He bought me a baseball glove. No small thing for him to do. This man who was my father worked as a mechanic for the Minneapolis Gas Company, and spent his spare time being the union president. Mechanics were not paid that much, and union presidents were paid even less considering the stress and late hours that went with the job. He usually brought his checks home, turned them over to his wife, and collected back from her two weeks of street car fare and cigarette money, down to the nickel. When cigarette prices went up, they would renegotiate his allowance, often with anger. Coffee break was an old whiskey bottle filled with about equal parts of coffee, milk and sugar carried neatly in his back pant’s pocket. Lunch was a sandwich and thermos of coffee extracted from a perfectly black and battered lunch bucket. But this week he had varied the routine, had Ruth cough up a few bucks extra, made a trip to the hardware store, and bought his eight year old son a fielder’s glove.

He sort of materialized behind first base, a position I was playing not too elegantly wearing a borrowed glove. As I think of it, that was how he so often appeared in my life, at one moment not there at all and not even a thought in my mind and the next deeply present, a wiry intense Irish gnome. He offered me the glove with pride, and I accepted it with some joy, and then realization, and then apprehension.

It was a fielder’s mitt, and I was a first baseman. I would have much preferred the long loop of a trap to its five fingers. It was designed to fit on the left hand. I threw with my left hand. My glove had to be on my right hand, which is where I proceeded to put this one, little finger up the thumb slot, and thumb up the little finger side of the glove. "That’s not right," Charlie said, "You got it on the wrong hand."

"I throw with my left hand, dad."

"Well, try it the other way. I can’t take this back. I got it on sale."

So I tried, and tried mightily, and failed, failed thoroughly. Absolutely could not throw with my right hand. Balls bouncing halfway to their targets, and ten feet off the correct line. And he got madder and madder and madder. Finally walking off swearing in disgust carrying the "goddamn" glove.

I think it was about that time I decided that I was not going to be like him. When I came home from work, my clothes were not going to stink with the smell of stale gas. I was not going to bubble with humor to impress and please people who I did not really care about. My temper was not going to rest on a delicate trigger, ready to explode at the slightest provocation. I was going to be my left-handed self and let those who saw it their business to reform me bounce off. As Ruth said in comparing me to my sister, "Mary argues but then she does what I want. John smiles, and then does whatever he wanted to do in the first place." I smiled when she said that, and made no comment, thereby acknowledging her point without allowing it to change anything.

Using this strategy I have for nearly fifty years been on a journey away from my father. As he lay dying of cancer, he told me he had one deep regret, and that was the day he bought me the fielder’s mitt, the one for the wrong hand. "I shouldn’t of got mad about that," he said. I told him it was all right, nothing to worry about, and did not tell him that he had cast a die with that event that affected our relationship for life, because I would not hurt him in that moment, and because the same strategy was still in force, to smile, and move through whatever, pretty much unscathed.

Do all sons move away from their fathers? I suppose not, but it does seem that many of us do, as do many daughters move away from their mothers.

I became a clergyman, something Charlie could never have done. Then a corporate employee operating at a conceptual level Charlie never understood, for a salary Charlie never commanded. Then a consultant to executives sitting comfortably in plush offices that my father would never have been invited to insult with the dirt of his overalls. And now an author with a decent following, articulating thoughts and feelings the old man never had. I have traveled a long way from that sand lot and a longer way from the narrow bias of my father’s life view.

The other day, another consultant and I were discussing an executive with whom we had both worked. I was long in my praise for his actions, spoke admiringly of his intelligence, and expressed my envy for his political skills. For some unknown reason in the light of my statements of unmitigated adulation, my colleague asked what I felt about this man deep down, in my heart of hearts.

"Oh," I said, "deep down? In my heart of hearts?" I focussed on the grease spot where my breakfast plate had been. "Deep down and in my heart of hearts I think he is a predator upon the working class, paid ten times what he is worth, overly concerned about his image, and a failure on most of the variables on which I judge a real man.

"But, then," I added in response to his shocked silence, "you must realize that you are asking the union president’s son."

Which makes me wonder if any son moves very far from his father.

The author of this essay is John Cowan. He has written two books of similar essays: Small Decencies and The Common Table Each is approximately 160 pages in paperback. To purchase either book by mail send a check for $10 per book to him at 1498 Goodrich, St. Paul, MN 55105. Price will be negotiated for any order over 20 books. If you wish to discuss consulting or speaking engagements or attendance at a workshop he may be reached by e-mail. His address is Johnedie@aol.com

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