The Po Show

Fathers

Happy Father's Day to all fathers, those still with us and those who live on in our memories.

Ross received a watch and the silicone mitts that he wanted for barbequing. Tessa made a card with a hilarious picture of him barbequing a hot dog for her, and the card from both kids was inscribed "Happy Father's Day to the King of the Grill," so there was a definite theme going. We got out early (no special breakfast for Dad, but that was the way he wanted it) and headed to the Empire State Building. Ross decided that it was another iconic New York sight that the kids should see (we did the Statue of Liberty a couple of weeks ago), just in case we end up leaving NY. We got there early enough that there were NO lines, and we got up to the observatory deck in quick time. We walked around, looked out at the city, then headed back down. I said it was the perfect Father's Day for him, getting out with the kids with no waiting or whining, nothing untoward happened, so everyone was happy. It's great when your diminished expectations of the perfect day are fulfilled.

I've been thinking a lot about fathers lately, partly due to watching The Tudors on Showtime. Good old Henry the VIII, who literally turned the world upside down, all because he wanted a legitimate male heir.

My own family's take on that is a strange one. I alluded to it a bit when I recounted my father's life story on his birthday. It involves my father, his father, and my mother's father. It's a story of names, and pride, and fathers and children.

When my maternal grandfather came to the US in 1918, laws were firmly in place prohibiting all people from Asia from immigrating to the country. There were loopholes, however, like men could send for their wives (thus spawning the whole bizarre picture bride phenomenon). They could also bring over their children, so my grandfather's uncle legally adopted him, which changed his name from "I" to "N" (I don't know why I'm being paranoid and not spelling them out, other than it is just standard netiquette). In 1941, when he and my grandmother, along with my mom and my aunt, returned to Japan, he changed his name back to "I," since that was how he had been known when he lived there previously. So my mother got a new last name. Then she married my father, and took his name, the name he had been born with.

After the war, when inflation skyrocketed in Japan, my maternal grandparents decided to go back to the US to live (where they changed their name back to "N"). They had some land, and they wanted to give it to my parents. However, for it to be in my father's name, he had to be legally adopted by them. This happens all the time in Japan, even today. A family with no sons will adopt the husband of one of their daughters, who becomes the family heir and takes on the family name. So my parents' last name was now "I" (thus, my mother again had the last name she had had when she was single). My father's father was OUTRAGED and incensed, that my father had changed his name and was planning on moving to the US. My grandfather's two oldest sons were dead, and my father was turning his back on the family name. The next oldest son in the family had already been adopted by his wife's family and was that family's heir. All that was left was the youngest son in the family (boy, was he lucky he'd had five sons).

My grandfather refused to speak to my father. He refused to say goodbye. He refused to answer letters from America. He died a couple of years later, and my father didn't find out (due to a telegram delay; at that point in the early '60s people in rural Japan didn't have international telephone capability) till after the funeral. He never got over that, that he missed his father's funeral. All this over a NAME. All this anger and regret over a name.

My sister had two daughters, my father's first grandchildren. Then she had a boy, and bought her a diamond watch.

When my brother had his first son, my father was ecstatic. He said, "This means the "I" name will be strong!" The whole carrrying on the family name thing continued on to the next generation.

What really struck me at the time was that my father hadn't been BORN with the name "I." But he wanted it to continue. He had always valued boys over girls; this was broadly apparent to me while I was growing up. I heard the story many times that when my mother had been pregnant with me, he had promised her that he'd buy her the pearl ring she'd fancied if I was a boy. I was a girl, so she didn't get the ring. When he went in to see my mother for the first time after I was born, she said she was thinking of naming me Paula or Lori. "Whatever you want," he told her gruffly.

All this fuss over having boys, and heirs, to continue the family name. And it hadn't even been his name to begin with.

And then, when I was in my 20s, I found out that the name my father had been born with, the one that HIS father had been so enraged that he had changed? **That had not been my grandfather's original last name.** He had been born with a different last name, but he had been adopted by a family member and took on that family name.

I'm relieved that it stops now, this bizarre obsession with fathers and their heirs and their changable names. My husband has a son, who will carry on his name, but he really wouldn't have cared if that had not been the case. His son is his child, to be loved and cared for, as is his daughter, not some symbol of immortality. He brings new, and inspired, meaning to "father," things that my father and his father never were.

I'm thankful every single day that my children have such a wonderful dad.