reading my father

This morning, at the library, I found a first edition copy of “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates, published in 1961 when he was 35. My mother was 35 that year. My father would have been 39. Lately, I’ve been drawn to these writers of that time: Updike, Barthelme, Cheever, Kerouac, Roth, Malamud. Today, I realized that I’m trying to read my Father.

My Dad and I don’t talk any more. He lives alone in Avalon, NJ in the house he and Mom purchased in the late 60s as a summer home, which later became their dream retirement home. I don’t call and he doesn’t either. Dad’s personal story is epic and I wish we were close enough to write it together. In the absence of that, I’ve started some notes, encouraged by a poet named Ted Kooser, who suggested just writing short sketches as you think of them. I’ve started over the last couple of days.

I’d like use that same technique to capture some memories of Sean. He tried hard to read me, I know. We spoke of that a few times, happily.

This is not unique in any way. We all try to understand people, and it sometimes happens that the people closest to us are the ones seemingly unreadable. It occurred to me today that the reading begins with the writing and that involves a personal effort. In the meantime, it now makes sense to me why reading Updike’s short stories help me understand and feel what Mom and Dad felt in those days after the war, working and living, raising my brother and me.

I’m impatient, though. A bit scatter-brained, wanting to write as well as read about “this”. Impatience turns into recognition of the scatter…and remembering what Donald Barthelme said about art…that “…it is a true account of the activity of the mind”.

The picture above is Richard Yates, the picture on the dust jacket of his first book, “Revolutionary Road” (1961).