The Long Dark Shadows of Small Men

Fair warning: this one’s got fewer punchlines and more gut punches.

A bird got into our house the other day — a finch. It came through the fireplace and repeatedly tried to fly through one of the four skylights in our vaulted ceiling, smacking itself silly each time. A little winged ball of chaos, panic, and confusion — unable to escape, trying to ascend, seeking the light.

I got the extendable rod we use to change lightbulbs and attached a feather duster to it, hoping to encourage the bird out the front door. The finch did not like this. To a small bird, I suppose a feather duster on the end of a long pole looks a lot like a threat — maybe an owl, or a falcon, or the 1982 version of Ozzy Osbourne. The poor thing circled the beams, spiraled and swooped, and looped the loop. Finally, exhausted, it perched on the blade of a ceiling fan. I raised the feather duster toward it, and it hopped on. I lowered the rod and walked it out the door, where it flew up into the canopy of oak trees.

This is a garden-variety day in our canyon. We’ve had bats and rats in the house, bobcats and coyotes in the yard. No big deal — just a sweet little bird doing a fly-by in the house.

Later that night, I got a phone call — my biological father had died.

They found him beside his bed. Maybe a heart attack, maybe a stroke. There weren’t a lot of details. I immediately felt sorry for the EMTs — or whichever poor suckers had to transport his corpse to the morgue. He was six foot seven when he stood up straight — though he often didn’t. His posture resembled a question mark. You could’ve set a beer on his neck and used it as a level to hang pictures. He probably weighed 325 pounds, maybe more, but he wasn’t always that heavy. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in over ten years, but my wife stumbled across a recent photo on someone’s Facebook, and it looked like he’d made chicken and biscuits his primary form of sustenance. He was a big boy but a small man.

He was full of contradictions like that. He fathered four children, but none of them would think to call him Dad. He was one of the most sensitive people I’ve ever met. He could be wounded by someone’s innocent facial expression, interpreting it as a psychic uppercut to his intelligence, intrinsic value, or the size of his tallywacker. But I doubt he gave a second thought to the 19-year-old he cheated on my mom with — just told her he was going out for a pack of Marlboros and drove through three states to disappear.

He could be charming and funny. He could hold court and tell a story. But I also saw him knock my mom around more than once. One of the times he got really rough with her, she fought back — and he wilted like she’d ripped his spine out through his asshole. Some women have bigger dicks than most men. My mom is one of those women.

He loved Johnny Cash, but he loved him the way pyromaniacs love Fahrenheit 451. He listened to A Boy Named Sue and took notes from the deadbeat, not the punchline.

So many funny contradictions.

Funny how he had the build of a giant and the backbone of a jellyfish.

Funny how he could take up so much space but never be around.

Funny how he could be so heavy, but let the rest of us carry the burden.

I got a call from him one day before our inevitable estrangement. He asked me to log onto a website that sold leather bags. They were nice, but I don’t recall ever saying to him — or anyone, for that matter — “You know what I could really use? A fancy-shmancy overpriced leather briefcase.” I know this might sound ungrateful, but it sticks out because it’s one of the few things he ever gave me.

A leather briefcase.

A bag.

Baggage.

Our family tree leans crooked, bowing under the weight of adulterers and philanderers, drunks and junkies, racists and wife-beaters. All that brokenness. All that dead weight. Warped branches. Shallow roots. A trunk twisted and wounded with cavities.

It’s a lot to carry. No wonder he was hunchbacked. But rather than bear the weight of it — pruning the scar tissue, splinting the busted limbs, coaxing the family tree toward the sun — he wrapped it up in a fancy leather bag and called it a gift.

The other thing he gave me was my name. His own father died shortly before I was born, and he convinced my mom to name me after him. So it was less a gift and more a hand-me-down.

When he talked about his dad — who was even larger than he was — he used a tone of reverence. But the tone never really matched the plot. I heard stories about my namesake threatening a neighbor who offered my grandma a ride home when he saw her toting groceries on the side of the road. Rather than offer thanks, my grandfather threatened to beat the shit out of him. He didn’t like the idea of his wife in the car with another man. My guess is he also saw it as a slight — that the neighbor knew our family didn’t have two cars and was rubbing it in.

When my namesake was riding high on the hog, he carried his check stubs in his pocket and worked them into conversations. In his mind, zeroes and dick size were synonyms.

One of my dad’s go-tos when talking about my namesake was to wax poetic about how charming he was. So charming, in fact, that when he died, my grandmother had to turn away several of his mistresses from the funeral. In his mind, charm and betrayal were synonyms.

My namesake cast a long shadow over my father. My father cast that long shadow over me. But that shadow wasn’t long because of their height or their depth. It was long because they stood so far from what mattered.

My mom’s father made a similar mockery of fatherhood, manliness, and basic human decency. He was a mean drunk who told stories of running with the family gang in Long Beach when he was a young man — stealing cars and sticking up liquor stores. The last few decades of his life, he didn’t go farther than a mile or two from his house. He had no teeth because he was terrified of the dentist. He was terrified of slipping in the shower, so he only gave himself sponge baths. And he smelled exactly the way you think he smelled. He would lie on his bed and play solitaire while gumming a Fudgsicle. I only ever saw him in pajama pants, slippers, and T-shirts so threadbare that I could see his slice-o’-salami nipples through the fabric.

The last few years of his life, he went to the 99¢ store every day. He paid for most of his stuff — but he always shoplifted a candy bar or a bag of M&Ms. He was a lifelong hood. Don’t let the petty absurdity of this fool you. When he was drunk, he was a monster. I won’t detail his crimes here, but I will say he died in hospice, and he probably should’ve died in prison.

Which is why it surprised me when my mom cried after his death. But I was much younger then. Now I realize she wasn’t necessarily grieving him, but the wounds he caused, the damage he did — the shadow he cast.

The tears aren’t for the asshole. They’re for the shit he put you through.

It’s been a few weeks since I got the news that my father died, and I feel fantastic.

Light.

Unburdened.

And this remained true even after the dreams started.

Several nights in a row, I had the same dream. A rerun I’ve had for years: I’m walking, and I jump over a snake. I hate snakes. And in the dream, every time I jump over one, there’s another. And another. Until I’m hurdling a never-ending sea of venomous murder noodles.

After my dad’s death, though, the dream changed. Toward the end, an old faceless man pops out of the ground and throws a snake at me — but the snake immediately turns into a kitten. Tiny, soft, and harmless. A scaredy cat. And I wake up feeling light. And unburdened.

Sometimes a snake is a kitten. Sometimes grief is joy. Because life and death are messy — contradictions abound.

One of the things that haunted me most about my father was his holy war against accountability. He refused to apologize for anything. Everything was someone else’s fault. A perpetual victim, he wore righteous indignation like a skin, and he was most comfortable hanging himself from a cross.

I’ve heard my fair share of relatives excuse his behavior over the years. “He’s doing the best he can,” they’d say.

I recently put that to the test.

While driving home, my son said something matter-of-fact that rubbed me raw. And I just laid into him. I raised my voice. I shamed him. I made him cry.

We got home. My daughter took him out for ice cream to calm him down. My wife took me to dinner to calm me down. She listened to me vent and rehash the situation. She gave me the looks she always gives me when I’m drowning in the past, the one that says, “That bag looks heavy. Why don’t you set it down?” And that’s all I needed to arrive at the only correct conclusion: I’d acted like a colossal prick.

I got home and called Sam out of his room. He came to the top of the stairs. I always apologize after I lose my temper with my kids. Usually, I follow it with a but.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper, but your closet can’t look like the BBC news footage from Ukraine.”

“I’m sorry I shouted, but those dirty socks under your bed have started evolving into sentient beings.”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you, but that side eye just aged your mother 14 years.”

There was no but this time.

I said this: “I’m sorry, Sammers. Something was going on with me and I took it out on you. You did nothing wrong. It was entirely my fault, and I promise to do better.”

He came down the stairs, the glow of the early evening sun, soft and warm, catching his face. I hugged him while he was still one step above. My beautiful boy, standing over me.

One of my proudest moments as a father.

Just after the finch got into our house — on that day my dad died — I left to run an errand and received this text from my wife:

The bird is back. WTF?

This time she got a good look at it. Brownish-gray with a red throat. A house finch, they’re called.

Again, it was this little ball of chaos, panic, and confusion — scared and insecure, flailing toward the skylight, desperately trying to escape this home where it had no business.

The first time, I guided it out. The second time, my wife did. Nothing broken. Nothing hurt. We didn’t catch it. We didn’t trap it. We just opened the door, guided it out, and let it go.

It makes sense that my wife would experience this moment too. It’s hard to see clearly when a long shadow has been cast over you — and she’s been with me in all that darkness for so long. She has always been the lighthouse calling me home, back to our family tree — where it’s warm, bright, and unbirdened.