Anita Adams retired from a career in newspaper advertising at five different newspapers, followed by a second career as a Meat/Food Inspector for the State of California and Southwest Airlines. Always a Pollyanna, she always knew tomorrow would be better! But sometimes tomorrow took a long time.
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Father's Day
Father's Day
Everyone has a dad. And there are really only three kinds: a good dad, a bad dad, or no dad at all.
A group I belong to is having a meeting tomorrow, and we’ve been asked to bring a picture of our father. It had been a while since I’d thought much about mine. But last summer, while unpacking yet another box from a recent move, I made a discovery. Right on top was a Bible. Embossed in gold: “Logan H. Duncan.” My dad.
What?! I had my father’s Bible?
My parents split up when I was eight years old. How did I end up with his Bible?
Underneath the Bible was a journal he had started in Europe after the Battle of the Bulge. The first entry, dated May 28, 1945, read:
*“In one of the rare, beautiful evenings of Belgium, I find my heart very lonely, indeed. My whole soul reaches out for something it cannot attain. My feelings travel the many miles separating me from the ones I love. Home seems just a vague memory or some faint dream difficult to recall.”*
Shortly after I was born, Pearl Harbor was attacked and America entered the war. My dad, along with three of his siblings, joined the Army. Since he was a minister, he served as a sergeant and chaplain’s assistant. His brother, Earl Dean, was a P-51 Mustang pilot in the Army Air Corps. His sister, Alvarea, was a captain in the WAC. His brother, Ernest, worked as a statistician for the Army.
My parents’ marriage was not made in heaven. How they even found each other remains a mystery—and since neither especially liked children, it’s even more remarkable they had three.
Just before Christmas 1945, my father returned to Chetopa, Kansas, his hometown. He had stayed on as part of the Occupation Forces in Germany. And suddenly, there was this man living with us. We’d been doing just fine without him, and I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing there. Daddy? Hmm.
My brothers were a handful, and I was often blamed for things I didn’t do. When he punished me, I was deeply offended.
Later on, he dragged me—kicking and screaming—to the dentist. What a monster! That summer, his idea of teaching me to swim was tossing me into the pool and letting instinct take over. “I’ll catch you!” he said—but he didn’t. This man was making my life miserable.
Still, there were a few sweet memories. He used to sing a little ditty:
*I had a little parasol, long, long ago
I left it in the rain one day,
and that was the end.*
And I remember one time my mother played a trick on him. He loved apples. She found a plastic apple that looked perfectly real and placed it in a bowl on top of the refrigerator. He spotted it, took it down, and looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “Are these apples good?” he asked.
“Yes! They’re delicious!” I answered.
We shared a rare moment of laughter.
Then there was the Sunday dinner when my brother Ron, a picky eater, was whining about the food. Suddenly, my dad jumped up and shouted, “I’ve seen children in France starving! STARVING...!”
I stared at my plate, confused. *What’s a France? What’s he talking about?* As the shouting continued, I thought, *Who ARE these people? And what am I doing here? I don’t even like them. I have nothing in common with them.*
A few years ago, I called my oldest brother, Norman, in Texas and asked if he remembered that day. He sure did.
In his words: “Daddy jumped up, backhanded Ron, knocked him clean out of the chair. He hit the floor screaming—and all hell broke loose!”
Apparently, I’d been so deep in my thoughts that I missed the whole thing.
I remember another scene: my mother ironing in the back bedroom, me sick in bed with the croup, when a loud argument broke out. Daddy hit Mother. I lay there, scared and sobbing.
We were never a family. We were five people who happened to live in the same house. Because of my father’s behavior—which we now understand as PTSD from the war—my mother eventually told him, “We’d be better off without you.”
Deep down, most little girls want to be “Daddy’s Little Girl.” It’s a kind of fantasy, but I did want to be cared for, accepted. Neither of my parents expressed love for us. We were tolerated, as if we had somehow just shown up and they were stuck with us.
So Daddy left. And things went from bad to worse—murder, suicide, child sexual abuse. Maybe Daddy wasn’t the only problem after all.
I got married at sixteen.
Six years later, I had a conversation with my friend Judy, who also married young. She was the first person I knew who had ever seen a psychiatrist. She confided that her father had sexually abused her and her sister for years—and that their mother knew about it.
The moral of this story?
There are three kinds of dads: a Good Dad, a Bad Dad, or a No Dad.
Wasn’t I lucky to have a No Dad?y abused her and her sister for years—and that their mother knew about it.
The moral of this story?
There are three kinds of dads: a Good Dad, a Bad Dad, or a No Dad.
Wasn’t I lucky to have a No Dad?
~ Anita Duncan Adams
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