I never quite know how to shop for cards for Father's Day. My father tends to be in a category all his own. He doesn't fish, he doesn't like sports, he wasn't the kind to bounce us on his knee or teach us how to ride a bike. He lectured me on Freud, Rogers, Maslow and May growing up. I knew about the Trauma of Birth and Penis Envy before I knew about the Revolutionary War or the Ten Commandments. Mine was a bit of a strange childhood.
Rollo was born and raised in a small town near Bombay (what is now Mumbai) India. He was a British subject in what was then a British-occupied country. He grew up with mango trees outside his window and servants that attended to his every need. He was the youngest of children, several of whom died in early childhood. His own father died when he was 14. I know very little about him or my grandmother, who stayed in India till she died in her late 80s. I never met her. I don't know much about my father's childhood-- he never spoke of it much. I knew he was anxious to leave India, especially when India gained her independence from Britain. He came to the United States in 1949, sponsored by a U.S. missionary from Kentucky, a Mr. Skelton. Rollo came to Asbury College in Louisville, KY, where my mother says he was ushered in ahead of the line like some British royalty. However, her disgust did not last long, and they fell in love.
Dad was never the Michael Landon type of father. Of course, where he came from, female prodigy were often quietly disposed of, so I cut him some slack. He read a lot of books, mostly on psychology and theology, and he liked to lecture on what he'd read. When I was in college, my friends were fascinated by him. They literally would sit at his feet while he spoke and ask him all kinds of questions. He'd start philosophical conversations at the dinner table, sometimes frightening my brothers' girlfriends, and I knew never to bring home a boy to dinner. Actually, dating was difficult for me, as my father would psychoanalyze each prospect that came into my life, and had them summed up and rejected before they would have taken their first bite.
In the mornings, after asking us questions that were too intense or deep for our brains to compute at such an early hour, he'd go to the door, pause with the doorknob in his hand and say with great drama, "I go to prove my soul." I think he felt a great responsibility each day to do something magnanimous, and it was a great burden.
I remember on Saturdays we'd never take any trips too far from home because my father had to mentally and emotionally prepare for Sunday. It was an all-day endeavor, and to be away from home would have thrown him off. He sat at his desk in his bedroom, gesturing, whispering, preparing the great drama that would unfold in the pulpit the next morning. Every Sunday afternoon he was so exhausted he had to take a nap. So we didn't go anywhere on Sundays either. In the pulpit, he was intense. His grip was fierce, from all those years of hand-gesturing in the pulpit. His sermons were a dramatic event, a course in human potential, a calling forth to wholeness. People were taken up in his grip and in awe. He was never Rollo to his parishioners, but he was "Dr. Michael." In their eyes, he stood apart and above. In Erma, NJ, the UMC there named their fellowship hall after him, Michael Hall. They threw him a "This Is Your Life Rollo" event that made the area papers, flew his mother in from India, and showered him with gifts. Another church gave him his own trip to India and a Tiffany lamp.
So my father was a huge presence in my life, kind of towering and other-worldly. He spent many of his off hours in his green vinyl recliner, either watching the Evening News or meditating. We were not to disturb him when he was meditating.
The memories I have of him as a Dad include the time he attempted to build me a treehouse in the pine tree out back. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that the branch on which he intended to build was dead. It snapped at some point, and I remember walking out of the back door of our house just as my father's ladder came toppling over, dumping him mercifully in the soft bed of pine needles below. He left all the wood up in the tree... and abandoned the project. Another time, he told the assistant pastor that he needed to take a picture of him for the newspaper, when in actuality, he was taking the picture for me, as I was deliriously in love with the assistant pastor. Stu Dangler. 25 years old, long hair, dark glasses. The first love of my 11 year old life. I truly believed he'd wait for me. Alas, he did not.
He hasn't been the kind of Dad that took me on his knee, got all teary-eyed when he saw me in my prom dress, or ran behind my bike as I learned to ride. There were other men in my life that fulfilled those roles along the way. My father taught me to devour books, to think deeply, to ask big questions, and to relate to God on a mystical level. He taught me to learn as much as I can. And all those years watching him and listening to him in the pulpit probably made me a better preacher, infusing some of the drama and intensity. These days Dad is long retired in Mississippi where his wife, my mother, finally convinced him to move. He loves eating at Cracker Barrel--he sneaks in a hamburger when my mother's not looking--and he still teaches Sunday School and preaches a sermon when it's needed at my mother's home church. He's still perplexed at southern culture, but in his own way, he analyzes it and tries to understand what he will probably never truly understand. He's self-conscious, I think, sticking out with his British accent in a world of strong southern accents, but many people still find his "otherness" fascinating. When I think of my father, I remember a man who was always telling me what books I ought to read or what subject I ought to write a paper on, just for "fun." And I have to smile. NOBODY, I'm sure, has a father like mine.
