The Council Of Dads Part 2

My second memory involves a week I spent with a family in Groningen, Holland. My first night, after a startlingly white meal of fish, potatoes, and yogurt, the family retired to the television, and I retreated to the water closet. There was only one problem: I couldn't figure out how to flush the toilet. There was no handle, no b.u.t.ton, no lever, no rope. The tank was located near the ceiling, and I decided to flush the toilet manually. I stood on the lid, reached up toward the tank, and was just about to remove the cover, when...there was a knock on the door.

"Are you okay?" someone inquired.

"Um, I'm fine!" I sang.

The family shuffled back to the living room, but their teenage daughter leaned close to the door and whispered, "Pull down the pipe!" That night I cried myself to sleep. A week later, after biking the nearby dunes and stuffing liverwurst into muslin casings in a butcher's bas.e.m.e.nt, I had forged such a deep connection with the family that when it was time to leave, the daughter and her friends came to the train station with a giant American flag and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" as we pulled out.

"That story would bring tears to my father's eyes," Jeff said, "because it's the crux of his speech on Central Park South. 'It's not going to be easy. It's going to take adjustment. But get your hands dirty, go into the bas.e.m.e.nt, and stuff liver into a sack. Be a traveler, not a tourist.'"

"So what is a traveler?" I asked.

"A traveler is someone who can let go of what is familiar and in a very conscious way seek out what is different. It is someone willing to slow down enough, get off the pressured, achievement track, and seize the opportunity. It is someone willing to break the routines of home: what you eat, when you sleep, how you wash."

He went on. "It's meeting the cheese maker in a village, and before long you're in the barn up to your elbows in whey. It's sleeping on a dirt floor in Tanzania, using a pit latrine, screaming every time you see a bug, then realizing that the people who live there, the ones who carry water in a bucket for miles, are just as happy, if not more so, than you are. It's being at a reception in Afghanistan, eating unidentifiable food, then discovering later that it was goat's stomach, and that the animal was slaughtered in your honor by people who simply appreciated the ability to interact with you."

The afternoon had slipped into evening by now. Our families were waiting back at the house. We sat up in our chairs.

"So it's ten years from now," I said. "We've gathered at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel, and our daughters are about to leave on their first trip abroad. You've earned the gravitas that your father always had, and-I'll say it-I'm not there." For a second, the emotion of why we had gathered returned to my voice. "What will you say to my girls?"

He took a deep breath. "I think I would say, 'Girls, you come from a background that's open to the world. You come from a set of values that appreciates learning, and you will have many opportunities to take in human civilization at its highest levels of achievement. But I would urge you to approach this experience as a small child might approach a mud puddle. You can lean over and look at yourself in the reflection, maybe stick a finger in it, and cause a little ripple. Or you can dive in, thrash around, and find out what it feels like, what it tastes like....'"

Once again Jeff had the same twinkle in his eye I first saw that night behind the castle in Holland. He had that look that said, "Hey, let's go cow tipping," even though we never did actually tip the cow. Even though no one tips the cow. Even though cows don't sleep standing up.

"'I urge you to jump in, girls,'" he said. "'And I look forward to seeing you, back here, at the end of this experience, covered in mud.'"

.6.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY TWO-THIRDS

MY BROTHER KNEW THE GUN was there. My father sensed that his father was feeling down. My mother believed he needed an outlet other than work. was there. My father sensed that his father was feeling down. My mother believed he needed an outlet other than work.

Just before lunchtime, on Wednesday, March 30, 1983, Edwin J. Feiler stood at his dresser on Early Street, immediately behind our home on Lee Boulevard, and scribbled a note to his family. Then he strolled into the bathroom with the gold and white tile. For as long as anyone could remember, my grandfather and grandmother had slept in separate bedrooms. It was a Southern thing, perhaps, a nod to gentility from the traveling salesman's son who rose to become a small-town lawyer. It was a mark of formality for a man who earned an honorary t.i.tle from the governor and told my stupefied, Baltimore-born mother, "Just call me 'Colonel.'"

Or maybe it was the manifestation of a pain he could never express.

"I spent two hours with him that morning," recalled Jazie Ingram, his bookkeeper. "His Parkinson's was getting worse; he was showing signs of dementia. 'I'll never come back to the office,' he told me. I said, 'Sure, you will!' But now I realize he was sending me a message."

Standing in the bathroom, he surely couldn't avoid looking in the mirror. He would have seen a once-jolly face with spectacles, a teardrop nose, and a gap between his two front teeth. Perhaps he paused. Twelve days later he would turn seventy-eight. A month later I would graduate from high school. The following year he would celebrate fifty years of marriage.

He put the pistol to his temple.

My grandmother was a few steps away in the den. She heard the gunshot. She found her husband folded on the floor. He was still alive. She reached my dad on the telephone. "Your father shot himself. There's a lot of blood." My dad hurried to the hospital. "He'll never recover," the doctor told him. My father made the decision to grant his father's wish. It was he who ended his dad's life.

"He thought he was doing it to relieve the burden on all of us," my father said. "Instead he gave us a burden for the rest of our lives."

THE TAPE WAS SCRATCHY after all these years, but the voice was slow, clear, and strong. It reminded me of white corn in summer, a bit of old country charm. after all these years, but the voice was slow, clear, and strong. It reminded me of white corn in summer, a bit of old country charm.

This is to be the story of the life of Edwin Jacob Feiler, born in Meridian, Mississippi, on April 11, 1905. I am going to call it Twentieth-Century Two-thirds. Twentieth-Century Two-thirds. The reason for this is that I have lived and been active for approximately the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. That is from 1905 until the present date, 1970. The reason for this is that I have lived and been active for approximately the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. That is from 1905 until the present date, 1970.

From 1970 to 1982, my grandfather recorded twenty-eight ca.s.sette tapes that detailed his childhood, his education, and his sometimes-colorful professional rise. He was a notoriously slow driver in the brown Ford Granada he owned during most of those years, and he dictated as he drove. After the suicide, my father had the tapes transcribed. The resulting doc.u.ment, four-hundred-plus pages, sat in the family vault, unread, for more than two decades.

That is, until I got sick.

Faced with my own mortality, I suddenly ached to know why Papa had ended his life. I was curious if the tapes might answer some long-held questions I harbored about his life. Mostly I wondered if his memoirs contained clues about our family that might benefit my girls. In a year in which I was trying to capture my own voice for my daughters, I first had to revisit the voices that had fed into mine.

EDWIN J JACOB F FEILER WAS raised in a modest frame house in Meridian, Mississippi, a railroad town near the Alabama border. The house had no central heat and no hot water heater. "By the time I came along they had electric lights," he noted. The highlight of the week was when ice arrived by freight train because it meant he could order a cold Coca-Cola at the drugstore. raised in a modest frame house in Meridian, Mississippi, a railroad town near the Alabama border. The house had no central heat and no hot water heater. "By the time I came along they had electric lights," he noted. The highlight of the week was when ice arrived by freight train because it meant he could order a cold Coca-Cola at the drugstore.

The Feilers were descended from a wave of German Jews who had emigrated to the United States in the mid-nineteeth century, bypa.s.sed New York, and headed deep into the South. Many of these families went into the grocery and dry goods business, and Papa's father, Melvin, was a traveling salesman for one such firm. He never made more than $250 a month, his son recalled, and "never had any money that he considered a gain or a surplus."

The princ.i.p.al lesson my grandfather took from his father's plight was the same one he pa.s.sed on to us as we drove with him on Sat.u.r.day morning to work in the family office. The proper life is the working life. The highest value is labor. The one treasure no one can ever take away from you is the self-confidence from knowing you have done a good and earnest job.

And boy did he do a good job-in dozens of unglamorous circ.u.mstances. From the time he could throw a baseball, my grandfather was working. He collected payments for a dry cleaner, he sold penny magazines, he delivered scenery to the opera house (and hung around to ogle the actresses). He delivered homemade medicines from Stanley's Drug Company, namely, stomach tonic, which was 98 percent alcohol, and hair tonic, which was 99. "I didn't realize at the time that Prohibition was what brought about the sale of all these tonics."

He was consumed with self-improvement. He went to the library and read the entire World Book Encyclopedia World Book Encyclopedia. He reveled in every good grade and teacher's praise. On the one-year anniversary of the armistice of World War I, a group of students decided to take an unannounced day off. "That was their fatal mistake," my grandfather recalls. "I had no more idea of walking away from that school than flying." The renegade students were suspended for two weeks, and "practically everyone failed their courses."

My grandfather attended the University of Georgia, then law school, where he earned a spot in Phi Kappa Phi for being in the top 10 percent. He briefly joined the army, then moved to Savannah. Renting a room in the YMCA, he was disheartened to find little demand-or respect-for lawyers. So he did what he did best: He adapted. He wrote wills; he sprung people from jail; he defended gangsters and p.o.r.nographers. And he got breaks. A steams.h.i.+p went down in the Atlantic, and he handled the claims. He got a coveted job defending the railroads against a law that held them responsible for any cow found dead within twenty feet of a railroad. Someone, it seems, was was cow tipping, and it was the Southern and Coastline railways. cow tipping, and it was the Southern and Coastline railways.

By the time my father joined him in 1959, and they pioneered the business of low-income loans, little Eddie Feiler had finally achieved some of the status he long craved. "I have dwelt on the things that were successful," he says near the end of the tapes, "and purposefully left off the things that weren't. n.o.body wants to be bored with my troubles. They get bored enough with my successes!"

BUT AS I I READ READ, I sensed a darker, sometimes sadder story infused with his successes.

For starters, he was remarkably candid about the seamy side of small-town life. He describes bags of cash being pa.s.sed around the police department and the judges' chambers. He includes a recipe for brewing moons.h.i.+ne. And when the army plans a base near Savannah, he and a friend drive all day to Columbus, to investigate how soldiers spend their pay. My grandfather brings along my dad, then five, but leaves him in the hotel-alone!-when they go out to inspect the layout of local brothels. "When I got home and told my wife," he reports, "I was the recipient of considerable scorn."

Even more haunting, an air of premature, spectacular death shadows his life. His earliest memory is the sinking of t.i.tanic. t.i.tanic. The first time he sees a plane, at the Mississippi State Fair, it crashes and kills the pilot. Later, when a firm in Pittsburgh suggests he and a colleague fly up for a meeting, my grandfather declines, declaring the plane unsafe. His friend chose to fly, and the airplane crashed, claiming his life. The first time he sees a plane, at the Mississippi State Fair, it crashes and kills the pilot. Later, when a firm in Pittsburgh suggests he and a colleague fly up for a meeting, my grandfather declines, declaring the plane unsafe. His friend chose to fly, and the airplane crashed, claiming his life.

More troubling, my grandfather could recount exacting details of bank failures and equity trades. His memoirs are so dry in places that when he mentions coming to Tybee Island to visit our family, I felt a well of relief. But in twenty-eight tapes, in twelve years of recording his life, twelve years of recording his life, he never describes his mother-or what he felt about her. He doesn't talk about his sister. He never mentions his wife by name-or their courts.h.i.+p or wedding. My father is referred to fewer than half a dozen times; his younger brother even less. My mother does not appear at all, my brother and I only once, my sister never. Women come up only when he describes how difficult it was to hire good secretaries. he never describes his mother-or what he felt about her. He doesn't talk about his sister. He never mentions his wife by name-or their courts.h.i.+p or wedding. My father is referred to fewer than half a dozen times; his younger brother even less. My mother does not appear at all, my brother and I only once, my sister never. Women come up only when he describes how difficult it was to hire good secretaries.

A son of the dirt-poor South, my grandfather surely loved his family. But his complete disinterest in personal feelings was undeniable-and maybe the clue I had been seeking all these years. He simply didn't define himself by relations.h.i.+ps. He was that boy looking for work; that young, hungry lawyer; the man on the rise. I had always believed that he could have relieved his pain if he had someone to talk to in those final years. But his memoir told me he had a deeper problem: He had no one to listen to him at all. He felt alone in the world.

And maybe that's why, when he did come down with Parkinson's, when he could no longer be productive, when he lost his sense of self, he ignored the feelings of his wife sitting in the next room, of his son building their business, of his grandson about to reach a milestone.

His work had come to an end. He had no other reason to live.

AFTER THE AMBULANCE LEFT for the hospital, Jazie Ingram went to 333 Early Street to clean up the blood my grandfather had discharged all over the bathroom tile. for the hospital, Jazie Ingram went to 333 Early Street to clean up the blood my grandfather had discharged all over the bathroom tile.

"I loved him," she explained. "He was like a second father to me." She and I were sitting in his former office, which Jazie has used for the last quarter century. No taller than an ice-cream sundae, Jazie speaks with the cane-syrup sweetness (and occasional rattlesnake bite) of her rural Baptist upbringing. "I have something you might want to see," she said.

She walked into the vault and returned moments later with a piece of paper. It was yellowed with time and stained with pain. The words were large, as if written by a child.

I cannot live a sick man. I am taking my own life. Edwin J. Feiler His life ended where it had always been lived: With one last piece of work. His final act was conscientious, professional, and cool. It was devoid of emotion.

"There's one thing I want you to hear," Jazie said.

"Even though it was a month before you graduated from high school, I know your grandfather was proud of you. He loved you. You must know that."

I sat there frozen, unable to speak. Tears poured down my cheeks. I hadn't gone seeking confirmation, but now I realized I must have been waiting for it all along.

And sitting in my grandfather's office, I began to see how my own experience with sickness had changed how I viewed my grandfather's death, and with it the role of being male in my family. Like many men of his time-particularly men of the South-Papa approached his illness as a saddle to bear, both wordlessly and alone. He didn't even share his anxieties with his family. I, by contrast, was not only writing regular letters to family and friends, but I was also sending them through e-mail, which meant they were being bounced around to people I didn't even know.

Papa never talked about his feelings. I talked of nothing else.

And as someone trying to figure out how to "live a sick man," I suddenly yearned to be transported back to that bedroom where he slept without his wife, to that dresser where he scribbled that note, to that mirror where he stared at himself for the final time, to be able to call out across the generations what the men who came after him have been able to learn.

"We're listening, Papa. We hear you.

"You are not alone."

.7.

CHRONICLES OF THE LOST YEAR

volume II

August 15

Dear Friends and Family, Some rain pa.s.sed through Brooklyn in the last week, leaving us with a string of clear, beautiful afternoons. The Brooklyn Bridge, which just turned 125 years old, is looking fresh-faced and handsome overhead, its famed promenade glittering like the pot of gold at the end of a long journey to come.

On July 31, I was admitted to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan for the first of a dozen cycles of chemotherapy. Each cycle lasts one to three weeks. Because initial exposure to chemotherapy can trigger heart failure, I was kept at the hospital as a precaution. After what seemed like a month of antic.i.p.ation, followed by a banquet of pills, a nurse hooked my arm up to an IV of Cisplatin and unwrapped three syringes of Adriamycin. The liquid in the syringes was the consistency of melted lollipops and the color of a s.h.i.+rley Temple. I whispered to the drugs, "Be good to me," then closed my eyes. Tears pushed against the inside of my eyelids. I didn't want Linda to see me cry. What these drugs do to my body over the next three-quarters of a year will go a long way toward shaping the rest of my life: How long it lasts; how much quality I take out of it; whether I have one at all. The nurse noticed I was having a reaction.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Physically, yes. Emotionally, it's just very intense."

"Don't worry," she said. "These drugs are going to make you better."

The biopsy on my left femur had confirmed that I have a high-grade, osteoblastic, osteogenic sarcoma. As my surgeon, Dr. Healey, put it, "You have a bad disease." Pediatric sarcomas appearing in adults are extremely rare, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of recurrence in the lungs in the first five years. The morning I heard those figures was one of the worst of my life.

At the same time, these tumors are responsive to chemotherapy and in many cases can be cured outright. My doctors agree that the seven-inch tumor in my left femur will not kill me; it's eventually coming out; but the cancer cells that have likely spread to my blood and are looking for trouble are the graver threat. For that reason, we are leaving the tumor in place for now.

My oncologist is Dr. Robert Maki of Sloan-Kettering. Bean-pole tall with aw-shucks reserve, he has the unfortunate quality of reminding some people of me (at least in appearance, and some pounds ago at that). If Dr. Healey is the rousing warrior, straight out of The Iliad The Iliad, Dr. Maki is the upstanding do-gooder-think Gregory Peck as a young Abe Lincoln. He has called for four to six months of aggressive chemo, followed by surgery in which the bulk of my femur will be removed and replaced, followed by three more months of chemo, then extensive physical therapy. The Lost Year.

A lot of the specifics of treatment will be determined by how a forty-three-year-old man bounces back from a course of treatment used much more often in teenagers. As many of you have sadly learned, the idea behind chemotherapy is to flood the bloodstream with poison, which the more aggressive, rapidly dividing cells in your body hungrily attack. This includes not only malignant cancers, but also hair and the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. My particular chemo drugs are also neurotoxic, meaning they a.s.sault the central nervous system. The body's reaction is to rally around the vital organs to protect them, thus leaving more peripheral parts to suffer. I am therefore vulnerable to permanent hearing loss, as well as numbness in my fingers and toes. The resulting list of dos and don'ts is quite precise, including no sus.h.i.+, manicures, or tattoos. Really, how do metros.e.xual j.a.panese bikers get through this?!

On the side-effect front, my first week after taking the drugs was pretty brutal, with an ever-changing menu of nausea, heartburn, dry mouth, fatigue, and a smog in my head as thick as that over Mexico City. I probably sat up in bed less than one hour a day; ate only half a bowl of chicken soup and a cup of Jell-O; and grunted through the few phone conversations I was forced to have. With the fog in my brain, I would have had a difficult time picking out my daughters in a ballet lineup. I feared I would not leave my bed until Valentine's Day.

After bottoming out around Day 7, my energy and appet.i.te returned astonis.h.i.+ngly strong. In my second week, I've coordinated over a dozen relatives moving up and down the East Coast to help us out; supervised home renovations; and eaten a Michael Phelpssize diet of barbecue, tacos, and Graeter's cherry ice cream from Cincinnati. I have a third week to regain my strength before being walloped again.

So how have you all been reacting? Depends on when you get us, frankly. Our families have lurched into action, and my parents, in-laws, siblings, and cousins have helped us manage the house and the girlies. Much of the brunt of all this falls on Linda, who not only has a husband retching in the bathroom many nights at 2:00 Depends on when you get us, frankly. Our families have lurched into action, and my parents, in-laws, siblings, and cousins have helped us manage the house and the girlies. Much of the brunt of all this falls on Linda, who not only has a husband retching in the bathroom many nights at 2:00 A.M. A.M. but two darling daughters who have yet to fully grasp the meaning of: "Please play in your room until the digital clock says 7:00 but two darling daughters who have yet to fully grasp the meaning of: "Please play in your room until the digital clock says 7:00 A.M. A.M.!" Then, just when I hit the nadir, Linda came down with a case of s.h.i.+ngles, forcing her to be quarantined in a nearby hotel for three days. As she said of this stress-related illness, "Message: I care!"

The girls have been adapting to our new lifestyle. In a bid to show them that losing my hair was an affirmative choice, as opposed to a negative reaction from the medicine, I had my head shaved like a marine. They were instantly charmed by my "shoft" hair, their homemade combination of short short and and soft. soft. In one of the more amusing sideshows around here, their grandmothers had the idea of feeding them a diet of films with bald, father-hero types to prepare them for the inevitable hair loss to come. To date, this has included Daddy Warbucks from In one of the more amusing sideshows around here, their grandmothers had the idea of feeding them a diet of films with bald, father-hero types to prepare them for the inevitable hair loss to come. To date, this has included Daddy Warbucks from Annie Annie and was about to include King Mongkut from and was about to include King Mongkut from The King and I The King and I until someone pointed out that he dies at the end of the movie. until someone pointed out that he dies at the end of the movie.

In the early weeks, Eden and Tybee did show signs of empathy and stress. They stared intently at my new crutches, trying to figure out how they worked and what they meant. Eden suddenly had the need for multiple Band-Aids; Tybee started to limp every now and then. We had some bed-wetting and the occasional nightmare.

A few nights ago, at 4:30 A.M. A.M., Eden went over to Tybee's bed and started jumping up and down on the mattress. Linda got up to deal with this unusual outbreak but was quickly fl.u.s.tered. By the time I hobbled down the hall, Eden was on the potty, Tybee was crying, and general chaos had ensued. I tried every trick I know: Threatening. Offering "grown-up" points. Volunteering to tell a story. No dent. Worse: Tybee wanted to listen to Brazilian sambas and Eden wanted Disney love songs.

At this point, I lost it: I snapped at Linda; I screamed at Tybee; I picked up Eden and plunked her down on her bed. Then I began to sob. This was my worst nightmare writ large. My illness was ruining the lives of everyone around me. Linda was suffering. The girls were unraveling. I was a wreck. Our home had become a gruesome parade of psychological disfigurement.

I left the room. "If you want to speak to me," I blurted to Eden, "come to my office." To my utter shock, five minutes later she followed. I sat on the floor, and she climbed into my lap, perching on my right leg. I tried to perform some archaeology on her feelings. First she was mad at her sister. Then her mommy. Then she unfolded this story: Monsters have invaded our house, she said. They sit with us at dinner and eat us up. "Then we are lost," she said, "because we can't walk."

Walk. The word leapt out of the story like a mushroom cloud. Walking had been such a hallmark around our house. Walking is what Daddy did. Even before they could walk themselves, Linda taught the girls that I had written a book about walking. Now, walking is exactly what I could no longer do, and in her nightmare, she couldn't either. I didn't need a Ph.D. in child psychology to understand that she had internalized my illness and created an imaginary situation where the worst that could happen to her was that she would become like me. And what better description of our situation can there be: Monsters have have invaded our house and are mas.h.i.+ng us up. invaded our house and are mas.h.i.+ng us up.

By now the sun was coming up outside my office window, and Eden's face seemed more tender than I had ever seen it. Her delicate skin sloped gently around her cheeks. The perky lips she inherited from her mother were puckered in fear and need. Her hair bobbed around her face.

I pushed the hair from her eyes, kissed her cheek, and held her close.

"I am going to make the monsters go away," I said. "I have magic and can make our home safe."

She looked down at my leg. "Is this your boo-boo leg?" she asked.

"No, that's my better leg," I answered.

"I want you to have two better legs," she said.

"I am going to have two better legs soon," I promised.

She reached down and stroked my left thigh.

"But I can still walk," I said. "I just use crutches."

"I want a pair of crutches like Daddy's," she said. "You have to share."

I asked her if she wanted to go back to bed. She nodded. We walked the few steps to her door. Would she insist I come in? Would she start to cry? No. She padded off gleefully to bed and a.s.sumed her sleeping position. The magic had worked. The monsters were gone.

We have been touched, tickled, and just plain agog at the outpouring of best wishes. I've heard from half my high school cla.s.s, a number of neighbors who remember my bicycle accident as a boy, and nearly every girl I ever kissed. I am heartsick at not being able to communicate with each of you personally, but please know that we are attacking this challenge with the full force of determination, love, and humor. We find piercing shafts of meaning on even the most challenging days. And we treasure the reconnections this situation has spun.

Cancer, I have found, is a pa.s.sport to intimacy. It's an invitation-maybe even a mandate-to enter the most vital, frightening, and sensitive human arenas. It's a responsibility to address those issues we rarely want to discuss, but we feel enriched when we do. In that spirit, I hope you find occasion to ask a difficult question of someone you love, renew a long-forgotten promise you made to yourself, or spread a little magic of your own to help keep the monsters at bay.