Some Bittersweet Memories of Life With Father : A Different World

Father. Fathers loved and fathers feared, close fathers and distant fathers, famous fathers and “ordinary” fathers. No matter what the relationship, he’s special. In the remembrances that follow, Times writers tell something of what that relationship has meant.

My father was almost 50 when I was born, which may explain why he seemed so different than other fathers. Born in Berlin as the century turned, he seemed to come from a different world than the men in their early 20s who brought the other girls to school. I realized later that he did--but it wasn’t just because of his age or his accent.

I have a picture of my father, at the age of eight, in tails and a top hat. This was not, he assured me, a costume, but the clothes he wore when he went out with his parents. That was rare; he and his sister were raised by nannies and governesses and brought down each evening, well scrubbed and dressed, to kiss their parents good night.

Clinking Glasses of Juice

Fifty years later my father was determined to do things differently. We ate breakfast together (huge breakfasts of sausages and cheese and coffee cake and glasses of orange juice which we clinked together as if they were cocktails). No matter how late my father came home from the office, my mother and I waited to eat dinner with him. When my parents went out to eat, which they often did, I went along. “Your father didn’t want to miss a minute of your childhood,” says my mother.

My father’s manners also set him off from other people’s parents. He almost never expressed anger (“No harm done,” was his favorite phrase), he ignored pain (“You just think it away,” he’d explain, returning from the dentist), and he was embarrassed by the mere mention of money. He actually looked away when he handed me my allowance. And yet he could do things like kiss women’s hands with perfect naturalness. In fact every night after we had eaten, my father would reach across the table, take my mother’s hand, kiss it and thank her for dinner.

“Was it hard on you, having such old parents?” my mother asked me recently. (She was 40 when I was born.) I told her that by today’s standards, they really weren’t all that old. The truth is I didn’t mind the fact that my father was too old for energetic games, puzzled by proms and found rock and roll ridiculous. But there is one thing about parents who have children later in life; they tend to check out too soon.

Dad died seven years ago. There’s not a day that I don’t miss him.