To Embrace or Not to Embrace

To Embrace or Not To Embrace

“Where have you been?” 

“I got back to town as soon as possible,” I responded to my father’s question. 

I’d just returned that afternoon from a cross-country trip and headed straight for the hospital. Now, sitting at the hospital next to my father’s bed, I saw a man I hardly recognized. It had been only a month since the last time I’d seen him, but I was now looking at a man whose strength and independence were gone. I watched my father struggle to pull himself up in the hospital bed, and in an unprecedented move, I reached out, and for the first time, he allowed me to help him. 

I put my arms under his armpits, with the side of my face touching his, and I helped him move into a more comfortable position. I was aware as we connected that this was the closest I’d ever been to my father. We both held this embrace a split second longer than was needed, making me believe he realized the same thing. This hug marked the first and last time I shared a genuinely intimate embrace with this man. 

I wondered if he’d ever allowed himself to be this vulnerable with anyone and knew what it felt like to be without control. I thought I was holding a special moment in his life. 

My father, coming from a large immigrant family, navigated his youth at the beginning of the 20th Century. His childhood was made up of having to fight in gangs and finding his own way of sustaining himself on the city streets. His schooling was minimal, and he was thrown out of the army on his first day when it was discovered that he was underage to be a soldier. 

I had heard these stories from others about my father, but he was a stranger to me. 

My relationship with my father was not an unfamiliar one: a son who could never live up to his father's legend.                                                                                                                                                                                                               

“You did great!” “Atta boy” or “Proud of you” were never words I heard from my father directed toward me. I was more accustomed to seeing him looking disappointed while watching me do anything.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

My first memory of him was when I was four years old. We were walking next to each other, much like Sheriff Andy Taylor and his son Opie walking together during the opening credits of “The Andy Griffith Show,” but very different. We were not casually going through a rural North Carolina dirt path on our way to a fishing trip. We were awkwardly slogging through wet snow on our way home from my father’s work in downtown Paterson, New Jersey. Instead of the two of us whistling carelessly, I was taught to count to ten in Italian while constantly being corrected for not pronouncing “cinque” correctly.

The reality of that intimate and loving scene between father and son on television strongly contrasted my life with my father's. Although we were never as comfortable with our affection as Andy Griffith and Opie were, he was never abusive. I just didn’t exist, and when I did, I was the source of great confusion to him. It was easier for us both to keep our distance from each other. 

I was six years old before I remember my first attempt to have any physical contact with him. 

One Wednesday in January, I returned home from an overnight stay at St. Joseph’s Hospital, where I’d had my tonsils removed the day before. Because of my father’s night work schedule, he was still in bed when I arrived home. 

“Dad, I got my tonsils out,” I said entering the house with as much voice as I could. Excited to see him and show off my now tonsil-free throat, I ran up to my father’s bedside with my arms stretched toward him and my mouth open. I started to repeat that same sentence as when I came into the house, but before I could get my arms around him or complete my sentence, I projectile vomited across him and the bed. 

Instead of being praised for my braveness during the surgery, I was humiliated and immediately rushed out of the room. That was the last time I would ever try to embrace my father. 

Growing up, it was made clear that hugging another man wasn’t considered to be a manly thing to do. At the same time, if I were hugging a woman, I was judged to be acting like a baby. That lesson was learned and ingrained into my daily life with the same importance as looking both ways before crossing the street. 

I’d seen my father being affectionate for others, but looking back, that seemed to be reserved for my mother on the dance floor, against whom he would intentionally grind his body. 

“Strike!” I yelled. It was the first time I knocked all ten pins down on the bowling alley, and with my father as the scorekeeper, I thought this would be an occasion for my first congratulatory embrace. I could see that I’d done something good by the look on his face, but as our eyes met, I knew that acknowledging this was as scary and awkward for him as it was for me. The decision on both parts was to ignore it and move on. 

“Let’s see you do it again.” was the congratulations I received. 

With just that one “strike,” I knew I’d given my father some hope in me. The embarrassment of not having an athlete for a son was washed away for a split second. I knew his mind was churning with a plan that maybe, with the help of more sporting equipment, I’d suddenly become a sportsman. I was flooded with ice skates, hockey sticks, basketballs, and punching bags within days. 

Sports were always present in our household. Although my father never flaunted his accomplishments, newspaper clippings from his days as a champion lined the walls and then overflowed into a stuffed scrapbook in the basement. 

“Madama wins in five rounds.” 

“New Jersey amateur boxer champ” 

“Madama brothers lead State Bowling Tournament” 

“Paterson team wins with Madama scoring the final touchdown.” 

Even being away from the house was not an escape. His popularity and reputation made the bar and grill he owned a popular night spot for all his ex-teammates and fans. There was hardly a day I wasn’t reminded that I was expected to follow in my “old man’s footsteps.” When the word was out that Junior (me) was in his establishment, I was greeted with,

“You gonna be a champ like your dad?”

“I bet you can throw a mean punch like your father.”

“Nobody could beat your dad when he was playing.” 

“What’s your favorite sport? Boxing? Football? Wrestling?”

In addition to having to avoid answering these questions, I also had these grown men playfully throwing softballs, footballs, and body punches at me that I could only deflect with tears. 

Finally, there was a sport I found interesting, tennis. I quickly became obsessed with playing and watching as much as I could. Where we lived, there were three courts with weeds growing through the cracked surface, and the selection of other guys my age who were interested in playing was thin. 

This was the only sport my dad had absolutely no interest in. His idea of playing a sport was one where you get hit or hit someone else, not one where you hit a ball back and forth. Despite his feelings about the sport, a new racket awaited me at home. 

The first and only time he ever saw me play tennis was at the public park where I’d been practicing daily. I was shocked to see him standing outside the fence watching. My nerves caused me to panic and see three balls instead of one coming at me, and I completely missed all three. On the next shot, I tried to show him my strength. I hit the ball so hard it sailed over my opponent’s head and the fence my father was standing behind. After a few minutes, I looked to see if he had any reaction to my playing. To my relief and disappointment, he’d disappeared. 

Realizing I liked a sport where you could hit a ball, he encouraged me to play baseball. One day, he asked what my favorite professional baseball team was. I had no references to baseball teams except the color of their uniforms. Since I liked red, I told him the Cincinnati Reds. Within days, I was being fitted with my own Cincinnati Reds uniform. He then found a local little league baseball team that wore those same colors, and I was signed up for practice before I’d chosen a number for my back.

The first practice came, and I sat on the bench, hoping to remain there. When I was told to get up to plate for batting practice, I tried to hit the ball over the fence, as I had done with the tennis ball, but I found myself swinging with no results. It quickly became apparent that my butt was going to be engraved into the bench the entire season. I did like wearing the uniform, though.

Because my father was the President of the Old Timers Sports Association, and the Madama kid was playing his first year of Little League, I was chosen to wear my Reds uniform to lead the parade that started downtown and ended at the ball field signaling the start of the Little League season. 

The following season, I wasn’t even invited to watch the parade. 

“I love skiing!” I announced one day, returning from a high school skiing trip. The news surprised my father but did little to impress him. His only reaction was, 

“Skiing? Well, that’s a waste of money. You’ll never make the Olympic Team.” I never skied again.

The irony was that I liked sports, but I was a watcher, and he was a doer. Maybe he pushed me because he never rose to the level of a truly professional athlete and wanted me to achieve his goal. Or maybe he just wanted us to have something in common. I’ll never know. Maybe I fought his encouragement because I was afraid to try and prove I couldn’t reach his level.  

As the years passed, his desire to take advantage of the opportunities he arranged for me dissipated. We grew separate and spent little time together, making us almost strangers. 

I didn’t know of his illness until a relative reached out to inform me that he was fatally sick. It was then I returned from my trip to see him. I felt a combination of wanting to resolve past differences and just the obligation to be a good son.  

I sat at the hospital after he fell asleep, sifting through all these memories and many more with vivid recollections. Finding a moment we shared with joy or trust was hard. I wanted to know what went wrong, but I knew it was too late to make it right. I resigned to the idea that my father did his best, and so did I. We were not a good match.

I said nothing, nor did I have any further physical contact with my father when I slipped quietly out of his hospital room. By the time I returned home, I was greeted with the message that he had died. 

I later spoke to the nurse, and she told me he’d been waiting for something before letting go. She indicated that it was me. I tried to feel something but didn’t know what to feel. It was days before I remembered that last embrace, and at that time, I was able to release a lifetime of disconnection, knowing that before it was too late, we’d found a moment where we were one.