My father was the classic Willy Loman type. Born into post-depression Oakland, California, he was the youngest of three sons. His father ditched out of the family, shortly after his birth, leaving him a bastard. With a lanky awkwardness, a cream and freckled skin, and red hair, dad blossomed into adolescence without knowing the strength of a man's spine or the gentleness of unconditional love. His attractive mother, whose steady eye pierced each tall gentleman who came along, spent her time in saloons and dance halls. She was sociable with strangers, as well as with her favored middle son. Thus, Dad spent his childhood alone, cruising his bicycle (a gift from his oldest brother) throughout the Oakland hills of numbered avenues and suburban villages. He graduated from the technical high school, immediately enlisting for a year of service. Fortunately, with the time being in between both of the great wars, dad was not called upon to serve in any exotic, foreign locale.
Instead, he returned to the backyard of his upbringing, where he set up a bachelor pad and began his lifelong career as a traveling insurance man. It was also in San Francisco where he and my mother were set up on a blind date. They spent their courtship period in bars, engaging in intoxicated, pedantic communion. Within a few years time, mom was pregnant. They eloped on the balcony of dad's penthouse, on Gary Street.
Early on, dad forthrightly admitted that he had little to no parenting skills, - for he had greatly lacked any role models as a young boy. Initially, he asked mom for help in this terrain. Mom, knowing only the control from which she had come (for she was raised underneath the heavy thumb of a teeming and raging alcoholic), easily took the reigns. She neglected to note that dad was asking for guidance. Rather, she heaped all of the roles and responsibilities of parenthood onto her own two, broad shoulders.
Years elapsed as dad worked, traveled, drank, and returned home to his growing family. Meanwhile, mom raised the children, a daughter was born after the first son, kept the home, and continued to work part time as a registered nurse. Communication between mother and father deteriorated as the
