Learning Who My Father Really Was
By T.L. HEADLEY
My father was a hard man to get to know – especially for his oldest son. Growing up, I saw little of him except on the weekends. He was a mystery to me – one that I never quite seemed able to understand or even approach.
He worked hard. There was no doubt about that. He was up well before daylight, often driving hundreds of miles, along what passed for roads in West Virginia in the early 1960s, just to get to his job site for the day. He was a mine construction worker. His company did most of the work for Westmoreland Coal throughout the mountains of central Appalachia. It was nothing for him to leave at 4:30 am and not come home for a couple of days – especially if there had been a bad flood or snow storm that had knocked out power to one of the operations.
When he did make it home he often collapsed into bed after struggling to get his knee-high, lace up work boots off. He often went to bed without even cleaning up, he was just too tired to care.
Although he didn’t know it, I worried about him every day. Like many children whose parents worked in and around the coal mines, I worried that he would leave in the morning and I would never see him again. It was a fear that was with me always and the type of fear that shapes me still today.
Some days it almost happened. One day he was working as part of the ground crew while another man was working up on an electric pole. Dad was an electrician and most of the time would have been the one on the pole, but this was one day he decided to let another man do the work. Somehow a steel bar fell, barely missing impaling him, but hitting him at the knee and going down inside his leg till it came out at his ankle and went into the ground. No one told us anything until he called from Logan General Hospital and told us he had hurt his leg but would be home in a bit. A few hours later, three of his buddies carried him into the house with his leg wrapped tightly. He never complained and just days later was back at work.
But try as I might I couldn’t break through and really get to know him. I thought for most of my life that my dad just didn’t like me. I was “different” – a “bookworm.” I didn’t care much for anything else. I didn’t care much about the mechanics of a car, tilling a garden, or learning about his work. Sometimes when I did try to help him with something it seemed I was just in the way and so slowly, surely we grew apart.
Dad had a heart attack at 32 years old and another a year later. He had to leave work for a while and times were very difficult for our family. We were poor as could be. We lived in an old house that belonged to my great-grandparents for several years and it seemed dad drifted further and further away. He seemed to also grow angry. I thought it was due to something I had done, so I drifted further away as well. I never considered that he was depressed and angry that he couldn’t take care of his family as he wanted to.
Dad would take me to basketball games and practices, but I don’t remember ever seeing him smile or laugh. He would just sit – stone silent – watching. In fact, that’s how I remember him most from that time – sitting silent, expressionless.
About the only time I remember him happy was when he finally got the doctor’s clearance to return to work and he went into his bedroom, dug through the closet and pulled out his old, knee-high lace up work boots, lineman’s belt and climbing cleats. He came out with a big smile and without a word went up the utility pole outside our house to the top, belted off and tested his equipment. He came back down the pole in what seemed to be two or three steps, bouncing off the pole with the delight of a child.
A week later he was back at work — hard, outdoor work in all types of weather – and worked for another 25 years.
By the time I was a teenager, my dad and I lived in almost totally separate worlds, with them only colliding when I got in trouble – most often for back-talking or not doing something I was supposed to do. Sometimes, though, it felt like I was just the target of choice.
Then I graduated and moved away, first to Morgantown and then to Huntington, for college. I came home less and less and then a few years later I met the girl who would become my wife. We lived for the most part in Huntington.
After several years, my wife decided to go back to college. We moved back home to a mobile home my parents owned that sat next to their house. I was working at a newspaper and then I went to work as a public relations officer for a state agency. My job took me all over the country and state at a moment’s notice. My wife often couldn’t come along with me — by that time we had our first child.
I didn’t like to travel alone and my father was freshly retired, so for some reason I began to ask him to come with me. The two of us would jump into my car and drive to wherever I was going. And on those trips – slowly and quietly – I learned who my father really was. And it was because of those trips that we became more than father and son – we became close friends who understood and respected each other.
I soon learned that my father had lost his father when he was just eight years old. I knew my grandfather had died young but never really knew much about him or my grandmother, who had died before I was born. My father only had a couple of old photos that showed them and everything else was buried in my father’s mind.
On one trip dad opened up, telling me things that allowed me to see deep inside the man sitting next to me in that car. He told me that he never really knew how to be a father. He never really had a role model to learn from and that I was sort of his guinea pig. He learned from the mistakes he made with me and he cried as he apologized for not being a better father.
He told me about how he and his father had gone to an old coal bank, digging coal for the winter fire at home, when a sudden ice storm hit. He talked about how his father had put him back into a cleft on the rockface, covered him with his coat and laid on top of him, shielding him from the sleet and rain, until it passed. He said his father never recovered from that and died shortly after. He said he always blamed himself for his father’s death.
I sat there in silence… the man I thought was so hard and emotionless … had been hiding this secret torment for 50 years.
On other trips we talked about better things … how he loved to travel and always wanted to visit New Zealand. We talked about his experiences in the Army … how he loved Munich and Frankfurt and hated Paris. We talked about what he had learned from life and how he would change things if he could. And we talked about God.
I knew my father was a Christian and had a strong belief, even though he didn’t regularly go to church. We talked about Christ and about what it is to be truly Christian. We talked about family and how to raise children. We talked endlessly after those flood gates opened and we talked about how I felt when I was growing up. Dad told me he was proud – proud of each of his children – for growing up to be individuals. He was proud that we grew up to be caring people who each carried with us a strong faith. He talked about how he was proud of me standing up for what I thought was right even when it meant standing up to him. He said despite the anger he sometimes felt, he was never prouder of me than when I would disagree with him.
Sitting in that car, on those long rides, we traveled a distance that could not be logged in miles. I grew to understand my dad, and in doing so, I grew to really understand myself, for I AM my father’s son.
TH 2016
The Mind's Eye 