Every year I repost this little tribute I wrote about my father:
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| My dad, with me and my sister |
Our house was modest, gray, with two juniper trees ornately
framing our abode. My father
meticulously tended to his garden. We
were never wont for flowers or beautiful shrubbery. In spite of the fact that my father's hours
as the owner of a box manufacturing company kept him at the warehouse during
the summer until nearly 10 p.m., he managed to raise the most bountiful garden
in the whole neighborhood. It was his
pride and joy. It was a pleasure to turn
down our street and see the luscious green lawn, clipped just right, framed by
rows of flowers my father would painstakingly grow from seeds.
My father was a good man, but I did not know it then. I was spoiled; I had no idea what it was like
to work as hard as he did, to come from what he had come from.
I considered my father an aloof, insensitive man. Truth is, he was anything of the sort. He was raised in a time and culture so far
from my life; he may as well have come from Mars. I did not understand then how important
heritage was. To me it was trivial and
played a very small role in my life. I
did not understand culture and customs.
I was American first and foremost, my parents were immigrants and that
did not apply to me.
Sitting on my mother's
lap, listening to her talk on for hours in her native tongue, I could feel her
chest rising and waning to the tone of a language I would never learn, a
culture I would resist.
And now I have
come back, full circle.
Back to the
dusty, barren valley floor that burnt my toes in the summer and gave me Tule
fog in the winter
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/loathed-by-motorists-loved-by-fruit-trees-californias-tule-fog-fades-away/.
Twenty years of wandering
and exploring made me no smarter than the day I left.
Maybe I was smarter then.
Maybe I should have seen the wisdom in my
father, his kindness, and his generosity.
There was the time when he attempted to sell our neat, tidy
little cottage home to an African-American woman who had been given money for
her property so a freeway could be built in its place. Some things can stick out in one's memory as if it were
yesterday. It is her face that I will
never forget. First was exhilaration, a
face that could not contain her happiness at being able to have such a pleasant
and well-cared-for home with an elaborate garden full of flowers. But that would not last. Word spread like wildfire and neighborhood
meetings soon popped up in our living room as if some important figure were
planning a visit. To the neighbors, this
was just as important.
I would sit amongst them and observe. A child's
vantage point in a sea of adult wisdom.
“What about my husband's
flowers?” our neighbor's
wife was heard to say. What was so
important about flowers, I mused. “Our
property values will go down,"
they continued on.
In the end, my father bent to their demands. I was there when he broke the news to the
woman with the happy charcoal-colored face and saw the smile fade to such
disappointment I could feel it all the way across the room. And then there was my father's face. His downcast eyes let me know he completely
understood the heartbreak she felt. She
left then, fading into the horizon and I never saw after that, but I never
forgot.
My father never breathed a word of animosity to any race
different than his own. I would sit for
the longest time studying the wedding portrait of an African-American family
with wide, bright, milk-colored smiles framed by dark skin that accentuated
this brilliance. In the picture neatly
planted among these tall, dark figures, stood my very white father, all of
5'2", with one of the biggest smiles on his face that rivaled the smiles
of those around him. Clearly, he was as
happy and proud to be there as they were to have him as their guest. The owner of the packing company they no
doubt worked for in some capacity. I
would imagine that this was the marriage of some foreman's son, or his daughter, or a packinghouse
worker. I never knew for sure. I was fascinated by this picture and studied
it for hours it seemed. I was enthralled
by the differences, the mystery of a race kept secret to me, a people so far away
from my life. So far, in fact, I may as
well have been looking at a National Geographic picture.
In the 1950s, African-Americans were regulated to live in
their own community, on the west side of town, over the railroad tracks. In my neighborhood, where I shopped, where I
went to school, I would never see such a person. They were foreigners in their own
country. Who established these
boundaries was never explained to me.
My father must have understood this dilemma; our own people
were chased from their homeland due to racial bigotry and religious
intolerance. Our families' histories were rife with
suffering and stories of lost and dying relatives separated from each other,
succumbing to starvation and many other cruel and inhumane treatments by their
oppressors. But the saga continued even
in this land of freedom they cherished so much.
Some years after my father passed away, I discovered a piece
of my family's history
that had been strangely kept from me.
Our race, the Armenians, also had a section of town where they all
lived. With a prospering business, our
family could well afford a new home in the more luxurious northern part of
town, and God knows my father had earned it.
Yet in the final process my father was stopped from completing his own
dreams by a small piece of paper and by men of small minds. Written into the mortgages of this affluent
part of town was a small clause that excluded ownership by certain races. Sandwiched between various undesirables were:
“...and peoples of the Ottoman Empire",
a clear statement that Armenians were not allowed in the newly built suburb and
were not wanted as neighbors. We would
be barred from living there until the 1960s when the civil rights movement was
in full sway. Newer houses omitted this
clause. I understood then why my father
was so tenderhearted to the woman of another color.
It was strange that I was never told about this roadblock in
our lives. The children's innocence must be
protected, I assume. I was not to learn
hate. My parents never breathed a word
of disrespect to the land that had offered them freedom and a place of refuge.
I hope I have learned these lessons from my father and can
pass them on to my own children.
Happy Father's Day, Dad
