King Oscar in a can

Thinking about my dad and a joke he played as a boy on Chicago's South Side. Dad grew up in an Irish ghetto. His very first job, which he quit after a day or two, was delivering milk from a horse-drawn wagon. He had to get up at what he considered an godawful, early hour but he quite, he told us, because he had not anticipated that he would have to clean up horse dung. The combination of very early rising and cleaning up horse shit was too much for my adolescent dad.

Anyway.

Before he was old enough to get paid employment, dad ran loose in his tenement neighborhood with his 'homies', other Irish-American, Catholic lads. Good kids, basically, but, boys. They needed to stir something up.

One of my dad's first displays of poor public behavior involved going into a local shop and asking the shopkeeper "Do you have King Oscar in a can?" King Oscar is a brand of canned sardines. When the shopkeeper would say 'Yes, we do!" dad and his cohorts would squeal "Well, then let him out!" and rush out of the shop, thrilled at their own bravado.

I loved listening to my dad tell me any stories about his boyhood. He didn't tell many. Dad had beautiful blue eyes that never twinkled enough with happiness. His eyes had a happy glow when he recalled his rebel days and King Oscar.

I believe there was also a brand of canned tobacco named after a king. Dad also liked to go into tobacco stores and ask for the canned, king tobacco.

Yesterday, I spotted King Oscar in a can at Trader Joe's. I suppose Trade Joe's sells King Oscar all the time but I rarely shop for canned fish. When I saw King Oscar yesterday, I bought one can. My dad has been with me, smiling and happy.

Maybe I was thinking about my dad before I saw the sardines. I've been recalling an unhappy story about my dad. Which came first, the happy or the sad story?

My dad was a gambler. Every once in awhile, in the fifties and sixties (I was born in 1953), dad would blow his whole paycheck on the ponies. Harness racing. If ever there was a chump bet, it's harness racing. My dad was a chump gambler. When I was five years old, we had a baby girl, Mary Ann, who only lived two months. On the morning of her funeral, unable to cover the entire cost of the funeral, my dad stopped by my grandpa's house, the same tenement where dad had grown up, and grandpa gave him the money for the funeral home. Then dad went to the tracked and put the entire amount down on a horse, losing, of course. Dad said that he couldn't believe god would let him loose on the day he had to bury his baby daughter. Oh my gosh, the day of Mary Ann's funeral was awful. None of the adults in my orbit ever told me much of anything. Even Mary Ann's death was treated a bit hush hush, like the grown ups wanted me to pretend I didn't notice that my baby sister had ever lived or something. I sure wasn't supposed to act sad or anything and be a burden to my folks.

I was floundering with the loss of my baby sister (I had two brothers, thank you very much, I took the loss of my sister very deeply, sure that a sister would somehow bring me happiness)
trying to hide my sorrow as I was pressured by various aunts and uncles to do. We were all waiting at the house to head to the funeral home, waiting for dad to come with the money to pay the funeral home. We couldn't go without the money. How mortifying to not be able to pay to bury our baby. We kids weren't supposed to know about the money but we did, of course.

Dad was expected home long before he arrived. Then he walked in and ushered mom into the bedroom to tell her what he had done.

What a weak, foolish man.

My grandfather showed up with more money. The funeral went ahead. Dad's gambling took the sting out of losing my baby sister. Even though I was only five and I was not supposed to know what was going on, I did know. I remember being very angry at my dad for causing us more pain on that dad. Somehow, in my five-year-old mind, his gambling away the funeral money tore me apart as much, if not more, than Mary Ann's death.

In recent days, I've been thinking about my dad's choice to do something to hurt himself and his whole family on such an unhappy day. Suddenly, I have great empathy for him. Suddenly, I think I understand why he did it. It was weak and foolish. It caused him a lot more pain. But focussing on the pain of his gambling might have taken the focus off the fact that our baby had died. The gambling pain took the focus -- and maybe some of the sting? -- out of our sorrow. I am pretty sure my dad had borderline personality disorder. It is so borderline to cause one's self pain as a way to spare one's self other pain.

I've also been recalling an incident that occurred after Mary Ann died. Maybe I was seven.

On a Sunday morning, as we scrambled to get ready for mass, Mom announced that she had no money and no food for Sunday dinner. She was hurt and angry. Dad had, once again, gambled his paycheck, although this was not voiced out loud by my mom. The fact of dad's gambling was always supposed to be hidden. In actual fact, until I was in my forties, I never once voiced out loud to any member of my family of origin that my dad was a gambler. We never discussed it, not once. The closest it got to being out in the open would be when mom would complain that she had no money for food in front of us kids. I think she was shaming dad. Or something.

Dad said "I have money, Mary Ann. Let me take the kids to mass and then we'll stop at the grocery store."

My dad rarely went to Sunday mass. Me, Chuck and Joe went to church with dad for a change. I don't know about my brothers but I was aware of the tension. I was very anxious that we were going to run out of food. I wanted what my dad had said to be true, that he had money and there was nothing to worry about.

So, we go to mass and then dad takes us to an unfamiliar grocery store, one I had certainly never been in before. He stopped in the meat eye and handled a packaged smoked butt, some kind of pork. I noted that he handled it, taking it up, putting it down. He didn't put it in the shopping cart. Then he bought something, a loaf of bread, I think. I remember eyeing the items he bought and thinking that he had not bought something that would add up to dinner. I dread the fight mom and dad were going to have about food and money. I felt so sorry for my dad, my mom, all of us. I felt so very bad.

I acted like I did not notice the contents of the shopping cart, keeping my eyes averted.

Dad put the grocery bag on the floor behind the driver's seat. We all piled in and went home.

Getting out of the car, dad lifted a smoked butt from the floor of the car and slipped it into the grocery sack. Aghast, I realized my dad had stolen that meat.

"Did you still that, dad?" I asked, horrified.

"No, no, that was already in the car."

It made me sick that my dad had stolen. And what I did might still be making me a little bit sick today. I pretended, right inside my own self, that I believed dad. I pretended I did not think he stole.

Now, in 2007, I don't really care if my dad stole a few dollars worth of meat. A gambler is a dishonest man. My dad would have stolen anything that he could get away with stealing. The thing about these memories that are bruising me even now is remembering how I created a fiction and substituted it for my reality. In order to survive childhood with my parents, I had to live in a world of artificial assumptions, lies, inventions and pretend I believed them to be true. I disciplined myself to belief that black was white, that up was down. In doing so, I built the foundation of who I am on shifting sands of falsehood and, in many ways, I am still living my life from such shifting sands.

I miss