Reflecting on My Dad's 65th Birthday

It's Time to Celebrate | 🥳 no. 015

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According to my dad, this blurry photo of him on crutches is the only birthday picture he has. If you know my dad, this seems about right.

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Growing up, I don’t remember ever really celebrating my dad’s birthday. Sure, we went out to nice dinners—probably Sizzler or Don José—but there were no birthday parties, no festive decorations, and no singing of happy birthday while we served dad a tiered birthday cake stuffed with candles. The only real commotion came from the house phone ringing throughout the day with folks calling to wish my dad a happy birthday. His birthdays came and went with a nod, and any lingering feelings of celebration quickly disappeared into the dry heat of another Southern California summer.

Wondering if my faulty memory was exaggerating how dismal dad’s birthdays were (are), I sent him a text asking if he had a birthday celebration picture I could include in this post. “Sadly, I don't think anyone’s ever taken my picture on my birthday,” he replied. He eventually sent me a picture; in it, he's around seven years old, on crutches, and his leg is in a cast: “I think the picture was taken on my birthday soon after I broke my leg.”

Confirming dad’s tradition of lackluster birthdays.

Before you start thinking I’ve neglected my dad and he’s surrounded by heartless monsters, it’s worth noting he a) hates having his picture taken; b) hates smiling in pictures when they are taken; c) is totally lukewarm about and gets indigestion from birthday cake; and d) hates being around large groups of people (or people in general). He's an introvert—a self-identified “lone wolf” on good days, a “misanthrope” on bad days—and not having big parties (or any parties at all) is his clearly stated birthday wish.

The best gift you can give dad is solitude (and this is currently at the top of my birthday wishlist, too).

But, last week, dad spent his 65th birthday having a CT scan to check for complications from last year's surgery to remove his cancerous kidney. And that’s about all he did to celebrate.

I feel awful dad spent such a special birthday at the doctor’s office and even worse he had zero plans afterwards to celebrate a milestone no doctor ever thought he’d reach: “You could even live into your forties,” one of his doctors told him after his lung cancer diagnosis at 36.

Well, how about 65 and counting?

What makes dad’s history of unremarkable birthdays lamentable isn’t just how we could have done a better job celebrating him (even within the parameters of his stubbornness); more troubling is the fact they’re missed opportunities to honor and recognize what an achievement it is for him to still be alive.

And so it’s time to celebrate my dad, but how? This calls for more than pointy hats and ice cream.

My motivation to write is partly explained by my wish to honor my dad by telling his story.

The real story, for me, has always been dad’s love, his ability to show up every day as a present, selfless, dedicated stay-at-home father despite the trauma of an abusive childhood and suffering through nearly three decades of illness and chronic pain. He consistently demonstrates what it means to be a resilient, patient, and loving father, and “thank you” is too shallow a word to capture the depth of my gratitude for the man he is and the example he set.

Yet, as much as I want to honor my father by writing about his life, I’ve never been able to shake the ethical problem of being the one to try and impose purpose and coherence on an otherwise random and unfortunate event: My dad never smoked, exercised his whole life, and worked as a personal trainer in his twenties. His early cancer diagnosis and the subsequent havoc it and other illnesses wreaked on his mind and body cannot be redeemed by the archetypal hero’s journey narrative.

Dad has been the one to bear what has felt to him like a pointless, arbitrary suffering on a daily basis for the last 29 years, so for me to show up and talk about how meaningful it’s been—look how resilient and inspiring you are!—would be in poor taste indeed.

To solve this dilemma and in the wake of dad’s 65th birthday, we’ve been brainstorming ways to collaborate. Dad and I have a tradition of talking on the phone every night, catching up on our days and venting our frustrations. During these phone calls, he’s explained how he feels too crummy to write, so the tentative plan is to have him join me for some video podcasts here on dad trying. The mutual hope is he'll find the act of making art out of his illness restorative in some small but meaningful way.

Arthur W. Frank, in his book The Wounded Storyteller, cites a letter he received from a woman named Judith Zaruches who was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. She writes,

Stories have to repair the damage that illness has done to the ill person’s sense of where she is in life, and where she may be going. Stories are a way of redrawing maps and finding new destinations.

By telling his story and redrawing his map, my wish is for dad to find his new destination, one illuminated with purpose and a joy that cannot be compromised or stolen by his pain. Storytelling, I hope, gives dad some agency over his illness, a way of combating the feeling he has lost himself to it.

In this way, I'm reminded of an excerpt from Anatole Broyard's poignant and moving memoir Intoxicated by My Illness when he writes about the therapeutic value of style:

. . . it seems to me that every seriously ill person needs to develop a style for his illness. I think that only by insisting on your style can you keep from falling out of love with yourself as the illness attempts to diminish or disfigure you. Sometimes your vanity is the only thing that's keeping you alive, and your style is the instrument of your vanity. It may not be dying we fear so much, but the diminished self.

These days, with one kidney and one lung, a battered heart, and his body seized by chronic pain and marked front and back with surgical scars, the man who took so much pride in building a powerful body often despairs over its diminishment.

Writing, or talking, is little consolation perhaps, but I hope our father-son interviews give him a space to tell his story and, in doing so, help mitigate the feelings of diminishment and disfiguration he endures on a daily basis. Creating this generational artifact is an act of permanence.

Selfishly, I hope it provides a space for me to understand my own emergent narrative as a father and a space to finally celebrate my hero in the way he deserves.

Although I'm regretful so many of dad's birthdays have been forgettable, we're working together to ensure his story is anything but.

                                                           Thanks for Reading.