The Green Bay Packers
A Letter to My Father
I took a little break for Thanksgiving. Football, F1, shitty food, video games. My Chargers played the Raiders again. I started to type “your Raiders,” but that changed when they left L.A.
It still amuses me that you decided on the Green Bay Packers as your new team. Your logic—they’re owned by the people of Green Bay, so they’ll never leave—was flawless. They’d never abandon their fanbase.
I remember thinking it made sense that you, of all people, would want a team you could count on to never leave. I was sure it wasn’t a coincidence. It took me a little longer to realize that was where you and I had considerable overlap.
As precocious as I may have been, the obvious could sometimes fly right by me. You and I—we were the same. The reason you were the perfect person to raise me was because you knew what it was to be abandoned by one of the two people who should default to loving you.
You never told me your stories. I had to hear them from Grandma and Uncle Charlie. Stories about being left to sleep outside in the car in the driveway. Stories about whoopings with electric cords. Stories of abandonment and broken promises; of waiting outside for someone to arrive who never does, being coaxed back into the house long after bedtime.
They were stories that broke my heart, but I was obtuse and self-absorbed to the point that I missed the parallels until I was a little older. I was too busy brooding to really listen.
God, I was such a little fuckhead.
Being unwanted by a parent leaves a particular kind of hole in a child. From everything I’ve ever read or experienced, those children grow up to either repeat their parental unit’s mistakes or undo them with their own children. Fortunately for me, you were part of the latter group.
You were a senior in high school when I popped into the world, so you ended up getting your GED in the Army.
I learned how to drive a forklift before I learned to ride a bike because you took me to work at a time before daycare was a thing, and you couldn’t find a sitter.
You let me sit outside and wait for hours, even when you knew Mom wasn’t coming. You’d check on me, ask if I needed anything, then leave me alone. When I woke up from nightmares and demanded her, you picked me up and wouldn’t let me go—no matter how much I screamed for her, no matter how much my little fists pummeled you.
When she finally showed up, you told me not to treat the new guy like he was trying to replace me. You said, “Give him a chance,” and then invited him in. You became his friend and gave me permission to love him.
They didn’t last very long, but all these decades later, there’s still some part of me that loves him. The image of you welcoming him into our home, having a drink and laughing with him—that’s what kids today call a core memory.
My point in all of this rambling, Dad, is that you set an example from the beginning. You handled your business and your boy without ever saying, “Handle your business, boy.”
But the older I got, the angrier I got. Because, like you, I was abandoned over and over and over again. Unlike you, I lashed out and hurt the one person who always showed up.
Fuck.
You were my Green Bay Packers.
