My Dad and I are Pen Pals Now

My dad’s name is Curt, and that’s what my brother and I have always called him. My parents weren’t into the whole “mommy/daddy” thing.

Curt is a retired carpenter, hobbyist oil painter, and passionate bluegrass musician. He lives in rural Massachusetts, 3,000 miles away from my home in California. I see him once a year if I’m lucky.

Curt likes to brag that he studied computers in college when he studied engineering at UMass in the late 60s. Back then, of course, computers were a very different animal. The school probably had one “computer”—a gigantic, room-sized mainframe that only the engineering students had any hope of ever glimpsing in person.

Almost forty computerless years later, someone gave Curt their old desktop computer, but he has yet to figure out how to use it, despite his alleged extensive computer training in college. I get the occasional sporadic email with the lone word “test” in the subject line. When I reply to it, Curt calls me on the phone.

And by phone, I mean landline. Remember those? He did get a cellphone, at one point, “for emergencies”, but he never could figure out how to turn it on, never mind answer it or make a phone call. So, that paperweight didn’t last long.

Staying in touch is a hurdle for us, but suddenly a few months ago, after 38+ years of knowing each other, Curt and I became pen pals. I started getting letters in the mail. I think Curt is trying to meet me on my level. He knows that I’m a writer and that I loathe and abhor the phone. I must emphasize that these letters were his idea.

I love them.

Neither of my parents has ever been much into the family aspect of being in a family. But all of a sudden Curt has started to fill me in on his childhood. He sends me these one-page chapters from his growing-up experience, replete with awesome line drawings like the one at right. The drawings remind of something from The Little Prince, but that might be because I’ve been somewhat obsessed with Antoine De Saint Exupery lately.

My dad’s childhood was not awesome by conventional standards. He and his nine brothers and sisters were raised in the slummy projects of depressing Worcester, Massachusetts by their underemployed single mom, Peg, after their dad left the family and ran off with another woman. Peg managed to raise ten kids by herself on very little money, and as far as my dad and his brothers and sisters are concerned, she was right up there with Mother Theresa.

I remember Gramma Peg as an overweight, chain-smoking, highball-drinking semi-stranger with a house overrun by my millions of cousins, so that I never got much attention. (Apparently, the Hamiltons are meant to be breeders, so not sure where I went wrong.) I had a preference for my other grandmother, who favored me because I was her first grandchild and doted on me from day one.

But my dad remembers Peg, and his entire childhood, with nothing but love, gratitude and respect. Curt’s ability to appreciate the simple things in life and to be happy with what he was given is an admirable trait that I both envy and aspire to every day.

It’s taken me way too long to realize that Curt is a not just a great dad, but a pretty awesome role model for me in this life.

Oh and also, he doesn’t read my blog, so in case you are wondering, I am not just trying to get on his good side. I tried to get him to read my blog for a while, but he would just get impatient with me and say, “What the hell is a blog?” I gave up.