Time for others, but not for me

In a June issue of The New Yorker, writer Molly McCloskey wrote about her relationship with her father, Jack McCloskey, the general manager who helped build and guide the Detroit Pistons to nine straight playoff appearances, five consecutive Eastern Conference Finals and NBA championships in 1989 and 1990.

Jack McCloskey passed away in 2017, but was absent for large portions of his daughter’s life. In going back and looking through his accomplishments, she writes that one of the tougher moments to experience was seeing her father hug his players after their 1991 loss to the Chicago Bulls in the Conference Finals.

The team was coming off consecutive championships. “The camera zoomed in on his face. He was crying, holding Isiah (Thomas) tight. I’ve rerun that moment a dozen times. I even found a longer version of it that shows my father pulling away in the direction of the court and Isiah steering him back toward the locker room, talking in his ear, consoling him.”

“Eventually, I realized why the image hit me so hard. It wasn’t just that this was my father at his very best: loyal, vulnerable, utterly invested. It was because it made clear that there were two things I needed to forgive him for: not having been there for me, and having been there for others.”

Hitting home

It’s a simple line — “and having been there for others” — but I’ve read and re-read McCloskey’s line several times since first seeing the piece. My father wasn’t famous, he didn’t have an important job in the NBA, but I understood what she was trying to convey.

It’s a strange, cold feeling.

My father had to retire early from his job as a steelworker when a heart attack nearly killed him. The attack ripped through his heart. To help with expenses and to keep a roof over our heads, he refinished and refurbished antiques. He would take a piece of furniture that had seen better days, maybe a stylish coffee table or an ornate roll-top desk, and would restore it to its natural beauty. It was a tough, dirty job, stripping the wood of stain, paint, and lacquer, but he loved seeing the look on his customer’s faces when he would drop a piece off on their doorsteps. Since my father needed my help loading and unloading the furniture, I would have to go along and would get to see the interaction for myself.

His customers would beam with excitement as they cleared a special place in their immaculate homes for his latest find or work. I could never get it out of my head that our dining room table looked like it might fall over at any minute and the dresser in my room lacked a handle and would always catch when I went to close it. Interior design? That was a foreign concept for my family. Everything was about practicality and survival. However, the customers, whether it was a professional couple redoing their home or a sophisticated woman in the neighboring town’s Society Hill, would always rave about my father and his work. I’m sure they meant well, but their praise came off hollow to me. They would pat me on the head, like a good little boy, and tell me what a kind man my father was and how talented he was.

“Your father is such a hard worker. You should be so proud.”

“He’s such a wonderful artist, I bet you want to be just like him.”

I always wanted to tell them the hours upon hours he spent on a piece or how they were paying X, but we both knew they should have been paying him Y, triple or quadruple that amount. I wanted them to know that my father might not have been the wiser, but I was in on the scam. They were getting museum-quality pieces on the cheap. My father was a skilled craftsman, but he was never a great businessman. He never charged what he should have been charging. He always worried about losing future work and constantly discounted his fee. He would start out with a reasonable number, but would in the moment, discount his fee to pennies on the dollar.

Learning my lesson

Like McCloskey, I felt to a certain extent that I was short-changed. I appreciated that my father cared for us, but I still felt enormous anger how he shared more with his customers than he did his own family. It took me a long time to get over the frustration and anger. I was probably luckier than McCloskey in that my father couldn’t keep up his furniture work forever. He couldn’t go into the front office and become a general manager like Jack McCloskey. The hard manual labor eventually caught up to him and he had to give it up.

It helped too that when my kids came along, it brought out another side of my father. Before he passed away, we could finally address some of his harshness and anger to my brothers and me when we were young kids. In addition, we could finally face too some our disagreements and hurt feelings.

When I finished reading McCloskey’s piece, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that my adult kids will be able to say a lot of things about me as a father. I have my blessings and faults. Fortunately for them, though, I’ve been here. I might not have given them what they needed, but they didn’t need to look elsewhere to see me. They’ll have their own impressions and thoughts.

I’ve been here warts and all.

I’ve written some in the past about my father’s carpentry skills. Check out these two pieces:

—Two ways of looking at the same thing

—An antique in a fast-paced Ikea world