THINGS MY FATHER TOLD ME (poem 1)
When I was a toddler, Dad called me "Captain" and literally gave me marching orders as his lay on his bed (in his own bedroom) reading books on how to make money and biographies of famous men. "Hut! two, three, four! Hut! two, three, four!" I began marching to his orders at an early age.
When I was five, I overheard him talking about me with his father-in-law. Something about sending me away to school back East when I got older. It scared the hell out of me.
When I was old enough and began playing Little League baseball, once (I mean only one time), he took me to Topeka's largest park and spent a while throwing pitches to me that I tried to hit.
When I began playing junior-high football, once (I mean only one time), he and I threw passes to each other in our big front yard.
Sometime in my 8th-grade year, he and Mom drove me to Kanasas City to take some kind of test. A couple of weeks later, he called me aside and showed me only the last sentence, which asked "Who's pushing this boy?" Dad looked at me, as if I could answer this question. I had no idea what all this was about and said nothing. The two of us stood in silence for several moments.
In my last year of junior high (9th grade), I was elected by my fellow teammates co-captain of the football team, elected co-captain by my fellow teammates of the basketball team, got virtually straight A's, and was elected by the whole school president of the student. Dad never spoke a word to me about any of this, let alone congratulate me, even possibly have given me a gentlemanly hug.
What he did do during those years was to write, without my permission, in chalk on my blackboard that was in my bedroom the following poem:
"Sitting still and fishing
makes no person great.
The good Lord sends the fishing,
but you must dig the bait!"
That poem stayed on my blackboard for eight years. I was too scared unconconsciously to erase it.
In my sophomore year at Topeka High, I was elected by over 800 fellow classmates to become president of our class, a high honor I revere to this day. Dad said nothing to me, but he did have me apply to Andover and I was admitted for my junior year.
The years I spent at Andover were the worst of my life emotionally and socially. Though I probably received the best secondary education in the world, it was at an extremely corrosive cost. During the annual graduation ritual on the Old Lawn, I made a silent and solemn oath to myself: Never again would I ever set foot on the Andover campus. I have kept that oath to this day. I surived Andover; others didn't.
I chose to matriculate to Columbia instead of Yale. Four more years at Yale would have been like spending four more years at Andover, anathema to me.
Columbia was liberating. Its traditional undergraduate liberal arts
program called the "Core" made one learned for life. Exploring and living in New York City for four years made all undergraduates "Citizens of the World," even if one decided to reside somewhere else after graduating as I did. I now live in Boulder, CO. As an alumnus, I was one of twenty-five from more than 40,000 chosen to serve three two-year terms (1990-1996) on the Board of Directors of the Columbia College Alumni Association.
While Dad had wanted me to get a JD, then a MBA, then make millions on Wall Street, I have spent my entire adult life as a poet and a human-rights advocate. And too belatedly, I erased that poem from my blackboard.
MOM'S WISH FOR A DIVORCE THAT NEVER CAME (poem 2)
Mom spent her early years on the famous Tod Ranch located in the lush green Flint Hills, a mere 18 miles west of Topeka, one of best places in the world to raise cattle. But at an inordinately early age, she was sent to an Episopalian boarding school for girls in Topeka. By the age Mom turned 14, being so depressd, she furtively began to start smoking cigarettes and contiunued until she died.
Several decades before her death, a doctor said "Antoinette, if you don't stop smoking now, those cigarettes will **** you. Mom's reply was, "I don't care. I love my cigarettes. They are my friends. They give me pleasure and never judge me. I can start up a converstion whenever I wish."
Dad had an eye for good-looking women, began dating her, and then married her. I found out about this, and many other things, from my social worker at Menninger's when I was in treatment there.
When I was about 4 1/2, Dad came home much earlier than usual, walked upstairs, and opened the bedroom door, only to find his wife in bed with aother man. That moment blew Dad out of the Milky Way, and emotionally, he never returned. As the social
worker was telling me this, I came to realize why I felt as a young boy what I would describe as a cloud of emotional radiation that
hung over all of us. The social worker had told me that Dad and Mom's father said that if Mom tried to get a divorce, they would make legally sure that Mom would never be able to see any of her children (I have two sisters) again. So that's why they had separate bedrooms, I thought, and that's why Mom spent the rest of her life watching alone TV shows all evening and read detective stories until 3 a.m. Maggie, the black woman who worked for us, became my surrogate mother. She fed me grits and poached eggs every morning, washed all my clothes, spanked me when I need a spanking, and gave me a big hug when I needed love.
Getting into theapy in my early 20s was the best education I ever received. It both saved my life and continued to enlighten me.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.