How My Father Became an Amazing Man: Or My Evolution from Boy to Man

From my late teens to my mid thirties, I thought my father was an embarrassment. Why? He was old, afraid, and illiterate. He died when I was in my early 30’s. Now I’m in my late 40’s, and I think that my father was an amazing man. Why? He was old, afraid, and illiterate, but he did his best.

When I was a kid, I didn’t understand why the other kids’ parents looked so odd. They looked more like siblings than parents to me. That was because my parents had me when they were in their late 40’s. I am the youngest of five children, and my siblings are all 10 to 19 years older than I am. My mother was almost the same age as my father, but she didn’t look as old as he did. He was a bald old man, and unlike the other fathers, he almost always wore a brown janitor’s uniform. But his age was the least of it.

It seemed like my father was afraid of everything. He was afraid of fire. He checked the stove and the vents to the heater at least twice a day, and often up to five or six times a day. He was afraid of water. He took baths, but the only water that touched his head was a damp washcloth. He was afraid that he forgot to lock the doors. When he left in the middle of the night to clean the floors and the bathrooms of various stores, he always jiggled the door to make sure that it was locked, and he always came back once or twice to check it again.

When I was a kid, I thought that all trips by freeway began at the same onramp in Pasadena that my father used — even though the Pasadena Freeway was miles away and the San Bernardino Freeway was only one block away. I thought that all fathers rehearsed the contents of shopping lists with their wives if the father needed to go to the market. I thought that all fathers asked their sons to read the comics in the Sunday newspaper to them. Later on I found out I was wrong. Only my father did those things. He couldn’t read, and these were some of the strategies that he used to maneuver through a world that was written in an indecipherable code.

The written word was a mystery to him, but I think his life made sense to him. He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a janitor. He owned his own business; he cleaned the floors and the bathrooms of various stores in Southern California. His main customer was one of his brothers, who owned a chain of stores which sold curtains, carpeting, and bed linen. However, when my father reached his early 70’s, he spent more time socializing than cleaning, so he was forced to “retire.” The uncle that owned that chain of stores saw to it that my father received a pension; so we had enough money to live, but my father didn’t have any reason to wake up in the morning.

He spent the remainder of his life sitting in his armchair (sleeping or watching TV) virtually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He’d always been “old” to me, but his aging process accelerated after that. He went from being a strong bull of a man to shriveled up shell with more and more health problems in the span of about two years. Then he had a massive stroke.

I don’t remember most of his symptoms. I remember that he only said one word: “control.” My mother tried to talk to him, but that was the only thing that he could say. We took him to the hospital, he was admitted, and I’m not sure why, but I was left alone to watch him. He kept trying to get up, and I had to keep telling him that he couldn’t. Over the next few hours, this literally happened about 100 times. I looked in his eyes, and I think that I saw my dad in there somewhere, but he couldn’t communicate. I don’t think that he really even wanted to get up, but some part of his brain kept repeating that signal again and again. That was the last day that he was conscious. He was in a coma the next day, and he died a couple days after that.

When my parents had me, Dad was about the age that I am now: 47. I haven’t had any children, and I’ve had mixed results with my own business: teaching private ESL classes. However, I’ve got him beat when it comes to health problems. I had a minor stroke about four years ago. I had surgery to reattach the retina in my left eye about three years ago, and I had surgery to reattach the retina in my right eye about two years ago. I’ve also had problems with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. “How did you do it, Dad? How were you able to start raising another child when you were my age? Did you think that you had passed the midpoint of your life? Did the future frighten you?”

Dad was afraid of things, but now I know that that’s OK. Everyone is afraid of things, but not everyone is brave. Dad was afraid of things, but he was a brave man, too. He was brave because he didn’t give up; he didn’t quit. And he may have been braver than many because he had special demons to face. I found out after he died that he was afraid of fire because of an accident at work. My father worked as a baker for a large company during World War II, and the oven next to him exploded. He watched his coworker burn to death. Dad was afraid of water because he almost drowned when he was a boy. I don’t know why he was afraid that he’d left doors unlocked, but I’ve “inherited” that fear. I often go back and jiggle doors to make sure that they’re locked. I’m not sure why I worry about it, but I do. I can’t explain why Dad did it, but I can understand it.

I’m not proud that Dad was illiterate, but, again, I’m proud that he didn’t let it stop him. I lived in Japan for about five years, and I’m virtually illiterate in Japanese, so I have some idea what it’s like to be illiterate. I, also, teach English to nonnative speakers, and I see how problems with reading, writing, speaking, and listening can hold people back. Dad didn’t have the luxury of saying, “I can’t.” Even though he was an illiterate janitor, he was the only breadwinner in the family; he bought a house, raised five children, sent them all to college, and he provided them with every necessity — and a thousand other things that his children didn’t need but wanted. He had dreams, but he was too busy caring for his family to do anything about them.

He once told me that he dreamed about being a big rig truck driver, and I imagine that those giant beasts must have looked magnificent to him as he spent hours in his van (which contained all his janitorial supplies) driving from one business to clean to the next. It was an impossible dream for him: he couldn’t have ever handled doing all the paperwork, planning his routes, or spending days away from Mom. But I’m not embarrassed by this dream; it makes me love him more. It makes me love him more because I can see now that Dad was a human being. He had impossible dreams, ridiculous fears, and responsibilities that he didn’t want to face, too

Dad was always an amazing man. I couldn’t see that when I was a boy, but now that I’m a man, I can. Being a man has nothing to do with age really. It is, also, not synonymous with “acting like an adult” — by which most people mean acting like you have a stick up your butt. Being a man, being an adult, means being responsible. Being responsible means that you fulfill your obligations in spite of your fears, in spite of your dreams. Dad did, and he was amazingly successful. I hope that I will be successful, too.