Nothing is Forgotten or Forgiven - Work, Marriage, Fatherhood and the Magic of Springsteen

Chapter 1

Friday and Saturday nights were music nights at my house. No matter how many times we moved, my father found a room for his sanctuary and built a kick ass man cave. The walls always filled with posters of KISS, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and a variety of other arena rock bands from the 70s and 80s.

For a while, he held a job on the railroad, which allowed him to have weekends off. I don’t know how long this lasted, but I remember it was during the time we lived on Brookside. At this time, my mother was working at Wal-Mart, which came to town around 2004 or 2005. After the promotion for different movies ended, she would take some of the cardboard cutouts and posters and bring them home. I’d fill my room with posters of Spiderman, The Matrix, Star Wars, and countless others, and the cardboard cutouts would hang on either side of the stairs descending into the basement. It was cool.

There was a giant Spiderman and Green Goblin from the 2002 movie with Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe going down the stairs. Then when you walked into the basement, there was a small TV, which my father would keep on mute with a hockey game or a movie on AMC, posters, DVDs, and VHS tapes surrounded you along with my father’s massive CD and record collection, which were towards the back wall. It truly was a sanctuary, and an escape from a world where your body and mind were expendable. A place where you could enjoy the fruits of your labor, if only for a little while.

It was a fun place to be, and I’d get into many arguments with my mother during the summer months when I’d rarely leave it. Though I played sports, and had friends, I’d often find myself for days on end just walking to the movie store on Roseberry to rent VHS’s and walking back to grab a snack and fade away into my old man’s sanctuary. I can see why she was angry, because as a parent now, I don’t always love when the kids plant themselves in front of the TV for the day. The outside world is important. There’s no denying that. But the world is hard, unfriendly and unforgiving. Who wouldn’t want to slip away for a while? Plus, the days of being in my head feeling something akin to a goddamn Eli Roth horror movie would occupy a lot of time during my 20s. Those days were some of the last, where being inside my head was a paradise. Two best pals eating snacks and watching Jackie Chan clumsily beat the ever living hell out of gangsters.

During the school years and summer, though, Friday and Saturday nights at 7 were always the apex of the week, and something that I’d carry with me throughout my university years and deep into fatherhood. The importance of those evenings is instrumental, and still to this day, when the three of us get together, we make sure to crack a few beers and get the tunes going.

I think they were important because they felt like the only hours during the week where our father belonged solely to us. The rest of the week, he had some kind of preoccupation. Whether he was working, or spending time with my mother, or even when we all spent time together, it was nice in a different way, but it wasn’t the same.

My mother understood that too, and also understood the importance of having a couple of hours of “me” time. She loved music, but not in the same way, and she certainly didn’t feel a need to sit in a basement and discuss the merits of each song played accompanied by one of my father’s stories of being young, and how different songs changed his life. She’d always roll her eyes and playfully tell him he was brainwashing me or and my brother. Maybe he was, but what the hell, there are worse things to be brainwashed into than kick ass music from the 70s and 80s. He wasn’t Jim Jones, and the basement wasn’t Jonestown.

There was also a happiness in his eyes on those evenings, a sense of peace. And as my brother and I got older, he relished the fact that we took an interest in his life before us. I wanted to know about working on the oil rigs. I wanted to know about his high school years and his fights. I asked about his girlfriends. I asked about my grandfather and sometimes felt saddened at their distant relationship, while simultaneously feeling grateful for ours. I could listen to him talk for hours. He never bored me with those stories, though I’m sure he felt he did.

He never seemed to sink into depression, but there was a certain darkness in his eyes when work demanded more than his body wanted to give. There was anger in them, too. And it didn’t happen often, but when he lost his temper, it was frightening. You stood there and did your best to not let a single tear escape your eye. But as quickly as the darkness overtook him, he could cast it away once again in the snap of a finger. Something that I’d inherit from him.

During the music nights, we’d pick two songs each. My father would start, and then we’d rotate. It was fun, and we mostly picked songs we knew my father would like, but every so often we’d pick something new we heard at school and hope he enjoyed it. You wanted something that kept the evening fun going along at a nice, steady pace. You didn’t want to drop the ball with something that no one liked, because you’d hear about it. In fact, my family always had a propensity for never letting things go. So, you’d probably hear about it a lot more than was really necessary. But if you could take it, you’d get your chance to give it at some point.

My father would also designate someone as the beer guy. Since we didn’t have a mini fridge in the basement, my brother or I would have to run upstairs and grab the old man a couple of beers from the fridge and run back down, trying not to miss too much of a song that we loved.

For as long as I can remember, I loved the taste of beer. Especially that first drink when the cap came off. Sometimes my father would let me take that first sip, and that carbonated burn as it slid down my throat made me feel like I was getting a teaser into his world. The world beyond the fog. I was drinking and talking about the good ole days. The days before, I was even a thought or a whisper.

It always felt like I was training to be a man from the time I was a young kid. I wanted to see him leave in the morning and study how he walked to work. I wanted to partake in the weekend evenings of beer drinking and rock and roll music. I wanted it all, because there would come a time when I’d be my father’s age, and I’d have young kids getting me beer from the fridge. It’s the circle of life, I think, or some variation of life. The songs would be different, but the spirit of it never changed. It was a time when I belonged to the kids, and it was my time to talk about old stories and brainwash them in the church of Bruce Springsteen.

But those years of growing up and listening to music were important. They were important because I was being introduced to albums and artists that were well before my time. I was building a deep understanding of rock and roll music that none of my peers had. Then, when I’d find myself in university surrounded by musicians and looking to take a stab at writing songs and performing, I’d be able to speak their language.

You wanted to debate about The Stone and The Beatles? Let’s do it. You wanted to talk about shock rock in the 70s, glam or thrash in the 80s, great. If you wanted to talk about grunge and alternative music, fine. It was all good, because I’d dipped my toes in all of those waters. I became a well rounded, and I think unbiased music lover and critic. Well, maybe not completely unbiased, but I was being introduced to albums that may have been considered uncool at the time of their release because of generational factors, but I wasn’t there. So, everything was fresh and new and exciting. I wasn’t chained down by the ideologies of music gatekeepers.

And this was all thanks to my old man. But for all the great music he introduced me to (and there was a lot), Springsteen wasn’t there. Of course, I was aware of who he was, but he was never played on those sanctuary evenings. Not once.

But when a friend of mine introduced me to The River, and I’d be out on my own, studying music that wasn’t my fathers, I’d understand why. Springsteen didn’t always offer the escape that my father was looking for after a hard earned work week. In the basement, we listened to KISS, watched Star Wars and talked about days gone by. I rarely, if ever, asked how his day was. He rarely, if ever, talked about building trains. Because if we did, then work would occupy every second of his existence, and he was hellbent on ensuring that his life was about more than work.

My father and my grandfather never had those moments of talking through their differences. Much like Springsteen and his father, my old man grew his hair long. My father got his ears pierced, and my grandfather asked him if he was a faggot now? They argued about the state of their relationship. My grandfather wanted him to play sports every second of his life, and my father wanted to listen to his albums.

My grandfather was a railroader and my father, like myself, tried to run away from that life. But he got my mom pregnant at 19 and went to work on the oil rigs. From there, he went to the railroad. Then when my grandfather died in 2008, I heard from my mother that he cried, but I never saw it, neither did my brother. We were there for him in our own way, but we never really talked about how badly it hurt. Or if there were things he wished he’d said before he passed. We just kind of stood there, offering quiet support while our minds ran amok, trying to figure out how to actually help.

Still, to this day, I don’t speak to my father much on that level. We still laugh and poke fun at anything and everything. We still listen to music and drink beers when we get together, but it can still feel hard to shed that skin. But I told him one day that I love Springsteen because his music reminds me of him. I don’t know if he thought much of that, but I wanted him to know that this was music that dealt with complicated people and complicated relationships. It said the things that we were often too scared to say in real life.

But one day last year, I called him. He lives in Ontario now, and I don’t see him much. Sometimes I listen to My Father’s House, The River, Independence Day, or all of Darkness on the Edge of Town and think how much will go unsaid on the day that he dies. Will I sit and cry, wishing desperately that I’d said what I needed to say? The truth is, probably.

I made the call in desperation. I was losing my wife. I was losing my whole life and I could see it happening. My head was fucked, and I needed help. So, I called and for a while we joked, but he knew that something was up, because these weren’t calls we had often. So, eventually I asked how he and mom did it. How did they survive through it all? Because I felt like I was losing it.

That afternoon, as my wife was away with the kids, we had a great conversation. He offered advice in the best way he could, and when he had to get back to work, he told me to call anytime I needed anything. When I hung up, I felt like I was going to collapse with the sheer weight of finally telling the strongest man I’d ever known that I was feeling weak. And that I was in serious trouble.

The call made me realize that in many ways we were the same, and also different. I loved Springsteen because it hit home truths I was running away from. Whereas he didn’t want to be reminded of those truths, because he knew them all too well.

I sometimes picture a fictional version of those music nights. I’m ten years old and already a huge Springsteen fan. I put on Darkness on the Edge of Town. For my two songs, I pick Something in the Night and the title track. Or any two songs from the album, really. He places the vinyl in his hands and reads the lyrics. What happens? Does he become a fan, or does he tell me to turn it off so he can play KISS? I don’t know, but I often think about it. I think he would have found some hard truths in there, but I also think he would have revered the anger in a young Springsteen’s voice. Because in which other profession can you let out a primal scream like Springsteen does in Adam Raised A Cain, or Streets of Fire? You can’t do that in real life, though many of us would like to.

I know my father’s work weeks were often torturous, especially in the winter. I remember my mom telling me how much it upset her to hear the winds blowing off the river, howling so viciously you could barely hear yourself think, and knowing that he was out there. Out there walking that line between the tracks, reading a switch list, and trying to do a complicated mental puzzle inside his head to lessen the amount of moves and time it took to complete his job.

I’d understand when I got older and walked that same line, if only for a little while. I’d think about my father and those music nights, and I’d think about his eyes. They were tired, and there was anger behind them, but he never substituted hard work outside of home for the hard work inside. He did both, always and to me he was a goliath of strength. An impenetrable force, and as I get older, I’d feel much weaker knowing that we were cut from the same cloth. Though, I don’t know what the inside of his head was like; he handled that life like only he could.

That’s why the man cave was a sanctuary. Because it was his direct link to his childhood, it was a direct link to good memories with his kids. It represented everything the outside world didn’t. He needed it to keep sane, and I’d find the same thing as an adult. Escape through music and writing. Finding those links to times that didn’t crush you and make you feel small and weak. An insurance that no matter how bad things got, there was always a place you could go where things felt good, and things felt right. And while my father would seek it with KISS, and other huge acts, I’d find it with Springsteen.

At the worst of times, there would be songs that fit my situation like a perfectly placed puzzle piece. When I’d find him, it would be the closest thing to a religious or spiritual experience I’d have. An alignment of the world. An answer to the world’s hardest riddle. It would save me, at least from making it through my 20s.

There would be times when my world was ending. And the kids would go to bed, and my wife would follow suit. Then I’d find myself walking down the stairs of my home, feeling so weak I could explode and heading to my record player, putting on Darkness, or Born to Run, Nebraska, or The River, and just sitting trying to keep it together. Trying to rationalize my situation and find an escape. Seeking the strength of my father. The man who’s back was never hunched. The man who walked through the early morning fog, not with a mentality of “the world is going to beat me into submission”, but one of “I’m going to beat it into submission.” I’d search for that strength, and search and sometimes feel so depleted at the notion that it just wasn’t there for me. That his strength just wasn’t in the cards for me.

The music would help me understand. It would help me understand my childhood, my relationship with my parents. It would allow me to think about my parents as kids, and how that generation must have felt with their parents. A generation that felt like their folks were 500 years older than them. The coldness of my father’s father, and how it was his goal to be a better father, and how he was raising me to be even better.

Then, with that, I’d write poetry set to some of my favorite songs. I’d pick up a guitar, learn some chords and sit with those for a while, then I’d put words to my songs, and play bars and cafes, closing my eyes and pretending I was Springsteen in his early days at the Cafe Wha, or another Greenwich Village cafe around the time he was getting ready to sit at CBS in front of Jon Hammond and play his heart out for a record deal.

I’d seek words as a form of understanding. Songs could answer questions that an argument with my wife just couldn’t solve. I’d write and write, and then my chances at stardom would crash and burn like so many before me. My father who could have gone pro in hockey. I, who could have possibly done something with music, would find it ripped out from under me, the fog of my childhood pulling me back to the place I’d wanted to leave. Or maybe that was another question that needed to be answered. Did I ever want to leave?

Then I’d have to seek those answers in another form of writing. So I’d write stories. I’d write stories about railroaders and small towns. Imagery of smoke stacks like a gun barrel, burning winds coming off the river and cutting like knives. I’d write about people deep in depression staring at the sun creeping through the window blinds and wanting a darkness so absolute, it must mean death?

I’d write about characters in Springsteen songs. I’d read Springsteen books, and buy all his records and hope that just because music and sports didn’t work out for me, I wouldn’t just work and die without a single piece of art ever completed.

But first, I’d have to learn to survive without living under the same roof as my mother and father. I’d have to navigate a world alone as they moved hours and hours away in the opposite direction. And I’d have to deal with almost watching my brother die at the same time.