My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents

by Jonathan G. Silin

  Beth and I go out on a few more dates that winter. Although she runs with a faster crowd than my own elementary school friends, it is not her lack of interest but rather my own feelings of inadequacy that cause the relationship to slip away. Beth does not return to camp that following summer, and, when next I see her five years later, she has m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 103

  turned into a tall, slender, and stunning woman of seventeen. Needless to say, I am still intimidated but in quite a different way.

  When we are young and study history, it is always somebody else’s story, another world that we learn about. Then, with the passing of the decades, suddenly we find ourselves reading about a past that we have actually lived. Each of us participates in a world that at some future point may be described, interpreted, and judged by others.

  In Lost Subjects, Contested Objects, Deborah Britzman writes a history of Anne Frank’s diary—its discovery, editing, publication, reception, and ultimate transformation into theatre and film. Now I can place my date with Beth in historical context. The sirens that punctuate my dreams can be heard within the debates about how to interpret the pages that Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, the two secretaries who help to keep the Franks alive for so long, find scattered across the floor of the secret annex after its discovery by the SS and Dutch Security Police. Do they, as Otto Frank suggests, tell a universal story of adolescence or are they, as the journalist Meyer Levin claims, the record of an unprecedented historical event? Does Anne speak about the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of adversity or is her voice powerfully but uniquely “the voice of six million Jewish souls”?

  At age twelve I am largely unmoved by the so-called universal aspects of Anne’s story. I experience the movie as a Jew, frightened by the graphic images of life in hiding and ultimate discovery. I do not go on to read the diary itself at that time, nor do I knowingly see other movies about the Holocaust.

  Given the strong impression left by the movie, I was surprised by my response when, several years ago, I took up the book in an attempt to exorcise my childhood demons. I was drawn to its poignantly adolescent themes—the struggle for independence, the growing self-consciousness and critique of adults, the longing for a soul mate.

  These have undoubtedly been heightened in the 1991 definitive edition that contains material Anne’s father thought too sexually explicit or damaging to his family to be included in the original 1947

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  version. Two-thirds of the way through the book, my reading pace slowed to a few entries a day. I grasped the dwindling number of remaining pages between my fingers with the same sad certainty that I grasped the fate awaiting the Franks. Otto Frank and Meyer Levine were both right. The diary is of a particular time and place even as it transcends that moment through the depiction of fundamental human emotions.

  When I was growing up, my parents’ silences about social issues offered me many lessons about what might be said and what should remain unspoken. Foremost among the unspoken subjects is human suffering, whether caused by illness, intentional cruelty, or systemic injustice. Today, I want to make up for all that was left unsaid. My educational commitment is compensatory. Troubled memories of the YIVO, the shopkeepers with indelible numbers on their arms, the refugees who came to rest in our building, do not lead me to censor-ship and protectionism. Rather, they prompt consideration of how adults might create opportunities for children to talk about the difficult knowledge they acquire during their early years. Beyond the mandates of the formal curriculum or our beliefs about child development, our willingness to listen and respond to the children’s lived experience is shaped by our own histories. How did we learn to manage aggression, sexuality, and sadness? What patterns of loss and recuperation, separation and dependence did we subscribe to as children?

  This difficult work is essential to piercing the kind of social amnesia that permeated my childhood. It is undertaken to engage children in authentic conversations about the world they will inherit and to pro-mote their active commitment to social justice, which seemed to get such short shrift in my own upbringing.

  7

  The Other Side of Silence

  When we are writing and the pencil

  breaks, suddenly the content of our writing

  disappears and goes into hiding, and the

  pencil that we really did not see before

  comes out of hiding to reveal itself to us.

  t . t e t s u o ao k i , “The Layered Voices of Teaching”

  We live in a noisy world. The impatient sounds of fax and answering machines, telephone beepers and voice mail, punctuate our daily lives. There is little opportunity for silence to speak, and, when it does, we are often too busy to listen. In the summer of 1997, when I ride the bus between my home on eastern Long Island and the hospital in New York City where my father lies voiceless, I am especially aware of the intrusiveness of the new technologies. The cacophony of sounds on these weekly trips—the continuous ringing of cell phones and clicking of laptop computers, the driver’s shortwave radio, the attendant’s amplified words about fares and safety—is a stark contrast to the silence that reigns in my father’s room.

  As is often the case with cancer, the events that lead up to my 105

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  father’s surgery happen rapidly. I am made breathless by their speed

  —the mysterious first symptoms, the new doctors, and technical language replete with numbers and unpronounceable words that need to be mastered within days, and, then, the 5:50 am bus for a final consultation with the oncologist. As I collect my parents at their apartment for the brief taxi ride uptown, my father moving slowly and cautiously, holding on to the arm of his home attendant, my mother lunges ahead in an anxiety-driven haze. As we walk up the clinic steps, the heels of her shoes make a loud slapping sound against the cement. The sound is testimony to her stubborn refusal to spend money on new, more sensible, and better fitting shoes. Her weight has dropped well below a hundred pounds, little wonder that her feet do not fill the shoes. Bob reminds her endlessly of the potential dangers of the slight heel given her precarious balance. But my mother thinks too little of herself and too much of my father to make a modest investment in her own safety.

  During the long wait that morning to see Dr. Lee, my parents intermittently doze and stare into space. Finally ushered into the crowded laboratory-cum-examining-room, we try to arrange ourselves in some suitable manner. A half hour later Dr. Lee enters with an intern trailing behind. He greets my parents, whom he knows from prior visits, and barely gestures toward me when my father tries to make an introduction. After a brief examination, Dr. Lee proceeds to describe the operation in which he will remove either one or both sides of the larynx. It’s easy to see that my father, who initially wanted no other doctor but the well-known head of the clinic, has already transferred his trust to Dr. Lee, his associate. Dr. Lee returns this trust by looking at my father, and only at my father, throughout the interview.

  Dr. Lee talks quickly and quietly, and I am having difficulty following all that he says. Hoping to take a few notes, perhaps even slow down his rapid-fire delivery, I reach for the backpack at my feet and manage to pull out a writing pad, only to find that my pen doesn’t work. No matter, for Dr. Lee never sees me struggling to organize my-m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 107

  self and never stops talking. Feeling useless and reluctant to ask questions that might reveal my absolute ignorance about tracheotomies, shunts, voice boxes and the like, I retreat into the role of the good teacher who has invited a guest expert into his classroom. I restate the key points made by the presenter while suddenly realizing that, depending on the extent of the cancer, my father may well emerge from the operation unable to ever speak again. Dr. Lee is impatient with my attempt to process his information and snaps, “If he doesn’t have the operation, soon the tumor will close off the airway and it will be impossible for him to breathe. It’s not about whethe
r your father can talk or not. You are asking the wrong question.” Dr. Lee makes me feel foolish beyond words. Our exchange about speech ends in my silence.

  Shortly thereafter the interview is over, we all shake hands, and I promise to call on Monday with a decision about the surgery.

  I can tell from my father’s expression that his decision has already been made. The multiple and painful biopsies, lab tests, and examinations of the proceeding weeks, combined with Dr. Lee’s certainty, have undercut his usual determination to seek a second or third opinion. The handwriting is on the wall, and there is little to be said when we return to my parents’ apartment.

  On the bus home that afternoon I think about how often and confidently I tell my own students that they are asking the wrong question. Usually this occurs when they seek advice about why a class situation went awry or how to intervene when children are fighting.

  My students quickly learn that I have less interest in how they get out of a messy lesson or how to disentangle two children than in why the situation arose in the first place. What kind of planning went into the lesson? Does the physical and social environment encourage displays of aggression?

  In contrast to Dr. Lee’s focus on fixing what is broken or failing, which I will be ever thankful for, I am concerned with preventing problems from arising in the first place. Yet now I often think about Dr. Lee’s words. They were all right and all wrong. While he made me feel naïve and foolish, he also made me realize in a moment’s time 108 n jonathan g. silin

  what was at stake. I wonder if he would have been quite so successful had he been less harsh. Would I be more effective if I found a gentler way to redirect my students’ attention? I don’t know the answers to these questions. I do know that our meeting that Saturday morning brought with it a new appreciation for how, at least in some situations, identifying the right question can be a matter of survival. Perhaps, after all, my interests in beginnings and endings, time and memory, autonomy and dependence aren’t so terribly different from Dr. Lee’s interests in keeping the airways free and open. A brief week later, when my mother and I say goodbye to my father before his operation, somewhere deep in the bowels of that gigantic hospital, we do not know if his larynx will be salvaged. I do know that keeping my father’s airways open trumps my concerns about sustaining his voice and, as we will learn later, even concerns about swallowing food and water.

  Seven hours later, seated in a sterile gray room, the youthful and considerably more relaxed Dr. Lee, still dressed in green operating suit, plastic shower cap, and tennis sneakers, patiently assures us that he has been able to save two-thirds of my father’s right larynx. After three weeks of being unable to speak my father will regain a natural if somewhat sandpapery voice. (We don’t know that two years on the cancer will return, necessitating the removal of his remaining larynx along with the power of speech.)

  Seeing my father in the recovery room later that afternoon, still heavily sedated, lifeless and waxy yellow, the frustration of being temporarily without voice does not seem so pressing. He has weathered the operation well, and I know that he will eventually be able to speak when the shunt in his throat is removed. It is only the next morning, as I enter his room, that the full impact of his situation becomes evident to me. Angry, in fact filled with rage, he keeps trying to speak, and yet no words emerge from his mouth. Then I notice, on the bed, the first of the yellow legal pads that are to be his primary mode of communication. Written in his clearest print, all capital letters, are these instructions—GET MY SON IMMEDIATELY—followed by my phone number.

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  Asking my father to nod when I suggest various reasons for his distress, it quickly becomes clear to me that the room that he has been moved to, containing three other patients and no real partitions, is far too public a space for this very private, partially blind, and voiceless octogenarian. My father is not appeased by the promise of increased medical attention in this “step-up” unit designed for higher-risk patients. Phobic about germs, he has never shared a hospital room with another person before, and his current vulnerability makes his demand for another room hard for me to resist.

  As I begin to negotiate with the hospital personnel for a new room, the words my father has written in my absence resonate throughout my body. Although my mother is standing by his side during this time, a position she took up over sixty years ago, he knows that her own frailties will render her ineffectual. How few words it takes for my father to communicate his panic and dependency. How unnecessary it is to speak about my responsibility.

  In the weeks following the throat surgery, my father learns to communicate with gesture and pen. His needs and his discomforts take on a regular pattern. After a short while, it is easy enough to second-guess his wishes. The legal pads allow for more complex conversations. I come to accept the silence as the only way to wait out the recovery.

  There is little to be said.

  I am not there three weeks later when the shunt is removed, and my father speaks his first words. My brother calls me from the hospital room and casually asks if I want to speak with my father. For the first time in my life, the sound of his voice brings tears to my eyes.

  Sitting with my father day after day, I am aware of the complicated, changing textures of our silences. There are moments when the silence seems to create an unbridgeable gap that separates us into different worlds. There are others when it allows us to be together peacefully, without straining to make small talk or to interpret our frequently misunderstood words. Silence is a relief, a refuge in which we can be present without demanding or intruding. For me, it is a new way to express care.

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  I have not always appreciated the ambiguities of silence or understood the many different ways in which it can be read. Like many other gay people, I grew up with a heightened sensitivity to the strate-gic need for silence, for keeping my own counsel. As a child I experienced strong feelings of difference that were not specifically linked to longings for other boys or men, but they did contribute to a rich inner life. This link only came in early adolescence when questions of voice first became erotically charged. Then, I lived in a space defined by the tension between revealing enough to attract another and concealing enough so as not to be discovered by those who might do me harm.

  As an adolescent, I learned that our silences, like our words, await the interpretation of varied reading and listening audiences. I also learned that it is often better to remain silent than to use language belying our experience. The tomes that I covertly perused in libraries and bookstores during the 1950s employed a pseudoscientific language that seemed to have no relationship to the feelings and emotions that pulsed through my body.

  Today, even though I can choose to refer to myself as homosexual, gay, or queer, I am still painfully aware of the constraints that labels place upon us and stymied by the gap between experience and articulation. These reservations about language do not constitute a ratio-nale for silence. Rather, they underline an existential reality—much of human experience is unspeakable, even unimaginable. Nor are we automatically accessible to each other but must continually engage in a struggle for mutual understanding.

  As an early childhood teacher in the 1960s and ’70s, I was used to busy classrooms filled with the sounds of young children at work.

  Neither silence nor stillness seemed developmentally appropriate.

  Charged with the task of encouraging children to verbalize their thoughts and feelings, I did not consider that the acquisition of language is a mixed blessing. Along with the parents, I welcomed the children’s use of words as an unalloyed indication of development and integration into the social world. But language also imposes order and control, culture and constraint. We seldom think about what is lost.

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  In The Beast in the Nursery Adam Phillips reminds us that linguistic competency is achieved through distancing from the preve
rbal self and at the cost of the rich, if chaotic, emotional life of the preschool child. Language can inhibit the new and unrehearsed, the raw and embodied expressions of ideas. While failed attempts at communication remind adults of what it is like not to talk, most often words bring safety and containment. As a teacher I thought less about how to sustain fluency between the children’s spoken and unspoken lives, their words and the experiences in which they are grounded, than about how to improve verbal facility.

  Later, as a newly minted assistant professor, my life was haunted by pedagogical silences gone awry. Day after terrified day, I heard my freshly disciplined, carefully chosen, graduate school words sound-lessly swallowed by cavernous lecture halls. I looked out from the podium, so clearly designed for other, wiser, more charismatic instruc-tors, to see students casually leafing through books, surreptitiously passing notes to classmates, and staring distractedly at the window.

  My attempts to generate discussions ended in sluggish question-and-answer exchanges that only confirmed my inability to fill the classroom void with the lively noise of engaged learners. No words were ever as painful as the silences permeating those first years of teaching.

  Lacking the sanctuary of a seminar for new faculty or sympathetic colleagues to share my discomfort with, I inevitably read silence as failure. This sense of failure was all the more embarrassing because the subject of my classes was education itself. In retrospect, I understand the unrealistic images against which I measured myself, the alternative strategies that might have challenged apathetic undergraduates, and my own unwillingness to speak about the things that really mattered to me.