After a lovely yesterday of festivities with three generations of chosen family, my wife’s gift to me is time to do whatever I want. Adrift after a sweet morning of tv and cuddles, and waiting to get the courage for a bracing swim, I find myself needing to write about my dad 🧵
My dad has never asked to come visit his granddaughter. Since my first trip to Seattle nearly 20 years ago, where he came to help me move, he’s never asked to come visit me. He hasn’t texted today, and it’s late enough to know he won’t. And yet, I still miss him.
My dad, George Edward Famulare Jr, is a 9/11 survivor. Before becoming a survivor, he helped organize an evacuation. After, he helped reconnect lower Manhattan with the world. nytimes.com/2003/01/06/nyregion/sturdy-survivor-gets-back-work-herculean-effort-restore-landmark-battered-9-11.html
Turns out we’re cut from the same cloth. I also jumped into action when a disaster landed on my working desk in January 2020. seattletimes.com/seattle-news/how-big-will-the-coronavirus-outbreak-get-this-bellevue-scientist-is-figuring-that-out/ And I know people are alive today because of it. And I will always be proud of that.
But we’ve never talked about this shared bond. After 9/11, he withdrew into a frenzy of work. Throwing all his trauma into saving a building. Giving all his energy for human connection to another survivor, with whom he since has another son who to this day does not know I exist.
I too threw myself into work. Amplified trauma on trauma, for far longer than I can say saved lives, or at least far beyond when I was among the unique group whom History gave no choice, and well after I could’ve metaphorically come back home.
After 9/11, I had empathy for my dad but I thought I’d do better than he did in his shoes. I was wrong. I’ve been a deeply flawed husband. Present in body but much too rarely in heart or soul.
My wife has held out hope beyond hope, despite herself, that I will metaphorically come home. I’ve tried so many times. I am ever closer. But yet, like my father, my family still feels the pain of me choosing my hurt over them.
My dad will never come home. In that way, we are different. Because I will come home. I can only pray they are still there when I do.
But as long as I wait for him to come home to me—as long as I wait for him to call and say “I love you son and I’m sorry” and “I want to come out and meet Rosie”—I’m still stuck waiting for love that will never come, and my wife and daughter will wait for mine.
So goodbye, Dad. I’m blocking your number. I hope you see this, somehow.
Fuck you. I love you. I’m grateful for the lessons you taught me and the love you once showed me. But I was right—always right since I was a child—that I am stronger than you. I am going for a cold swim and then I am going the fuck home. Goodbye.