very similar to the things rumbling around my brain. Still, I won’t imagine that my daughters can grasp the idea that we’re not so dissimilar. I’ve had decades to consider this stuff, and I can’t truly speak to why fifteen year old Gerry rolled his eyes when his Dad said important stuff about life.
But old Leo did get a few things at a level that sometimes baffles me. One of them was me fulfilling my purpose out in America juxtaposed against those distant Sunday dinners. Precious family time missed. That little kick in the head when I hung up the pay phone in Biloxi, Mississippi, or on the corner of 13th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Everybody’s there on Nicktown Hill, and I’m not.
I had a gig at The Cat Club on 13th Street in Manhattan on November 21st, 1990. There’s nothing unusual about this among thousands of gigs, except that the next day was Thanksgiving. We probably went on around 11 o’clock. After a rousing performance that night, I took a cab to Penn Station and hopped on a New Jersey Transit train bound for Metuchen. It was very late, maybe 1:30 in the morning. I’m not sure of the exact time, but I’m certain that my dad was waiting in the parking lot of that deserted Metuchen train station. I had a small duffel bag with me, and I gladly got in the back seat. My brother Jack was with him, and the two of them drove through the night—about six hours—across a darkened Pennsylvania Turnpike. We moved west and the sun would finally rise at our backs.
My dad was sixty years old. And I have to imagine that he remembered fifteen year old Gerry rolling his eyes at the shit his dad said because dads do notice that stuff. He might have remembered times when I wasn’t exactly a stellar son. But I was home in Nicktown for Thanksgiving Day 1990, seated at the loud and crowded table in my mother’s kitchen because he made it so. I don’t remember any details about that day, but I imagine him at the head of the table after dinner. He probably had his hand wrapped around a glass of blackberry brandy. He must have been exhausted, too. But his entire family was there.
The most important piece of this little tale is that my dad’s sacrifice was like medicine to me. I was able to stay in Nicktown for about twenty-four hours, and Leo would drive me back to Manhattan on Friday. But I needed to be at that table far more than he needed me to be there, and he knew that. I don’t imagine that I realized that in 1990. I wasn’t a father then.
I suppose I’m grateful that I have the perception to recognize Thanksgiving 1990 as an important lesson, somewhere on the pole that sits opposite of eye rolls. I’m also grateful for the Dad Talks that made me roll my eyes, and grateful for my father. I’m grateful, too, for his imperfections, and grateful to realize that his struggles and realizations were not so different than mine. My only hope this Thanksgiving is that I can carry some of him forward for my own daughters, and that they’ll recognize the lessons that matter. And, just maybe, that they’ll forgive my imperfections on some distant, still unimagined Thanksgiving morning when I’m just a memory.