LOOK BACK AT ANGER

This is a picture of my Dad. His age is about 40, maybe younger. I remember 60 years ago, we were living in a pulp mill town on Vancouver Island. My Dad was laying wet concrete. I don’t remember if it was planned or impulse, but my little hands were imprinted in the wet concrete. They may still be there, some sixty years later. Unlikely, but possible.

One of my earliest memories at age four was getting into a fight. I punched a kid in the eye. It felt good. I felt bad. I remember my older brother Kelly leading me home after the punch.

The next memory is running out the front door down the street naked. My Mother in hot pursuit. She caught me, spanked me, and that was that. Enter shame.

We moved from Port Alberni, that stinky town on Vancouver Island, where the predominant smell was the rotten egg stench of the local pulp mill. My Dad probably worked there. Mills is the name, and millwork’s my game. In subsequent years we moved to Missoula Montana, then Aberdeen Washington, then Portland Oregon, and finally back to Canada.

Those first 15 years were marked with violence and anger. I had four older brothers. Then there were two younger sisters. A big family. Someone made the mistake of asking my father at a party if he was Catholic or just careless. He never found the humour in that comment.

When I was age 5, John Kennedy was assassinated. I remember watching Lee Harvey Oswald on the black and white TV, being lead down a hall, and Jack Ruby in overcoat with a gun shooting Oswald.

I remember the nightly news with Walter Cronkite, and the horrific images of the Vietnam War brought into our living room every night. I remember Martin Luther King’s assassination. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. The naked Vietnamese girl covered in napalm running down the street.

Today’s wars are hidden. We are not directly affected. People are maimed and killed every day in the world. Some in wars, some in supermarkets, some in schools.

I remember my Dad coming home from the mill, where he had fired a guy. The guy came back with brass knuckles and broke my Father’s cheekbone. My Dad’s black and blue swollen face. Him eating from a large straw a blenderized dinner. Stitches, bandages, months off work. Plastic surgery on his face, which sounded so space aged. Plastic surgery. What part of his face was plastic I wanted to know?

I remember my second oldest brother attacked in the parking lot of the same mill. My brother had been driving a car with friends, and someone in that car yelled at this guy. This guy met my brother in the parking lot, and sliced open his back with a razor. More than a hundred stitches I was told. He lived, my brother. But violence was in our face, written on our cheekbones, our backs.

Last night, I went to bed thinking about Dutch Savage. He was a wrestler on TV when we lived in Portland in the 70’s. He was known as the King of the Coal Miners Glove. “A coal miners glove is a a big heavy leather glove, similar to a welders glove. It has a band of metal wrapped around the knuckle area.

Stipulations: The glove hangs atop one of the ring posts about 10 feet high. The first participant to gain possession of the glove gets to use it on his opponent and with that usually comes the win. A pinfall is still needed to win but after the use of the glove....”

Dutch Savage was the King of the Coal Miners Glove Match. I remember it being called The West Virginia Coal Miners Death Match, a supreme example of staged violence. Was wrestling real or fake? These were the questions we lived with in those days. Was the war justified? Why were people rioting in the cities? There were also questions about John Lennon saying the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ.

Poor John Lennon. Recently we observed the anniversary of the day he was shot. I love his music. Imagine was the first album I ever received, a Christmas gift from one of my brothers. “Imagine all the people…. living in the world. “

I woke this morning, not with thoughts of war or Dutch Savage, but of my Father’s favourite chair. How they had to have it reupholstered in the 70’s to replace the oil stain from where my Dad’s head, heavy with Vitalis, rested.

“Grooms hair without grease”. Brylcream- a little dab will do you. How to manage wild unruly hair. Mad Magazine parodied the Vitalis ads with Volatils- Hair Remover, the new painless way to lose hair in a day.

They said Vitalis was greaseless, but the chair told a different story. “And no one heard at all, not even the chair.” So sayeth Neil Diamond, who recently attended the opening of a Broadway musical based on his music. Neil was forced to retire with Parkinson’s, but here he was, leading the crowd in a joyful rendition of Sweet Caroline- So Good, So Good, So Good. The old Lion roars.

My little league team was called the Lions. We had a green cap with a large white L on it. My baseball career was two years. Grade 5 and 6. We were 3- 12 the first year, and 0-15 the second year. The L for Lions became an L for Losers. And despite the team being so pathetic, what was even more pathetic, was that I sat on the bench most of those two years. So was the toxic masculinity of coaching, where the kids who were best were the only kids who got to play, further factored by the kids whose Fathers came to the practice. My Dad never came.

He was often on the road when I was growing up. I do remember the day he came to see us play a game. I don’t remember if I played or not. I remember being in the backseat of the car listening to him yelling. His anger filled the car. I don’t remember what he said, but for years I held a grudge. How could he never come, then yell at me for not playing. That was what I took from that moment.

Now in my 60’s, I choose to remember this incident in a different way. Perhaps he was mad at the unfair system of the Little League that denied me the chance to play, railing against the unfairness. Perhaps I took his anger at the system as personal, when it was not even directed at me. Perhaps. Probably not, but this is how I choose to frame this now.

When my wife and I had our daughter, I was the same age as my father when he and my Mother had me. She was the same age as my wife. They grew up in a different time, living through the Great Depression, fighting in WW2.

Through the eyes of fatherhood, I came to understand my Dad better. I found forgiveness when I was faced similar choices as he did. The choices I made were filtered through the lens of someone who grew up in a different time. I had the maturity to own my anger when it erupted, always apologizing immediately.

Was it good that my anger burst out when it did? Most likely not. But I told my daughter that anger is a human emotion, an important one. We have to take responsibility for our anger. We have the choice to not get angry. We can choose a different approach.

So if we get angry around other people, we need to own it, and take responsibility for it. This is a more important lesson than hair products, or professional wrestling.