The man in the shoe box
On Nov. 19, 1939, a Lowell, Massachusetts, man who would become my father wrote a letter to a Hazleton girl who would become my mother.
“Darling, today is my birthday … I’m sitting around the table looking for you. I can see you sitting here with that sweet smile of yours, but all of a sudden, my picture of you disappears and I fight back the tears. I will think of you every minute tomorrow while I work the day shift to save money for our wedding. … Stay as sweet as you are — your loving future husband, Nick.”My father passed way at age 52 when I was 19 after seven years of stomach and lung diseases. Miraculously, he came out of a 26-day coma on the night before he died. He sat in a chair, looking young and virile again. We talked quietly for only a few minutes. I spoke to him as if he was some random guy in a hospital room. He spoke to me as if I was some random kid who had walked into the wrong room looking for somebody else. It was perfect. He had never been a father to me and I never was a son for him.Mom died in 1997. While cleaning out the house to prepare it for sale, I found a shoe box in the attic stuffed with 50 or so letters that my father and mother had written to each other when he was 22 and she was 17. Yellowed from age, the tiny papers still gleamed with words of endearment and promises to live a life of love everlasting.They never did.Despite Dad’s futile attempts to keep a job while carrying lunch pails full of chronic sickness and pain, and Mom’s scrubbing of the neighbor’s floors to earn a few extra bucks, groceries and mortgage payments were paid by food stamps and welfare checks. The sting of angry words about broken dreams fueled from whiskey fire led to shattered dinner dishes and late-night sobbing from Mom and me on our pillows. A black cloud hovered day and night over our kitchen table. It lifted the day a new family took the house keys from me.After sitting on the attic floor that day, reading letter after letter, I came to a significant realization about my father. I never liked the guy who staggered around our house in his boxer shorts, snarling and sneering at me, gasping for breath from the emphysema that would eventually kill him — but I loved that man in the shoe box.From a letter written on Nov. 25, 1939, Dad wrote, “Darling, tell me the truth. Are you glad we are getting married? I know that even if we have to struggle along for a while, as long as I have you I know we can make it.”I found a small black-and-white photograph of Dad tucked in the back of the box. At age 15, he’s wearing a baseball uniform that says “Indians” across his chest. He looks athletic. He must have loved baseball. So do I. So does my son.He wrote on Dec. 1, 1939, “I’m thinking of our wedding day more and more each minute. When you come into my arms again, I will hold you forever. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat until I see you. I can’t wait until we have our own home and raise a family.”My father built our house with his own hands before he got sick. A short while after he died, Mom decided to drink away the rest of her life while sitting at the same kitchen table that had been stained from years of her tears. Once, after so many sips of Seagram’s Seven, Mom told me, “We wanted this to be a happy home. I only wish we could start over again.”Dad wrote on Dec. 9, 1939, “My darling, I know your mother doesn’t think I’m good enough for you. She wants you to marry a rich man. I promise I will work day and night to give you a good life and make you proud of me.”I hated my father who never was even after his death. Then one day I sat down and wrote him a letter that I placed upon his grave. I forgave him for not being the man I wanted to look up to. Today, free from yesteryears’ heartaches, I pull another envelope from the shoe box.I read aloud these words from Dad’s letter of Dec. 14, 1939, “My darling, I’m finally coming home to you. Soon you will be my wife and soon we will start our wonderful life. I promise to love you now and every day for my thoughts of you will always bring me happiness.”Dad came to me in a dream on a night 13 years ago. I sought his approval before I would ask the woman I loved to take my hand in marriage. He took me into his strong arms and said, “Yes, son. Go where your heart will take you.”To spin a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” Dad had “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness.”On this Father’s Day, after I hug my wife and children, I will go outside with the picture of that baseball player in my hand, look to the sky and say, “I love you” to the man in the shoe box.Rich Strack can be reached at