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Bud Grossmann's
Words of the Week
for the Week of
June 19, 2005
Published as Family History
in a WIP dated March 6, 2001.
© 2001 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Three Fathers, Four Sons, 1985
© 1985 by Bud Grossmann
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A STORY OF SONS AND FATHERS
At bedtime one summer evening, a couple years ago, my son David, seventeen years old and frail from muscular dystrophy, asked me to trim his nails. Sitting in his pajamas in his wheelchair beside his bed, Dave was freshly showered. His nails were well-soaked and clean. I found the clippers in a drawer, brought out a little wastebasket, turned on all the lights in the room, and set to work.
“Be careful, Dad,” said the lad. He was, in many ways, daring and strong, but where physical pain was involved—needle pokes, for instance—he was a worrier. I did not acknowledge his warning. After all, being careful with nail clippers goes without saying.
I did the fingernails, no problem, but while doing one of his toes, sure enough, I nipped the quick. Dave’s response was instantaneous and loud. “Son of a bitch!” he said.
My own response was just as swift, but nowhere near as noisy: my eyes flooded with tears. I bit my lip and kept on cutting. What was I going to do, slap the guy? It did cross my mind.
“I didn’t say it to you, Dad, I just said it,” Dave explained.
I understood that. I nodded but didn’t speak. I blinked away my tears so I could keep going with the task.
“What, Dad? What’s the matter?”
I shook my head. Clip, clip. Smaller little nibbles now.
“Dad. I didn’t say it to you.”
“David, I know you didn’t. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“Well, Dad, why are you crying?”
“Too hard to explain. I’m tired, I’m sad. Maybe I’ll tell you some other time. It’s okay. I’m all right. I’m sad, not mad, I’m fine.”
What struck me in the moment of David’s exclamation was my certainty that I would never have said such a thing to my father. I would never have spoken that way to my father’s father, Grandpa Grossmann. Saying “Son of a bitch!” in complaint to either of those good men is somewhere out beyond the bounds of my imagination.
As I continued clipping David’s nails, I began to think, Damn, I’m not much of a dad, not much of a man. I felt a tumble of emotions. Admiration was mixed with resentment and jealousy toward Dad and Grampa. I was envious because they somehow projected a presence so powerful it could prevent a kid from swearing. I wished for more of other manly virtues they passed on to me in insufficient measure: physical strength, mechanical know-how, the willingness to labor long and hard for family (Grampa as a carpenter and farmer; Dad as a career soldier and then a schoolteacher). Oh, I felt low! Son of a bitch!
Those words. “Son of a bitch!” They were an echo of something, and it took me a while to figure out what. It was long ago, at my grandparents’ Wisconsin farm, on another summer day when I did something dumb. I was in my teens, perhaps not yet licensed to drive. For some reason, or for no good reason at all, I drove my grandfather’s ’39 Chevy truck along the unplanted border of the two-acre vegetable garden east of the house. At the far end of the gently sloping field, in soft soil next to the marsh, I lost my momentum and got stuck. The wheels spun till the faded-blue, bug-eyed old brute was buried right up to her running boards. Oh, boy, was I in trouble! I hiked up to the house to confess my crime.
Just as I got there, the gruff old man came out the door. “Grampa,” I said, “I’m sorry. I got the truck stuck.”
He squinted out into the field, saw how deep the truck was dug in, and let out a shout. “Son of a bitch!” is what he said. He wasn’t calling me a son of a bitch—he was just saying it, same as Dave, but I felt small as a boy can feel.
My dad was there, in the house. He came outside when he heard his father’s curse. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Truck stuck,” I mumbled.
Dad looked. “Want me to see what I can do?” he asked.
I didn’t expect that. I thought Grampa would be the one to undo the damage. “Yes, sir! Would you, Dad?”
I was sure we’d have to use the John Deere, and tear up more of the garden in the process. But Dad and I walked down to the truck, and, while I stood off to the side, he climbed into the cab. He turned the key, pushed the starter button on the dash, and kept the revs low as he began to rock. Reverse-to-second, reverse-to-second, reverse-to-second-gear. In about a quarter of a minute, he’d rocked it right out of the hole, and he chugged on up, along the south side of the field, to the house. I trotted behind, on foot.
After trimming nails for my son, I was sad, deeply blue, for a day or two. Though there’s not a lot of logic to it, the feeling comes and goes. I’m a good dad, I know it. And I know of course that no one’s asking me to stand beside someone else to take my measure as a man.
This week Friday my father turns seventy-five. There are many miles between us. But he’s always here to lend a hand, when I get bogged down in the mud. ♦
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