Notes: The title and inspiration belong to Harry Chapin.
_____________________
Dear Dad�
I never knew you.
That shouldn�t be how this letter begins, and it wasn�t really what I wanted to say when I sat down to write this. But when I started typing, those were the words that came, so I�m going to leave them there, because the fact is, they�re true.
I wish they weren�t, you know. I didn�t intend for things to end like this, and I�m sure you didn�t either. At some point, in the beginning of all of this, I�m sure you had the right intentions, maybe even the right plan. But things change, and by the time I was old enough to know what a priority was, I already knew that I wasn�t one to you.
Ok, maybe that�s not entirely fair. I�m sure that mom and I made your list of important things in your life. Just below Changing The World, and Humiliating Republicans, and Supporting Matt, and Getting Sam Into The White House. Somewhere, four or five places down the list, there was Loving Your Wife And Son. And I�ll tell you something, dad�it hurt. Mom would never admit it, because that�s who she is, and she�s devoted her life to supporting you, but it hurt her too.
When someone dies, everyone else decides to tell stories about him, maybe to convince themselves that they won�t forget him. That�s how it�s been here for the past few weeks, and I can just imagine your ego swelling now, even as I type the words. Yes, dad. You have been the center of all conversation for quite a few days now. Congratulations. And the thing I�ve discovered in those days is that my father was not the Josh Lyman that these people all knew.
I wish I had known that guy, because I think that he might have actually deserved to be my father.
You were my hero, you know, for so many years. Even while I knew that you had more important things on your mind than teaching me how to read, or watching me play in my first baseball game, my goal in life was to make you proud of me. I still remember the first Mets game you took me to, when I sat there the whole time wearing my lucky glove, hoping desperately for a ball to be hit into our section so that I could catch it and you�d look at me with the same smile I would see when elections were won and bills were passed.
But it didn�t happen, not that day, not ever. That smile was not for me.
I know now that you weren�t always that way, that your work wasn�t always the center of everything in your life, and I wonder sometimes when it changed. It was before I came along, for sure, and probably after the Bartlet administration, because all the stories I hear about you from those days center around a man I don�t recognize. So it all changed right around the time Uncle Matt got elected, right around when you and mom got married.
Was it marriage that changed you? Or the pressure of holding Uncle Leo�s old office? Was it the combination of everything that got to you and made you choose between your work and your family? Or did you just lose sight of what was important?
You know, I was talking to Uncle Toby last night, and he seems to have a pretty good idea of what got into you, of when it all changed. I don�t know if he�s right or not, but it sure sounds like the most reasonable explanation I�ve heard. He says that your change of focus happened when you found out that mom was pregnant with me, and that throwing yourself into your work was just your way of being a father. In your mind, the best thing you could do for me would be to change the world while you still had a chance, to make it a better place for me to live in, to grow up in, and to someday build a family in.
But that wasn�t what I needed.
I remember being at baseball games and watching the other boys� fathers in the stands, calling out pointers, yelling at the umps. I remember spending holidays with the family, up on Grandpa Jed�s farm, or here in the city, and watching Uncle Toby reading to Huck and Molly, and Charlie playing on the floor with his kids. I remember being in your office late at night and peeking into the Oval to see Uncle Matt talking to his boys, or Uncle Sam scribbling on a legal pad with one hand while he held baby Kensie in the other arm.
I don�t remember you doing any of those things.
It seems like as far back as I can recall, it was mom who was there for everything, mom who read bedtime stories to me, and helped me with my homework, and cheered loudly and embarrassingly at my baseball games. You were there for the big events, the bar mitzvah, the graduation, the wedding, but it was mom who helped me learn the texts, and listened to me practice my valedictorian speech, and tied my tie for me when my fingers were shaking too badly with anticipation to do it myself. You might as well have just been ceremonial, ornamental, something to be brought out of its box and dusted off every so often to bring some significance to an event.
It�s not that you weren�t affectionate, because of course you were. I�d see you sometimes in the mornings if you were running late, and you�d always ruffle my hair on your way out the door, tell me to �have a good day, Sport,� and give mom a quick kiss as she handed you your coffee mug. But those brief and fleeting moments were sometimes the only time I would see you during the day. I�d go off to school, and then to Robbie�s when I was younger, and home to an empty house when I was finally old enough to stay alone until mom got out of work. Mom would get home late, tired, and we would order food most nights. Sometimes she would cook, and I�d help, and it would almost be like having a real family. But you were almost never there. When I was really little you�d try to stop home for a few minutes if you had time before I went to bed, but as I got older you didn�t seem to need to do that anymore, and there were more nights than I can count when you weren�t even there by the time I fell asleep.
I could see in mom�s eyes the strain it was placing on her, but there was nothing I could do to fix it. She would see you at work, of course, but there it was all about saving the world, or whatever you liked to call the work you did. When you would come home at night I would sometimes hear you guys talking downstairs. You never fought, not that I ever heard, except those pretend fights you would always have about coffee and flowers and anniversaries, that used to make me laugh and later made me sad, because in those conversations I could see glimpses of the man you were before me. But there were mornings when I would wake to find her sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at that framed photo of you guys from Bartlet�s second inauguration, and I could tell, even when I was little, that she was wondering where that grinning dimpled man had gone.
Just after Uncle Leo died, I came downstairs one night to find mom talking to Aunt CJ on the couch. I stopped at the doorway and heard Aunt CJ saying, �He always did want to be Leo, you know,� and I knew she was talking about you, so I stood there silently and listened. I could hear mom sigh, and after a long pause, she replied, �Well it worked. He�s more like him than he�ll ever realize.�
�He�s so lucky to have you,� CJ said, and mom laughed bitterly before agreeing. �Yeah,� she said wearily. �He�s lucky I�m not like Jenny, I guess.� I didn�t understand what they were talking about for many long years, and when I finally did hear the story of Leo and Jenny, it made me sad, because I knew mom had loved you once, and still did most of the time, but that sometimes the whole thing was just a matter of loyalty to her, a matter of responsibility.
No one wants to be an obligation.
By the time I graduated, I had recognized that I had become one to you�a debt of some sort, a task that you were required to complete. I�m pretty sure you never thought of me that way, at least not consciously, but it was what I was and I knew it, so I left. See, I knew from a young age that the family business wasn�t for me. I don�t know how I could have missed them, but somehow the politician genes skipped a generation or something, because the more I saw of the job that you and mom�not to mention Aunt CJ and Uncle Toby, Uncle Matt, Uncle Sam, Charlie and Zoey, and pretty much everyone else who ever meant anything to me�did, the more I knew that it was the last thing I wanted.
I never wanted to be you.
So I applied to west coast schools and ended up in California, because I had decided when I was very young that I wanted to be a writer like Uncle Sam. I don�t know exactly when it was that Sam became my ideal, but he did at some point, and I knew that you knew it. I also knew that it hurt you, but by the time things like that mattered to me, I had decided not to care.
It was in California that I met Adrienne, and I could never imagine having her as anything other than the highest priority in my life. We graduated and started our careers, and then we married, and I would love to tell you that we are blissfully happy, because we are, but I can�t honestly say something like that, because there is a shadow that hangs over our marriage.
You see, I�ve seen those pictures of you and mom in the days before Uncle Matt was elected, even in that first year as you were falling in love, and I know that at some point you had what Adrienne and I have. Something happened to make all that disappear, and it scares the crap out of me to think that it might happen to us.
You are that shadow.
I will not be you.
You know, when you started calling a couple months ago, I considered replying, I really did. But the thing is, I couldn�t let myself be pulled into that again. I spent my whole childhood trying to get you to notice me as something that mattered, something to care about and be proud of. I failed at that. I know you were disappointed in me when I didn�t go into politics, and I�m sorry for that, but at some point I just had to start living my life for myself and stop trying to be something that I didn�t want to be, and couldn�t even if I tried.
So I didn�t call you back, and now I see my guilt when I look in mom�s eyes.
See, your death destroyed her in a way I never thought possible. All those years, I knew that it hurt her, staying with you, and I thought that she just did it because she felt it was what she should do, and because maybe she was trying to hold on to that love that I could see in your eyes once in a blue moon when you�d look at her. But she loved you, dad, and she still does, and she will until the day she dies. And I don�t think she�ll ever forgive me for letting you die without talking to you one last time.
I didn�t know you were dying, you know. None of us did. I mean, we all knew about the heart condition, but that had been going on for years, and no one saw the heart attack coming until it was over and you were gone. I don�t know if it would have changed anything if I�d known�maybe it wouldn�t have. But maybe I would have called. I guess we�ll never know.
There�s only one thing that�s getting mom through this, and honestly, it�s the thing that scares me even more than your death. Adrienne is pregnant, and every night I wake from a nightmare where I�m walking away from her and the baby, towards something, some goal, that I can�t see and can�t touch, but I know is there, in the opposite direction from them. And it scares me so much, dad. Because I�m afraid that your dimples and your hairline weren�t the only things I inherited.
There�s this picture of us, on the day I was born, and it sits on the table in the front hallway in my house. The man in the picture is not my father. He is the Josh Lyman that existed before me, and for that brief second as he looks down into my sleepy blue eyes, he is still himself.
I wish that man was my father.
I never knew you, dad.
�Isaac