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Boston Globe

My father, so long ago

Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Cancer took him when he was only 56 and I was in my first year of college. He never got to see me grow up and into myself, make my way in the world, or father my own children. He was also spared watching his good Catholic son grow long hair, protest the Vietnam War, take up the guitar, and God knows what else. The tectonic societal shifts and grinds of that era would likely have played out at our kitchen table with glass-rattling shouts and fist-pounding. He may even have disowned me but, then again, he may have related to and embraced me. I had learned from my mother, when I was much too young for such a revelation, that my father himself had a 'lost' period before they met. What did that entail? Again, I'll never know, but I like to think there was bacchanalian revelry, foolish chances taken, and at least one wild, decidedly ill-advised love affair. And I hope that if there was conflict with his own father, it was resolved. Related : Advertisement For years I had a recurring dream in which he would suddenly appear. He had been in a faraway sanitarium or a medical facility, alive all these years, and I, his oblivious, self-centered son, somehow failed to grasp this or reach out to him. I would wake feeling hollow, shaken, and ashamed. Advertisement I can only remember one piece of advice my father gave me: 'Slow down when approaching a curve, then accelerate through it.' I think of him every time I drive a mountain road, and his advice has been helpful as a metaphor as well. When life has thrown me a curve and I locked the brakes, it did not go well. I, like my father, learned to commit to a course and power through. And I, in reaction to my father's taciturn nature, learned to be forthcoming, perhaps overly so, and have passed down a surfeit of advice and anecdotes to my own children. They will be well equipped should they, one day, attempt to decipher and demystify me. One moment remains frozen in time from his last summer. I was soon to leave home for college, and he had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was riding my first set of wheels — a beat-up, BSA 650 motorcycle — up Glenwood Way when I glanced over to see Dad standing on the porch of our 1960s ranch. His eyes met mine, and he flashed a rare smile at the sight of his middle son roaring off on that black beast towards a future he would not live to see. Advertisement