My father grew up poor. The youngest son of four boys with a
baby sister tagging along, his family subsisted on their father’s income as a
carpenter and their mother’s frugal homemaking skills. Needless to say, there
was not a lot to go around and there was no social welfare system in place in
the early ‘30s. No discount food stores or food shelves or food stamps. You
grew it or swapped for it or did without.
One memory my father recently shared with me was about his
mother’s deep-dish clam pie. She’d send them out clamming in the Long Island
Sound off the coast of Connecticut. They’d drift around during low tide,
plunging their hands eight inches or so into the cold wet sand to bring up the
hard shelled clams. It was worth it; she lined a big, deep ceramic bowl with
pastry into which she put the clams with all the rest of the ingredients: potatoes,
onion, and carrots. Was there a white
sauce, I wondered? “It was like a beef stew only with clams,” is what my father
fondly remembers. She would make this special dish only a few times a year.
Dad has a lot of stories of pranks he and his friends
had played – friends with nicknames like “cricket” and “pudgy”. Skinny dipping off the railroad trestle into
the high tidewaters of the Sound seems charming in an old-movie
sort of way (they named this spot their "UBYC": Under the Bridge Yacht Club). Grabbing onto the bumper of the milk truck and “skiing” down the
snowy road in loafers was also the stuff of movies; lighting the road on fire
in front of the high school on Halloween and eluding the cops through the swamp took their
pranks to another level! Getting in trouble with anyone in authority meant you
were punished twice -- and the punishment at home was worst of all.
My father finished his secondary education by taking his
GEDs while in the army. He’d soured on attending high school when he was
ridiculed by a teacher in the tenth grade. The day he decided never to return
to school was the day he began full-time employment with his father. His mother packed him four sandwiches every day to get him through the
long hours of labor. Skinny at age fifteen, and under his father’s thumb, he did a lot
of the messy work, like pulling out old insulation and crawling into tight
places. It was an education of a different kind and one that would carry him
through to old age. One of the jobs he
had, along with his father and brothers, was working for a famous marine
company. There he labored with a crew of skilled carpenters to make mine sweepers
at the end of World War II. I imagine his thin, gentle face in sepia photos on
a wall of a historic museum, standing shoulder to shoulder with this rough and
skilled esprit de corps of first-and second-generation Americans. My father was
proud of the work he did and never regretted dropping out of school to learn a trade.
When Dad wasn’t working, he was actively resting. I can still
picture him stretched out on the couch, snoozing off Mom’s Sunday dinner while
we ran in and out of the house. I know he did yard chores, like mowing the lawn
and fixing things around the house; hanging the Christmas lights along the edge
of the roof; working in his basement shop on a cabinet order. Occasionally he
played with his seven children, hitting fly balls for us to catch, pushing us on
the big rope swing (we were the envy of the entire neighborhood) or taking us
swimming after supper. He enjoyed his time with his fellow volunteer firemen,
spending Sunday mornings there while we attended church with our mother.
It was a gentler time. Blue laws were in effect back then so
there was no frenzied shopping on Sunday. Only the local Rexall would stay open
until noon so that we could pick up our Sunday paper on our way home from
church. There were no local sports events
like soccer tournaments. It was a day
for family. Sometimes my mother’s
parents drove up from Stamford to visit, always bringing along some jelly
donuts. Occasionally we’d pile in the station wagon and drive out to the
country to see my father’s parents in their little house in Falls Village. This
was how we ceased from our labors and took a breath before beginning another
work week.
What my father did NOT do was what we now call “exercise”. I
don’t remember him playing a sport, like golf or tennis, for instance. He
didn’t go bike riding or hiking or camping. We didn’t own a boat so there was
no water skiing. When he swam, it was leisurely. I never saw him run a foot
race, play baseball or chase after a Frisbee.
When, as a smug teenager, I had the audacity to suggest he do some
aerobic exercise for cardiac health, he let me know in no uncertain terms that
he worked HARD every day to support his family, and pay for my dance lessons by
the way. His hard, physical labor was enough and when he didn’t have to work,
he relaxed.
My father is good at resting.
But as he ages and becomes weaker, in part from inactivity, I long for
him to see the benefits of moving around more. My invitation for “Just a short walk, Dad.
It’s sunny out today. How about it?” is met with a semi-severe look of
suspicion. “I’ve already done my physical therapy today.” Other family members see him
gravitating to his recliner and shake their heads: “I’d like to see him time
himself when he goes for a walk, eventually going around the block, but a little
at a time. If he sees his time improving, he’ll feel better about himself.”
That’s not going to happen either.
Even IF my father really understood how being more physically
active would make him FEEL better and thus add quality to the remaining years of his
life, I'm betting he simply will not do it because he is stubbornly set in the examples of
his hardworking father and cohorts. This may be the “greatest generation” but
not when it comes to staying physically active.
They’ve fought the wars, raised their families, paid off their mortgages
and earned their rest.
