My father had his own bedroom, mother hers. That should had told me something, which it did, but I was too young to understand. As I grew up, father remained emotionally distant from me. Through grade school, I made straight A's, but he never acknowledged it.Ā Ā Only once did he play catch with me in the front yard. In junior high, I continued to make straight A's, was co-captain of both the football and basketball teams, and was president of the student council, but he never said a word. As a sophomore in high school. I was elected president of our class by over 800 classmates, but father remained silent. As a junior, I was admitted to Andover, the oldest and arguably the most prominent prep school in America, but all father could say to me was 'be of good cheer." I chose to attend Columbia instead of Yale and had a great four years, but father forgot to put film in the camera when he took photographs at graduation. When I dropped out of law school the first day of finals my first semester, my father was enraged, but again in silence. When I began to write poetry, he said, "Go buy a rental property." My father never congratulated me, never gave me a hug, never told me that he loved me. At times he would say mean, hurtful things to me, which still hurt today. I wrote a poem years ago in which I alluded to one of Shelley's most famous poems. My phrase was "farther away than Ozymandias." That was my father.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
