Absence of Dad

I'm reading a hysterically funny book by Jim Gaffigan called Dad Is Fat.  As he described his dad and his determination not to be at all like him, I commiserated.  My father was not an alcoholic, he was miserable without the aid of an intoxicant.

He was born and raised in Italy, in Sardinia, he would have you know, which is better than Italy.  I believe he was hard of hearing, speaking very loud very broken English all his life.  Because he was loud, he also appeared to be constantly angry, even when he was joking.  And by the way, he had no sense of humor.  Joking amounted to making fun of someone.  He loved All In the Family, and began to fondly call my mother a dingbat after Edith Bunker.  Ha ha.

Because he slipped into the US illegally, when he was found out he had to go back to Italy.  Thanks to intervention by Senator John O. Pastore, forever after known as a saint, and because he was married with two children, he was allowed to go do whatever he had to do to make Italy and the US happy, and then come back.

I was three.  He had decided he wanted to take me with him, even got me a passport,

at which time my mother flipped out, assuming he would take me and never come back.  This was either due to my mother's pervasive fearfulness, understandable under the circumstances, or my father's inability to instill confidence in him, probably both.  Anyway, I lost my big chance to go to Italy.

When he left my mother, she had me, my infant sister, and my wheelchair-bound grandmother, no driver's license, and a farmhouse in the boonies.  She had a nervous breakdown, which back in the day meant she was anxious and depressed.  Back in the day she was prescribed sleeping pills, which added to the troubles.  Assorted uncles would drive her to get groceries and aunts would try to tell her everything was going to be all right.

He was gone for I believe three years.  That's a long time for a woman with I'm assuming no income, no means of transportation, an invalid mother and toddler, and a baby.

I have absolutely no recollection of those years.  My memories start back up again when I started first grade.  And because my mother had a huge dysfunctional family, and the dysfunction continued with my immediate family, and mostly involved poor communication, you now know as much as I know about those years.

I can only imagine the effects of the separation on each of us.  I was already chubby and too serious so I can't blame the separation on that.  But I do recall one Halloween night when my father was taking us around to visit a couple of aunts and uncles.  I believe I was somewhere around eight.  Shortly after we got to Aunt Vivian and Uncle Jim's my dad and my uncle left.  I doubt that he was gone long, but when he came back I was in tears, inconsolable, because I thought he'd been abducted.  Not that he took off, but was taken away.  In fact, he had gone to help my uncle change a tire.

I wonder if the separation when I was small and my sister newborn led to him feeling alienated from us.  Was he angrier when he got back than when he left?  No idea.

But the inhumanity of forcing a parent to leave a family to satisfy legal requirements of citizenship for god's sake.  You just need to put yourself in the shoes of the immigrant, who just wanted to come here to have a better life.

At least he got all those t's crossed and dotted those i's.