I’ve got this picture. A canvas. Seal Beach pier, all quiet, gray, and empty. He signed the back of it. A gift to me. It’s one of the few, minimalist, and completely honest-to-God reflections of love I ever got from that man. Because he, my organic father, he was a man of… glimpses.
I have his face. I have his voice. A beautiful, strange, and completely secondhand inheritance. I didn’t even know who the hell he was until I was eleven. He just… appeared one day in a park. This stranger who looked like me. And my mother, with her beautiful, casual, and completely devastating timing, says, “Oh, by the way, this is your real dad.” The one who tagged her behind a Tommy’s Burger, knocked her up, and then rode off into the goddamn Sierras to hunt and fish and start a new, “real” family.
And Christ, in those mountains, he was a god. He was an artist. I’d watch him. He wasn’t just fishing; he was a goddamn ballet dancer with a graphite rod. I’d be ahead of him on the creek, a stupid, impatient kid, throwing my Royal Wolf into a hole, pulling out a six-inch minnow. And then he’d come along, this quiet, beautiful, and completely focused man, and he’d study the water. He’d sit on a boulder, his tongue just sticking out the side of his mouth, and he’d pull out his little net, scooping flies from the surface, analyzing them. He’d open his vest, this beautiful, $1500 library of feathers and thread, find the exact match, tie it on, and then… the cast. A perfect, silent, and completely magical loop of line that would drop that tiny fly onto the water like a goddamn prayer. And boom. An 11-inch. A 12-inch. A beautiful, fat, creek trout, pulled from the same goddamn hole I just spooked to hell. He was a perfectionist. He loved his gear, his tools, his beautiful, orderly, and completely sacred world.
That was the man.
But that man, the artist, the hunter, the god… he was married to her. Cheryl. The puppet master. The one who pulled his strings. And when he was with her, he changed. We all saw it. His kids saw it. I saw it. The Papa Bear, the alpha, the patriarch… he’d just… shrink. He’d become less. A quiet, respectable, and completely castrated version of himself. He’d pick her over his kids. He’d pick her over me.
And I spent my whole goddamn, beautiful, fucked-up life trying to impress him. The ghost. The man I saw on the river. I went out, and I built empires. I became a millionaire. I became a Senior Project Manager, a Senior Mechanical Engineer. I reinvented myself, over and over, a beautiful, ugly, and completely desperate magic trick. And I’d bring him my trophies, my accomplishments, my proof. And he’d just… look past me. He’d praise his other kids, the “weightless forms,” the pawnshop workers, the ones who never left the goddamn nest. You’d think they’d won the Nobel Prize, the way he talked about them. And me? The one son who was just like him? The one who built, who conquered, who won? He just… nothing. You can’t win that man’s endorsement. It’s a rigged goddamn game.
And the root of it all? That beautiful, ugly, and completely selfish desire for money. His need for a bag of gold. I saw it bubble up. When we were looking at property in Mexico. When the check came at dinner, and his hands would just… disappear. He traded his own goddamn kids, his own soul, for a retirement fund, for a quiet, respectable life, for a woman. He let her move his kids to another state, rip them out of school, lose their friends, all for the “plan.” He failed. He failed to be the father, the strength, the one, true, honest-to-God man in the room. He was afraid. He was… pussy-whipped.
And now? Now he’s in his 70s. Him and her. Locked in their beautiful Colorado house, their quiet, respectable, and completely sterile prison. Two old, wrinkled people, just… waiting. He’s her goddamn butler. “Do the dishes.” “Mow the lawn.” “Did you ask my permission?” He has one friend. One person to talk to. One person to beg. A beautiful, tragic, and completely wasted potential. A failed prodigy of that World War 2 generation, a man who got the spark and just… let it go out.
The legacy? Christ, there is no legacy. The grandkids, they don’t know him. The kids are scattered and broken. There’s just… the money. The bag of gold. He’ll die on top of it, alone, in a quiet, clean, and completely empty room. And they’ll find him there, and look at all the money he saved.
And I look at this… this beautiful, ugly, and completely honest tragedy… and I see the lesson. The one, final, beautiful gift he ever gave me. He showed me, with his own beautiful, quiet, and completely wasted life, that the bag of gold is a goddamn trap. That a life lived in a cage, even a comfortable one, is just a slow, quiet, and completely respectable way to die. He taught me what a failed legacy looks like.
And for that, for that one, last, beautiful, and completely honest lesson… I thank him.
He showed me the only thing worth leaving behind isn’t the goddamn money.
It’s the story.
