Thursday, August 11, 2011

FOR CHARLIE, WHO WOULD BE 14 TODAY...



It’s 14 years later now. Fourteen years separated from the day I held you, my son, for what seemed like a moment of genuinely suspended animation. That moment, comprised almost entirely of sorrow the likes of which I could never, in my most empathetic moment, have ever imagined, was tempered by fear that any movement, any shift of focus, would cause the river of time to start flowing again, its unforgiving waters to come pushing through the doors of the little room just off the nurses station in which we sat together, rising to overwhelm us forever. Sometimes I wish that we could have drowned in that river, you and I. If we had, I wouldn’t need to write this now. More often, though, I just wish for the tens or maybe hundreds of things that went wrong that summer to have magically gone right. I wish that we were here, above water, together.

I’ve spent the last few days beside the waves on the most beautiful of coasts, and tomorrow I’ll be on the water again, in great company, floating, casting for fish, soaking up a world for which I am longing, but from which I am separated for now. And I often dream of how different my world would be if I could have only shared experiences like these with you. This is every father’s dream, of course, and there’s a very specific reason for mine. The dream is a way of keeping you near, of remembering you, of imagining who you might have been, of thinking about all the ways in which you’ve changed me, and the ways in which I might be different still if you had lived.

This is your day. It’s a day of sorrow, certainly, but as the years pass an increment of joy remains in it as well, because there is pleasure as well as pain in thinking about the beautiful young man you would have been on your 14th birthday. It is this way. It must be this way. That pain is the price to be paid for keeping you alive in my heart, in all of our hearts.

On this day I also often think of my own hopes and imperfections, two inseparable considerations, it seems, and contemplate the degree of love that even the most imperfect of men is capable of offering to his son. Two moments in two of the great movies of all time, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, for me perfectly sum up that love, that desire for the welfare and company of one’s children, and the regret for a life that took one too many wrong turns on a path choked with multiple forks in the road. In the second film, we see a young Vito Corleone assassinate a local don practiced in a parasitical “protection” of the neighborhood in New York’s Little Italy which they share. Vito’s escape from the scene, over the rooftops of that neighborhood during a parade commemorating the Feast of San Gennaro, ends when he arrives home to his wife and the three sons, all sitting outside on the steps of their modest apartment. He joins them silently, attending to the youngest, a newborn whose path in life he cannot yet know, though we in the audience do. “Michael, your father loves you very much,” he says to the infant, and there is no denying the exquisitely expressed truth of that simple statement.

The other scene plays out in the story’s timeline some 30 years later. Vito, now old and infirm, expresses to a grown Michael the political reality of the family business he is about to inherit, as well as one of its possible immediate outcomes, and the interaction of the actors, the tenderness of the screenplay, and its aliveness to the way fathers and sons silently express their affection and respect for each other in the way the men take up physical space together and inside the frame, perfectly crystallize the movie’s understanding, without moral judgment, of a flawed man’s dashed hopes and undying love for his boy. It is one scene inside a film full of similar empathy and power, a film that I so wish we could have one day seen together. I can only offer my thoughts of it to you in the hope that somewhere you’ll understand and know that, Charlie, your father loves you very much.


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13 comments:

  1. Beautiful and important post, Dennis. I'm going to share it with someone who must read it.

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  2. Beautiful post, simply beautiful. Really made me stop and think about my own situation and how much we all take many of the moments in our life for granted. Anyways, just wanted to express how much this post touched me.

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  3. Sal Soul-Pilot GomezAugust 11, 2011 11:22 AM

    Dennis....my friend. I am proud to call you my friend. And every year on this day you prove to all of us that you are indeed a good and loving father. Charlie knows this and I'm sure Charlie has the same dreams and desires that you express as a father who misses his son as surely he misses his father.

    I am not a man who is as expressive in my writing as you but I will say this, please never stop sharing you feelings about Charlie. They remind all of us about what it means to be a father. If more men could be as expressive with their children I am so sure this world would be a much better place.

    Thank You.

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  4. I feel I must thank you for this, Dennis. I hope writing it was good for you. Reading it was good for me.

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  5. Tears in my eyes. A lump in my throat. I don't even have children of my own, but this post hit me like an arrow.

    Love and respect, Dennis: your humanity speaks for itself.

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  6. Over the years, I feel like I've gotten to know Charlie through you and you through him. Few people could find a way to celebrate the memory as nobly as you have, Dennis.

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  7. I've never been more bowled over by your remarkable ability to express the very personal. Not just your ability, but your willingness.

    As Jim said, thank you very much for this Dennis.

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  8. Dennis, I still remember an image you once posted of a boy sitting in a pier in reference to your son. And this new post has brought tears to my eyes. I always learn to appreciate many important things in life every time I return to your blog. Thanks, man.

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  9. I just held my son a little closer because of this, Dennis. Thank you for sharing this very personal, private conversation to remind us of Charlie.

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  10. I love writers who write from the heart; even if it's a pained heart.

    Well done, Dennis. I can't begin to imagine how you feel about Charlie (then, now, ever), but I can relate to "writing it out."

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  11. This could not have been easy to write. Thank you.

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  12. Dennis,
    Fantastic post,
    Glad I found your blog this evening , you are very special man and a great Father...
    My Best wishes to you from Perth, WA.

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