Finding dad in California 70 years ago
I found my dad in someone's blog in California. A woman was going through her recently deceased mother's diary and old letters. Among them were letters as well as a picture my dad sent her 70 years ago during the war. I ran across her blog when idly googling my dad's name. Just as I am ungooglable because my name is the same a famous hairband guitar player, he is instantly googlable because he is the only person ever with his name. Interesting coincidence: the blogger's mom and my parents all died within four weeks of each other.
It was a shock to see letters written by him to someone other than me and my family. It had his kind, somewhat unsure tone that he still spoke with to the day he died. I had seen a story in an online archive of a wartime GI newspaper called CBI Roundup about him writing letters to two girls and mixing up the addresses so that each got the other's letter. I never mentioned finding it to him or mom. Who needs that sort of thing brought up at the end of one's life. Here on the woman's blog were the letters he wrote to this girl he danced with at the Palladium in California.
Here is a picture she found of my dad, taken somewhere in India. We have the same photo. He's wearing the old WWI helmet and holding a WWI rifle, as it was early in the war and the vaunted American industry was only slowly gearing up. Plus India and China, where he served, were on the bottom of the supply lists.
It felt strange to have someone else look at the old photo, as our family's past had been OURS before, not really shared. My father was very private, with basically no friends to speak of for most of his life after the war. He wasn't even close to his brother the last couple decades of his life. That is not to say he did not love and care for people, it's just that the only people he could bring himself to care for were his wife and children. I suppose that was the effect of the war on him.
It all got me wondering about all that had to happen for me to be here. Had my dad gotten together with this woman after the war, the California blogger, my brother, and I would not exist. Sure, my mother would probably have married and had children, and my dad and the woman in California would probably have had children, but the lives we have all lived would not have happened, someone else would have lived instead. I wouldn't have done the things I've done in my life, in schools, in music, with people I know. The blogger in California is a nurse, so I wonder how many lives she has helped make better that would have had to find someone else to help them.
I hate to say it, but it's like that old Star Trek episode, The City on the Edge of Forever, where McCoy goes back in time and saves Joan Collins' life and changes the path of history and Kirk and Spock have to go back in time and stop McCoy from saving her life for all of them to live. If you've never seen it, watch it even if you don't like sci-fi, old Star Trek, or William Shatner, as it is considered by most fans of the series as the best episode ever. But it does point out how everyone's life has an effect on someone, somehow, someday.
It was a shock to see letters written by him to someone other than me and my family. It had his kind, somewhat unsure tone that he still spoke with to the day he died. I had seen a story in an online archive of a wartime GI newspaper called CBI Roundup about him writing letters to two girls and mixing up the addresses so that each got the other's letter. I never mentioned finding it to him or mom. Who needs that sort of thing brought up at the end of one's life. Here on the woman's blog were the letters he wrote to this girl he danced with at the Palladium in California.
Here is a picture she found of my dad, taken somewhere in India. We have the same photo. He's wearing the old WWI helmet and holding a WWI rifle, as it was early in the war and the vaunted American industry was only slowly gearing up. Plus India and China, where he served, were on the bottom of the supply lists.
It felt strange to have someone else look at the old photo, as our family's past had been OURS before, not really shared. My father was very private, with basically no friends to speak of for most of his life after the war. He wasn't even close to his brother the last couple decades of his life. That is not to say he did not love and care for people, it's just that the only people he could bring himself to care for were his wife and children. I suppose that was the effect of the war on him.
It all got me wondering about all that had to happen for me to be here. Had my dad gotten together with this woman after the war, the California blogger, my brother, and I would not exist. Sure, my mother would probably have married and had children, and my dad and the woman in California would probably have had children, but the lives we have all lived would not have happened, someone else would have lived instead. I wouldn't have done the things I've done in my life, in schools, in music, with people I know. The blogger in California is a nurse, so I wonder how many lives she has helped make better that would have had to find someone else to help them.
I hate to say it, but it's like that old Star Trek episode, The City on the Edge of Forever, where McCoy goes back in time and saves Joan Collins' life and changes the path of history and Kirk and Spock have to go back in time and stop McCoy from saving her life for all of them to live. If you've never seen it, watch it even if you don't like sci-fi, old Star Trek, or William Shatner, as it is considered by most fans of the series as the best episode ever. But it does point out how everyone's life has an effect on someone, somehow, someday.
Comments
Post a Comment