March 22 was my father's 67th birthday. We spent about an hour on the phone.
Last year I didn't call or email him for his birthday and he held a grudge all year. While I felt bad I was kind of annoyed at the pettiness of it and our past issues. But yesterday we actually talked seriously for what was I think the first time ever - and it was really good.
My father and I have always been at odds; we are very different kind of people. He was the oldest son of a Baptist preacher that was the sort that said you could be wet from baptism and still pretty much be going to hell - who later drifted into the fog of Alzheimer's and passed away several years ago. He was at odds with his father too. Dad joined the Army in the late 1960's in order to become a DI and ended up retiring just shy of 30 years later as a Lt Colonel. He is a decorated pilot, a disabled Vietnam veteran, holds a degree in aeronautical engineering and is a graduate of CMSC at Ft. Leavenworth. He was on the Aviation Test Board literally risking his life with prototypes Bell Labs and Huey were offering the military. He served as part of the US military R&D committee at NATO. In short, my dad kicks a whole lot of ass.
So I was born in a world of green and passports and protocol, America was our religion. My first memories are of listening to the helicopters and being able to identify them by sound - cobras, hueys, the heavy fat chinooks with their double rotors and doors open that reminded me of bumblebees. I had bedtime stories on tape with mortars going off in the background in packages with colourful stamps from a place called Laos. (Interesting little thing to remember, don't you think?) With my dad gone and I was still an only child, I carried a 5x7 picture of him everywhere and probably scarred a lot of adults without meaning to innocently showing his picture. "Dis is my daddy in Bietnam," I would say and hold it out proudly. This was all before I was 4 years old.
My dad was gone a lot. TDY - in the 1970s the Army decided everyone needed a second specialty so he went from helicopters to tanks and we were in southern Germany for a number of years. At one point in my teens we averaged it out to something like 11 months out of the year he was gone. And when he was there he had a hard time dealing with a weird kid (me) a sick kid (my younger brother) and a depressed wife.
But he tried. He supported my horrifically bad soccer teams through the Y and DYA and civilian sports leagues, made sure I had official Scouting gear for my first real campout (at great cost given how little Active Duty people made in the 1970s overseas) with my troop, he was the scoutmaster of my brother's Webelos and the Boy Scout troop I belonged to in high school - I got my Order of the Arrow from him. He took us camping and sailing and hiking and he is where I got my taste of the water and adventure.
There were bad times of course, but over all, I came out of it a fairly decent person I think most of the time and I developed character from my dad and his example and rules.
So we talked about sailing and my plans and he gave me both advice and honest support. He talked about his cats - he has nine of them - I come by that honestly too. He has a very low tolerance for bullshit, but when I tried to explain how I felt about the trip - I could tell he understood what I meant even though my choice of words "I'm not afraid," was not really what I wanted to say.
We talked about his health, how his doctor has basically been ignoring his symptoms of arm pain since his emergency bypass year before last - so much for the good care he was promised when he enlisted. But he got pissed and started making calls and tests are suddenly being ordered. He talked openly for the first time about PTSD and how it had hampered him before he admitted 'the Dragon' got hold of him in the past more than he liked. He spoke about it with dignity and strength, not as a victim.
We also talked about his belief that my brother and I both suffer from the genetic changes caused by his being regularly doused in Agent Orange. My brother has been diabetic since he caught a cold at 8 months. I don't even have time to get into all the ways I am weird besides the depression I have previously written about, but the gist of it is - he could be right. Even if he's not actually right - he believes he is right, so my weirdness is not their fault and he can actually treat me like a person. I will let him have that one gratis and with gratitude if it lets us talk again.
He also talked about how in the course of his activities in the Veterans groups he belongs to - Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, Deathstalkers, etc. - he's noticed that out of the actual recorded numbers of "boots on the ground" in Vietnam the survival rate is about 50% of veterans of previous wars. Vietnam vets die faster, have higher levels of certain types of cancer and chronic conditions and every time I talk to my mum someone else from my childhood had died.
But the thing that stood out most to me was this:
"You were born 364 days after I got back from my first tour of Vietnam..."
I never realised until that moment my father marked time based on milestones in my life. It wasn't "you were born the day before the one year anniversary of my first tour." I never thought of my father counting the days until I arrived, or that it mattered more than his career. I knew about him, but I didn't know him at all. Now I can't wait to find out more about him.
My father is 67 years old and talked to me like I'm an adult. Happy birthday, daddy. I love you.