As I mentioned in my blog, I first read this essay on the blog Is Greater Than. I think you will understand why I wanted to reprint it here.
Cory Fosco received his MA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University in June 2008. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Loyola University Chicago in 1992. His previous work has been published in Hippocampus Review, Superstition Review, Is Greater Than, CellStories, Chiron Review, and other small press publications. His essay, “Lost Luggage” was a November 2006 winner of the Guild Complex Prose Series. Cory teaches creative nonfiction at Harper Community College. He has been happily married for 15 years, and has two children.
My Father’s Legs
The doctors in the hospital were worried about circulation in my father’s legs. We needed to move pillows around, adjust things, even rub them at times. I never went so far as rubbing his legs, but I touched them. My job—when he was awake and not on a ventilator—was to remove, clean, and re-insert his dentures. We were never an affectionate family, so when I felt my father’s cold legs in my hands, I was uncomfortable.
*
I never thought much about genetics before I started getting older. More specifically, I never thought about genetics until I started having children of my own. When I was growing up, the big joke in my family was that I was adopted. I was the last of four children, coming after my brother, Ira, who was my parent’s first biological child, and my sister, Michelle, who died at three months from SIDS. My oldest brother, Darrell, is technically my half-brother. I’ve never seen it that way. Darrell is six years older than me and has struggled all of his life with issues of abandonment. His mother left when he was five years old, and she has never resurfaced since. Darrell was always attached to my father. He was Darrell’s comfort blanket, his favorite stuffed animal, his friend.
By the time I was born, life was busy for our family. My father worked at the airport from the early morning until mid-afternoon. He woke up at 3 am every day and was wiped out by the time he returned. My mother stayed at home with her three boys, aged six and younger, getting us up, planning our days, cooking our meals, cleaning the house. This was the early 70s, so this wasn’t uncommon. Although, by the time I was in first grade, my mother took a job at a currency exchange and never stopped working.
The recording of my first several years was minimal. When I was born, my mother started a baby book of me, which included my very first picture taken at the hospital, blurbs about my first few months about how I slept or when I first lifted my head, and a lock of my hair. Chronicling my life lost its frequency and went unfinished. There are a few pictures of me in various family photo albums and even a few 8mm silent videos. One odd thing people notice is that I didn’t look much like the rest of the family.
Darrell had blond hair and bluish green eyes, and he wore a thick pair of black plastic-rimmed glasses. Years later, whenever we would look through old pictures and come across a photo of Darrell, we knew exactly who he resembled: Ralphie, from the classic movie, A Christmas Story. Darrell never objected to the reference.
Ira was always a chunky kid. He was mistaken for a girl once at a restaurant, probably because of his long hair and boy-boobs. As a toddler, Ira had very thick, very curly brown hair. People always said he looked like the kid from the Oscar Mayer commercial. You know the one; the cute kid whose bologna had a first and last name. I always thought that Ira looked like Weird the Bellhop, one of the characters from The Gigglesnort Hotel. Ira had to wear braces on both of his legs to help correct a hip problem. He was the child version of Forrest Gump. Ira’s leg braces came off with much less fanfare than how it happened in the movie. No one was chasing him or yelling, “Run, Ira, run!”
I was shorter and thinner than my brothers, and no one thought my facial features resembled anyone else in the family. That was until one Halloween, my parents suggested I dress up like a girl, complete with makeup and a dress. After the costume was complete, everyone said I looked like my Aunt Denise, which was fine if I was a girl. Boys don’t want to hear that they resemble their aunts—or any woman—no matter how flattering that might seem.
*
My father was a hairy man. He had a mustache at 13. And it wasn’t one of those cheesy, peach fuzz/pencil-thin/barely see it kind of ‘staches. It was the real deal. Think Burt Reynolds or Tom Selleck. He was one of those men who could grow a thick beard in a week. I’m not like that. I’ve tried to grow a beard, but it just comes out all wrong. Patchy, thin, unappealing.
*
Whenever my brothers wanted to get me mad or make me cry, they would simply remind me that I was different. “You’re nothing but a nark,” they would say if I confessed to my parents when we misbehaved. I had a guilty conscience—something my brother’s did not seem to possess—so it was difficult for me to lie. “Why do you have to be such a jerk? Why can’t you be more like us?” I was different, my brothers would say, for only one reason: I was adopted. My parents were in on it too. They thought it was funny.
As I got older, I began to wonder if I was actually adopted. I wondered if I had to embark on a quest to find my birth family, to see if I could fit in there, to see if I had “real” brothers and sisters. I might have even fantasized that it was true. That someday I would find myself on a daytime talk show, hearing Oprah Winfrey or Maury Povich announce and bring out my entire grief-stricken family. The family that thought about my whereabouts regularly, the family that continued living no matter how hard it was for them. The family that liked to read like me, the family that liked to lift weights and eat healthy like me, the family that had brown eyes and thick brown hair, was slim, and cared about the food they ate. The family I resembled.
*
Being hairy isn’t something I think I missed out on. I mean, my father had hair on his chest which is, again, sometimes seen as manly. But he also had hair on his back, and on his stomach, and on his butt. My father used to sleep naked when we were kids. He never thought twice about walking naked in the house, as long as visitors were not around. I’ll give him that.
*
I’ve always been the negative print of a black sheep. I was the only one of the children to like school, and the only one to go to college for both my Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees. I am the only one who converted from Judaism to Catholicism. I am the only one who hasn’t been arrested, who likes his job, the only one who has coached his children in sports, the only one whose wife homeschools their children. I’ve never thought it makes me better than anyone else. It just makes me me.
As I’ve gotten older, I have started to see things differently. Physically, as well as behaviorally. When my father was sick in the hospital—dying from pneumonia, a side effect of the chemotherapy treatments for gastric cancer—I noticed that we have the same legs. More specifically, we have the same calves. It’s a strange thing to notice, but when you spend hours staring at a person in a hospital bed, you tend to look at them, I mean really look at them. I never noticed how round my father’s face was, or how many wrinkles he had on his forehead and around his eyes. I never noticed how long and wide his ears were. I never noticed the way his eyes, even closed the way they were, protruded so far out. I never noticed how peaceful a dying man could look.
*
With all of the hair on my father’s body, his legs were probably the spot that had the least amount. It was light colored, almost transparent, and thin; barely noticeable. My legs are the same way. The hair is darker, but the amount is negligible. When I was a competitive bodybuilder, my calves were thick and strong; they measured 17″ around. Now, even though I still workout on a regular basis, I’m lucky if my calves are 13″. My thighs have always been thick. Still are. But today, like right this moment, when I reach down and put my hand on my left calf, I feel more skin and bone than muscle. And they feel cold when I touch them. Just like when I touched my dad’s legs as he lay in bed, dying.
Thanks to this tactile memory, I think about my dad more often than I expected. If I am laying in bed reading, and my legs cross, I think about my dad. If I have an itch on my leg and I scratch it, I think about my dad. When I wear shorts, I think about my dad.
*
As I get older, I believe I am beginning to look more like him, too. I see him in my expressions, in my short stature; in the way my body is shifting. I’ve even started walking like him, hunched over a bit, quick; like E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial. My dad had this thing he used to do—my grandfather, his father, used to do it too. Whenever it was cold outside, and he had to perform an activity like pumping gas, he always puffed his cheeks up and blew out steady burst of air, repeatedly the entire time. I do the same thing, occasionally. But my puffs come with more frequency.
In 1996, Darrell was the best man at my wedding. He had to give the Best Man speech. It was short and to the point, welcoming my wife, Cyndi and her family into ours. I’m not sure there was much preparation behind the speech. Darrell didn’t read from a sheet of notebook paper or from index cards. He didn’t have any embarrassing jokes or gestures to share. He did, however, end with a simple proclamation: “Cory,” he said, “You were not really adopted.”
I’m beginning to believe him.
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