by Byron Pitts
Another conversation I had contemplated having with him was one that involved the kind of violence I had witnessed between my parents. Instead of the two of them scratching at each other, this time it would be me, Byron Pitts, grown man, slapping my father around, forcing him with my fist to listen. Truth be told, those conversations in my head never lasted long or wound up any place productive. I’ve seen enough in my own life to know violence (although it might offer some temporary gratification) is never the long-term answer.
For twenty years there was nearly silence between us. We had perhaps five phone conversations, but I thought about him every single day. I often wondered if he was watching me on television. When I got to the network, I began wearing a white cotton handkerchief in my jacket pocket every day because I remembered that he always wore one. It’s my daily reminder of the man I will always wish I had known better. Every time I glanced down at that handkerchief, I’d think of him. Outwardly, I was successful, but, inside, I felt incomplete. I was burdened by my unforgiving heart.
In the end, there was nothing courageous about my decision to talk with my dad again. I was simply paying off a bet with two of my workout buddies from my church. Dave Anderson and Darryl Carrington are two deacons at St. Paul Baptist Church in New Jersey. We would meet at the YMCA a few times a week to lift weights and for fellowship. On more than a few mornings, Darryl and I had to encourage Dave to lower his voice when he’d recite Scriptures while doing squats or bench presses. He was scaring some of the other people in the gym. Strong as an ox, Dave could also be as loud as one.
One week we got into a discussion about regrets—things in our past that pained us but which we hoped there was still time to address. I mentioned my father. The three of us talked about strained relationships with our fathers, though I seemed to be the most bitter. Darryl talked about his battle with his weight. Dave spoke of his temper. We agreed to pray for one another. Then Darryl challenged me. “If I start to lose weight,” he said, “you have to start the conversation with your father.” I refused. Refusing that challenge was as easy as lifting a twenty-pound dumbbell. But Darryl was relentless. Every morning for weeks he’d bring up the bet. Finally, I gave in. To his credit, Darryl didn’t shame me into it; he nudged and supported me. “Jesus died for us, He laid it all on the line, what are you willing to give up?” he’d say as a smile crept across his face. It is hard for a Christian to think selfishly when one ponders that kind of question. It actually can be a strength builder and can be applied to most of life’s struggles. Who can explain why after years of encouragement from family and close friends, I finally took a challenge from a friend in a weight room to push me toward a talk I had both dreaded and longed for most of my life? I guess God truly can use any of us in any situation. A sweaty weight room was the place for me. Days later, I called my dad on the phone. He was surprised I called. So was I.
We met at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore for breakfast, just me and my dad, in 2005. He was seventy-seven; I was forty-five. It was the first time we had spent this much time alone, just the two of us, ever. Then it hit me. I didn’t really know this guy, and he didn’t really know me. Even those first eleven years, we were rarely alone. During my childhood we would almost always be with my mom or my siblings, people at church, members of my Boy Scout troop, or baseball or football teammates, but rarely was it just the two of us. Through most of high school and all of college, we never spoke or saw each other. During high school football games, I could always look from the sidelines into the stands and find my mother and smile. Secretly, I’d also look for my father, but he was never there, or if he was, I never saw him. Even when my father remarried, if I saw him I also saw his wife, a lovely woman who often tried but failed to get us to settle our differences. She always seemed more generous with her time than he was. So with enough baggage to fill an ocean liner, Byron A. Pitts sat down with William A. Pitts.
“Good morning, sir, how are you?” I greeted my dad as if it was a business meeting. That was the “Clarice” in me: be polite no matter what. We shook hands. As affectionate as my upbringing was, I don’t ever recall my dad hugging or kissing me or ever saying he loved me. The last photograph we took together, when I was a child, was Christmas day, 1973. I was thirteen. He didn’t put his arm around me, and I certainly didn’t touch him. Now as an adult, I’ll hug a tree, a dog, or a stranger if we’re posing for a photograph. I simply love touching the people I love. But the notion of hugging my father had always seemed as foreign a notion as speaking Chinese.
“Good morning, son. You look good. How’s the family?” As long as I can remember, my dad’s always been a pleasant man in public, with an air of elegance (not Park Avenue elegance, more Rampart Street in New Orleans after-dark elegance). This day was no different, except looking into his oval-shaped eyes, I saw a flicker of innocence and sadness I’d never noticed before. There we were, father and son, the same last name, the same blood—we even look somewhat alike. Both six feet one, both balding, he a few shades darker, the stride of a once-confident young man long gone. Yet we share the same awkward gait. And our hands; identical, even down to the few strands of hair above each knuckle and to the length and shape of our fingernails. But it was still as if we were from different planets.
I motioned him toward the elevator and the ride up to the restaurant. For the first time in my life, I was suddenly looking down on him. Age had bent his spine, rounded his shoulders a bit, and left him with a slight limp. Had he been in an accident? Was it some degenerative condition? Does he have any major medical issues? Is this how I’ll walk in thirty years? These and about a hundred other questions filled my head as we walked the forty yards from the lobby to the elevators. In the ride up one floor, not a word passed between us. We both looked straight ahead, studying the details of an elevator door without any significance other than as a focus for our discomfort. The doors opened and I ushered him out first, touching the middle of his back. I wanted to put my arm around his shoulder. As a boy and later as an adolescent, I was repelled by the idea of touching my father. Now, as a man, the boy inside me longed for the moment. I’d seen fathers and sons do such things in the movies, at ball games, and at church. Each time, I had longed for the same moment, but when my chance came, I let it pass.
My father walked into the restaurant like a man out of place. His clothes and shoes hadn’t appeared so worn when we stood in front of the hotel. Why was he still wearing his hat? When I was a boy, he always seemed so stylish. Now he looked like the man he’d been most of his life, someone who worked with his hands, unaccustomed to fine linens. He remarked in a surprisingly loud voice, “This is a fancy restaurant.” This was the kind of restaurant I’d eaten in a hundred times over the course of my career. It was no big deal. I felt both a tinge of shame and unexplainable joy. I was finally standing with my poppa in public. We were in my world and one beyond his reach. We took our seats.
“Everything here is so expensive,” he said, visibly uncomfortable.
“Please order whatever you’d like,” I said, in as encouraging a voice as I could muster. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. “Please excuse me,” I said and pushed away from the table and made my way to the restroom. Once behind closed doors, I splashed my face with cold water only to realize that my hands were shaking. I’m not one to succumb to nerves very often, but here I was on shaky legs with trembling hands. I could feel my heart pounding through my tailored sports jacket. I was a mess. After several deep breaths and a quick prayer—“Lord, be with me. Hold me in Your hands.”—I returned to the table. My father appeared so engrossed in his menu he hardly noticed I’d been gone.
“What are you having, son? I don’t know what I want,” he said, expressionless.
“I’m going for the buffet. When the waiter comes, please order whatever you’d like.” I’d never fully appreciated the value of comfort food until that moment. I crowded my plate with smoked salmon, strawberries, blueberries, and grapes, oatmeal and brown
sugar—all my favorites but in unusually large portions. Much to my disappointment, I was uneasy being alone with him. I’d felt more comfortable with convicted killers and Afghan warlords than I did with my own father. Perhaps they could hurt me physically, but this man could wound me emotionally like no other. In desperate need to gain control, I decided to sit across from my father, as if he was just another interview on a run-of-the-mill story. He could have been a politician, a corporate executive, or a criminal. I’d decided to fill the time with as many questions void of any emotion for as long as possible.
“So how’s your health? Are you a fan of the Baltimore Ravens [they were the Baltimore Colts the last time he and I were alone together]? Doesn’t the Inner Harbor look nice?” Meaningless questions fired off with machine-gun frequency. I barely paused long enough to give the man a chance to answer. I’d leave no room for silence. Silence was awkward, and the occasion was already awkward enough. The silence left space for feelings and emotions, and I wanted no part of that.
“Your order, sir.” Thankfully, the waiter interrupted with my father’s breakfast. My goodness, it was a heart attack special: scrambled eggs, white toast with a small mountain of butter, hash browns, slices of bacon, ham, and three sausage links, with a cup of coffee. He looked pleased. I felt sorry for his arteries. Now my father was ready to push back, take control of the conversation.
“How’s the family? How’s work? Where have you been lately?” His questions were as pointless as mine. Then the conversation shifted. “So can you lend an old man some money?” I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I was no longer nervous. “You know your old man is getting up in age. Now that you’re doing so well, I’m sure you can help me,” he said, with a big toothy grin. It was an odd sight, no one else in our immediate family could ever gin up that kind of smile. Maybe we weren’t related after all. I wanted to shut him down, refuse him point-blank, and leave. Not this time.
“How much, Daddy?” I said, more resigned than angry or even annoyed. “A few thousand bucks would be nice.” As the words left his lips, I flashed back to a painful moment from my childhood. This is the same man my mother had to take to court in order to make him pay seventy dollars per month to provide for his two sons after their divorce. I remembered the shame of being in court, my mother making sure my brother and I were dressed in our Sunday best. My father showed up with his girlfriend and his youngest son, Myron, insisting he couldn’t afford the money because he had “other responsibilities.” Thirty years later, he was asking me for a few grand with the same tone a co-worker might ask a colleague to borrow their stapler.
I felt something odd. The edges of my mouth were slowly turning up. I was smiling. It was the same menacing smile I’d seen on the face of bullies just before they pounced. Or the knowing smile of Wile E. Coyote as he was about to devour the Road Runner. This was my opportunity to savage this old man, belittle him with three decades of anger and shame. Instead, for reasons I can’t easily explain, and in a modest tone reserved for reading Scripture during a church service, I said, “Daddy, I’m not here to give you money.” His face fell a bit, but I just kept going. “I’m here to talk to you, man to man. I want you to know something. I want you to know a few things. I love you. I’ve always loved you and wanted you to love me. I’ve never felt your love, and for most of my life I’ve felt cheated. I’ve been angry. Everything I’ve done I did in part to prove to you I was worthy of your love.” A lifetime of hurt and anguish and anger were pouring out of me like well water from my grandmother’s old bucket.
I felt lighter with each word. “Daddy, I want you to know I’m not that angry little boy anymore. People who love me have forgiven me time and time again. God has forgiven me more times than I can count. I can’t seek forgiveness unless I can give forgiveness. So, Daddy, I forgive you. I forgive you with all my heart.” I never took my eyes off his face. At one point, I put one hand on top of his and used my other hand to grip the edge of the table for balance. Near the end, my voice cracked a bit. But I held on. I stopped talking, took a heavy breath, and smiled.
My father sat back in his chair, wiped his mouth with his napkin, then leaned in toward me. I leaned in to him. Might this be the moment we embrace? Would he whisper some pearl that would change the trajectory of my life? For the first time during all of breakfast his eyes met mine. Was the moment I’d longed for about to occur? He put down his fork, cleared his throat of scrambled eggs, and said, “So you’re not going to give me the money?” As my mouth slowly dropped, he continued, “Then can I taste that,” as he pointed toward the smoked salmon on my plate. By now my jaw and heart were falling in the same direction. Without thinking, I motioned down at the salmon and said, “Sure, it’s yours.” He smiled in appreciation.
That was it? The moment I’d convinced myself would change my life had come and gone. As I often do in an awkward moment, I dropped my head a bit and put my hand to my mouth like a student in class who’d just made a startling discovery. Then suddenly I was back in my father’s car. I was a little boy again. Stone-faced. Expressionless. Then something odd happened. The passenger side door of my father’s old Buick opened, and I got out. What happened next surprised me. I burst out laughing. Then I smiled. It was an earlobe to earlobe smile. I clapped my hands and continued to laugh. The couple at the next table looked a bit startled. It was in that moment that the last few pounds of what had felt like an unbearable weight lifted from my shoulders and across the width and length of my back. All my life I had been waiting for some miraculous healing moment, and that was it? It actually made me laugh when I realized that I didn’t need my father to release me from the pain. With God’s grace, I could release myself. For the first time, I no longer felt inadequate. I no longer felt inferior. I no longer had anything to prove.
In that moment, it felt as if I’d been born again. I had finally let go and it felt good. It felt better than good. It reminded me of my own baptism at the age of twelve, when I was submerged in water. I remember the weight of the water as it covered my body and the fear I felt as water filled my nostrils. My pastor used one hand to brace my back and the other to hold my hands against my chest when he dipped me in the pool behind the pulpit of our church. When he raised me out of the water, I squealed with relief. The weight was gone. Those seconds after my father’s words reminded me of my baptism.
Sitting in the restaurant of the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in my beloved hometown, I was suddenly enjoying a moment and was unwilling to let it go. I’ve never laughed longer. I reached across the table and touched my father’s cheeks. He looked puzzled and said nothing. “Thank you! Thank you, Lord,” I said again to the distraction of the couple next to us. “Thank you, Lord, for lifting this burden,” I said, with my head tilted slightly back and my hands raised above my shoulders. All these years, and the answer to my anger had been right there, right where the answer to every question in my life had always been.
In that moment, sitting across from my father, I stepped out on faith, not in the words I had long rehearsed but in the words God had placed in my heart. I could finally stop beating this man up and, more important, stop beating myself up. My dad wasn’t a great father, but he did what he did and that was okay. I’d always had a Father who loved me and valued my life, a heavenly Father, who’d been there for every ball game, every disappointment, and every achievement. This man sitting across from me was just that, a man. As I watched him finish his meal, all of what he had meant began to flood my memory. Like everyone else in my path, God had His reasons for our relationship to be what it was. God doesn’t make mistakes. How many times had my mother told me that? So there was no reason for this man to apologize. No reason for him to even acknowledge my selfish offer of forgiveness.
Instead of being angry with my father, I wanted to thank him. Thank him for the things he did do and even the things he’d never done. He never abused me physically or emotionally. He never said a particularly unkind word to me. This man born in the segregated
South with little more than a high school education had taught me things in both words and actions no college or university could ever teach. Like my mother, he was a hard and reliable worker. That was his gift. He had a curiosity about life, and perhaps that too was a part of my DNA. For the years my parents were married, my father was the one avid reader in the house, newspapers and magazines mostly. Perhaps he had more to do with my career choice than I’d ever given him credit for. For all the tears he caused, he had the ability to make people laugh. He was good at pleasing people, if only in short spurts. He wasn’t a monster, just a man. He was the one who first introduced me to football, which had long been one of the great loves of my life. How many times had football kept me sane, kept me out of trouble? The game of football had given me a stiff measure of discipline, confidence, and social significance that helped fill the void of my father’s emotional and physical absence. For all the years and all the things I blamed him for, there were reasons to show him gratitude. For the first eleven and a half years of my life, I lived in his house, ate his food, lived a modest working-class lifestyle.
We finished breakfast, and I walked him outside and waited as the valet brought up his car. I tipped the valet and gave my father the rest of the cash in my pocket, about forty dollars. We shook hands, I touched his face again and walked away. He drove off, the sound of his muffler eventually disappearing in the distance.