Eyes
Front
Dec 3 2013
The best conversations with my dad
happened on the way somewhere.
He would be watching traffic,
feathering the brakes
steering deftly,
punching it hard
from a standing stop.
As if releasing
some pent-up aggression.
As if he'd have preferred
something sportier, sexier.
I also sat, eyes front,
belted-in
at the other end
of the long bench seat,
his looming presence
in my peripheral vision.
Like talking long distance
but you couldn't hang-up.
Between us
the rearview mirror,
where a glance might intersect
meeting half-way.
And the radio's green luminescence,
the intercession
of play-by-play,
a baseball game
on some faraway field
filling the awkward pause.
I still love listening,
transported, in the car.
After dark, especially --
the aural balm
of the announcer's folksy drawl,
the unrushed pace
of the game without a clock.
This is as close as I came
to intimacy, confession.
The purity
of the spoken word,
detached
from body heat
facial expression.
And from eyes
that can penetrate a boy's
excruciating self-consciousness.
The big V8
was like a sensory deprivation chamber,
smoothing over broken roads
muffling the outside world.
It didn't lean into turns, adjust to the curves
like some elegant foreign machine;
it powered through.
And I felt protected
under its steady dependable wing.
It was a good car
for a self-made man.
Who wore a suit to the office,
and infrequently took
even Saturday off.
Who effortlessly sported
a dapper fedora,
even long after hats
were no longer worn.
The kind with a small feather
in its black silk band
angled jauntily back.
Which I've always considered
an oddly flamboyant touch;
the inner peacock, perhaps,
but well enough subdued
to not be thought unmanly.
I'm not sure
how well he understood,
held
his judgement.
But when I talked, he seemed to listen
thoughtfully enough,
concerned, if unsure
just how to respond.
And I probably said too much
to my captive audience
in that secluded car.
Where eye contact
would have seemed unnatural
and it was easy to talk.
As he watched the road
and measured his words
and steered us safely home.
A driver and single passenger conversing in a car has a special dynamic: the difficulty of eye contact ("eyes front") conspires with the confessional seclusion of that privileged space, in the soft glow of the dashboard light, to create its own intimacy. It's a space that gives permission to talk about sensitive things, informed by the unspoken rule that what is said here stays here. This is where the poem began: trying to re-create that feeling, that flash of recognition in which my voice becomes the reader's.
There actually wasn't much one-on-one between my father and me. And not particularly in the car: we weren't chauffeured around, like kids are today; and if we were, it was my mother who did the driving. But I do have a persistent memory of something like this; and in the poem, a single incident becomes a vehicle with which to explore the past.
It was a big blue Mercury Marquis (notwithstanding my recurrent trope of the Buick Roadmaster!) And it was probably CBC radio (which would have been my choice, not his); but I couldn't resist baseball, since driving at night and listening to a ball game -- from anywhere -- is one of the great pleasures of life.
He wasn't taciturn. But the home front was my mother's job. And he worked a lot. (Yes, also half-days Saturdays, for many years. Which is what you do when you're starting a business and have payroll to meet. Although I suspect he lost the tie and jacket that one day of the week!) And -- as were most men in those days -- he wasn't particularly comfortable with emotion, hardly demonstrative: we were (are) not a "touchy-feely" family. (Our nuclear family, that is. My brothers' families are very much so, and they deserve all the credit in the world for that.) It's only natural that my mother and father learned how to parent from theirs, and both of their families tended to be distant, rigid, old school. I also think my parents derived more pleasure from their friends than from their children; and with them, he was outgoing and effervescent. This may seem odd, in our highly child-centred culture. But in those days, I think this was much more common.
As for me (equally complicit; because if I were different, I might very well elicit a different response), I either was, or learned to be, very emotionally self-sufficient: I didn't easily share; and still don't. (Or if so, in writing only!) I console myself. I intellectualize, re-frame, introspect. (Although "self-sufficiency" may be more conceit than accomplishment. Perhaps suppressing/denying my neediness is closer to the truth.) ...Anyway, it goes without saying that a heartfelt one-on-one was rare.
I like the oblique way the character of the father emerges through the eyes of a child. Who can dscribe, but lacks insight. Who might observe his father, but is still too young to see him as an autonomous human being: with an exterior life not defined exclusively by fatherhood; and with the unknowable interior life of a middle aged man. Or perhaps the child looking back from his own adulthood, and for the first time considering that actual man. So there's the sympathetic realization of "pent-up aggression", the "sportier, sexier"; of a seemingly conventional man, whose small plain feather becomes a restrained subversive act; and of suppressed frustration from having chosen duty. There's the somewhat perplexed concern of a taciturn man (who "(holds) his judgement" and "listen(s) thoughtfully", "unsure ... how to respond".) And there's the larger-than-life father of memory through the metaphor of the car, who fixes what's "broken", "smooths (things) over", "powers through", and "protect(s)"; who is "steady" and "dependable".
I think the last three lines really nail it: the manly attributes of quiet stoicism and strength and constancy come clearly through "as he watched the road/ and measured his words/ and steered us safely home." I'm really pleased that the poem ended with "home", a word with such powerful resonance of safety ...familiarity ...origin.
The best conversations with my dad
happened on the way somewhere.
He would be watching traffic,
feathering the brakes
steering deftly,
punching it hard
from a standing stop.
As if releasing
some pent-up aggression.
As if he'd have preferred
something sportier, sexier.
I also sat, eyes front,
belted-in
at the other end
of the long bench seat,
his looming presence
in my peripheral vision.
Like talking long distance
but you couldn't hang-up.
Between us
the rearview mirror,
where a glance might intersect
meeting half-way.
And the radio's green luminescence,
the intercession
of play-by-play,
a baseball game
on some faraway field
filling the awkward pause.
I still love listening,
transported, in the car.
After dark, especially --
the aural balm
of the announcer's folksy drawl,
the unrushed pace
of the game without a clock.
This is as close as I came
to intimacy, confession.
The purity
of the spoken word,
detached
from body heat
facial expression.
And from eyes
that can penetrate a boy's
excruciating self-consciousness.
The big V8
was like a sensory deprivation chamber,
smoothing over broken roads
muffling the outside world.
It didn't lean into turns, adjust to the curves
like some elegant foreign machine;
it powered through.
And I felt protected
under its steady dependable wing.
It was a good car
for a self-made man.
Who wore a suit to the office,
and infrequently took
even Saturday off.
Who effortlessly sported
a dapper fedora,
even long after hats
were no longer worn.
The kind with a small feather
in its black silk band
angled jauntily back.
Which I've always considered
an oddly flamboyant touch;
the inner peacock, perhaps,
but well enough subdued
to not be thought unmanly.
I'm not sure
how well he understood,
held
his judgement.
But when I talked, he seemed to listen
thoughtfully enough,
concerned, if unsure
just how to respond.
And I probably said too much
to my captive audience
in that secluded car.
Where eye contact
would have seemed unnatural
and it was easy to talk.
As he watched the road
and measured his words
and steered us safely home.
A driver and single passenger conversing in a car has a special dynamic: the difficulty of eye contact ("eyes front") conspires with the confessional seclusion of that privileged space, in the soft glow of the dashboard light, to create its own intimacy. It's a space that gives permission to talk about sensitive things, informed by the unspoken rule that what is said here stays here. This is where the poem began: trying to re-create that feeling, that flash of recognition in which my voice becomes the reader's.
There actually wasn't much one-on-one between my father and me. And not particularly in the car: we weren't chauffeured around, like kids are today; and if we were, it was my mother who did the driving. But I do have a persistent memory of something like this; and in the poem, a single incident becomes a vehicle with which to explore the past.
It was a big blue Mercury Marquis (notwithstanding my recurrent trope of the Buick Roadmaster!) And it was probably CBC radio (which would have been my choice, not his); but I couldn't resist baseball, since driving at night and listening to a ball game -- from anywhere -- is one of the great pleasures of life.
He wasn't taciturn. But the home front was my mother's job. And he worked a lot. (Yes, also half-days Saturdays, for many years. Which is what you do when you're starting a business and have payroll to meet. Although I suspect he lost the tie and jacket that one day of the week!) And -- as were most men in those days -- he wasn't particularly comfortable with emotion, hardly demonstrative: we were (are) not a "touchy-feely" family. (Our nuclear family, that is. My brothers' families are very much so, and they deserve all the credit in the world for that.) It's only natural that my mother and father learned how to parent from theirs, and both of their families tended to be distant, rigid, old school. I also think my parents derived more pleasure from their friends than from their children; and with them, he was outgoing and effervescent. This may seem odd, in our highly child-centred culture. But in those days, I think this was much more common.
As for me (equally complicit; because if I were different, I might very well elicit a different response), I either was, or learned to be, very emotionally self-sufficient: I didn't easily share; and still don't. (Or if so, in writing only!) I console myself. I intellectualize, re-frame, introspect. (Although "self-sufficiency" may be more conceit than accomplishment. Perhaps suppressing/denying my neediness is closer to the truth.) ...Anyway, it goes without saying that a heartfelt one-on-one was rare.
I like the oblique way the character of the father emerges through the eyes of a child. Who can dscribe, but lacks insight. Who might observe his father, but is still too young to see him as an autonomous human being: with an exterior life not defined exclusively by fatherhood; and with the unknowable interior life of a middle aged man. Or perhaps the child looking back from his own adulthood, and for the first time considering that actual man. So there's the sympathetic realization of "pent-up aggression", the "sportier, sexier"; of a seemingly conventional man, whose small plain feather becomes a restrained subversive act; and of suppressed frustration from having chosen duty. There's the somewhat perplexed concern of a taciturn man (who "(holds) his judgement" and "listen(s) thoughtfully", "unsure ... how to respond".) And there's the larger-than-life father of memory through the metaphor of the car, who fixes what's "broken", "smooths (things) over", "powers through", and "protect(s)"; who is "steady" and "dependable".
I think the last three lines really nail it: the manly attributes of quiet stoicism and strength and constancy come clearly through "as he watched the road/ and measured his words/ and steered us safely home." I'm really pleased that the poem ended with "home", a word with such powerful resonance of safety ...familiarity ...origin.
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