On the Tenth Anniversary

When I was five, my mother married my stepfather, John, a quiet, artistic man. The first man she’d dated that I hadn’t chased out of the house.

I sometimes look at skittish dogs and I smile and hold their gaze. They sense they can trust me; I love them just because, even though I don’t know them. They come over and let me pet them. I think John had this same animal ken with me; a defensive, hard little kid.

That first week we started our new family unit, I climbed into his lap in our new house and asked:

“What do I call you?”

“Whatever feels right to you,” he responded in his even tone.

“OK. I’ll call you dad.” I scooted off to play with my toy cars

My mom tells me she saw his eyes well up before he went to make a ham sandwich.

John had his office in the basement of that house where we would grow up. He’d stand at his drafting table late into the night pasting up ads and product campaigns the old fashioned way.

He was always creating. I’d find him typing away at our brand new Commodore 64. Or at his workbench in the garage. His work always had a certain wry sense of humor. Once he decided to make a shrine to the ham sandwich. For years, an embalmed bun with meat sat in an airtight, glass-fronted, wooden box in a place of honor in the living room.

From John I learned my craft. I learned to sit in a room full of people and watch them reveal themselves. I learned the value of the well-placed witty remark. I learned not to give my dignity away by writing “please love me” letters to the boy who’d broken my heart one summer.

Though it’s technically my sister’s, I currently have custody of what I consider to be one of his greatest works. A monument to his life philosophy.

“What the heck is that?” Is the most common reaction it elicits followed by “Why do you have a giant, white painting?”

Mom was creating a white and off-white living room and wanted a painting to match. So John, a classically trained artist, finished painting the fireplace mantle and took the house paints into the garage. He laid a big, old, much-painted canvas on the floor, set his beer can on it and slapped interior semi-gloss all over it.

“It matches,” he told her as he hung it in the living room the next day. She thought it very avant garde.

He had a way of chuckling under his breath. I know in his way he teased any of us who took it seriously. Trying to understand the painting was like trying to understand him. Was it full of serious content or a joke?

It’s only the people who bother to look, who spend time with it, that begin to see everything. There are tones in the white, textures. Some tell me they see faces, some see city skylines. And they are all there. All that and less.

I usually just let it ride when someone asks me about the painting. Let them come to their own conclusions. That’s what John did. I’m sure he felt criticism of it only belied the artistic ignorance of the speaker. Or their pretentiousness. But sometimes, when comments feel derisive, they hook me and then I play the death card.

“My step-dad painted it," I explain, "…before he died.”

Then the critic squirms: the uncomfortable shifts, the backpedaling, the apologies. It makes me laugh when they then come up with an ad hoc compliment. I think John would laugh too. But then I think maybe he knew it was really about nothing, a giant white painting, no need to compliment or analyze. Maybe he’d be laughing at me for caring so much. Maybe it was the joke he played on all of us.

Of the three of us I was the only child not his blood. Yet in some ways I feel I got the best of him. My sister whom he had with my mom was just a little kid. I’m not sure if he knew how to relate to my brother whom he brought from his first marriage. I was new to him and I’d like to think he recognized a kindred spirit. Yet in death, I am the one with the least claim on him. People don’t get it. They say he was just my step-dad so of course my brother and sister are entitled to more. Not that he had much to leave us. But he shaped such a large part of who I am. He was an equal parent to me just like my own father or my mother.

“Yeah but you still have a dad, they don’t,” is the counter.

Of course that’s true. But does that lessen my loss?

How can we determine who is entitled to grieve the most?

Fortunately, that is a question most dealt without outside our family. Or in my own heart. Among my siblings, we never use the words step or half. For now, I study the painting until my sister gets a permanent home or for as long as she lets me keep it. My favorite part is the ring from his beer can. I trace my fingers around the circle raised in the paint wondering if he sees me and still laughs with that under-toned chuckle. The one I hear in my brother’s voice now.

I can’t believe it’s been ten years. I miss you, dad.