“It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”
- Anne Sexton

I never say things that I don’t mean, so I am familiar with the shocked awe of others when they hear some of the words and phrases that issue forth from my mouth. But everything pales in comparison to the shock with which I was greeted this week at work when I inquired, “When the fuck is Father’s Day?” and a fellow colleague responded, “This Sunday.” To which I replied, “Oh. Thank God my father is dead, because I always fucking forgot Father’s Day.”

Even my co-designer was shocked. “Atherton, I cannot believe that you said that!”

I was raised in an austere environment, and that austerity was strictly enforced by my father, who was a firm believer in tradition, decorum, propriety, discipline, and excellence. In fact, we rarely spoke to each other.

And yet, my first memory of him is not so austere; my first memory of him is of he and my mother holding each of my hands while walking through a park in Winnetka, and both of them lifting me up into the air to circumnavigate the park benches, me, screaming in delight at being airborne, while they jointly bore my weight before setting me down on the other side of the park bench.

It is the other memories that are not so great.

Of course, there are those memories that I treasure now: the subtle trip to the men’s room when I was acting up and being a screaming brat in a restaurant, so he could give me a few lashings with his Gucci belt (and please, do not pull that New Age “I Never Hit My Child!” Card…that’s how we learned what is wrong and what is appropriate); the evening of the day that I broke a fellow classmate’s nose in sixth grade, and felt badly about it, when he laid with me in front of the fire and convinced me that I only did what I had to do in order to not be disgraced by anyone else; the days on which we received the acceptance letters from Phillips Exeter (Duh. He was on the board. I attended.) and Yale (Duh. He was on the board. I did not attend…big mistake.).

But then, there are other memories. Wanting to talk to him about something and walking into his office only to see the front page of the Chicago Tribune staring back at me, and an icy, “I’m busy,” in response to my query, “May I talk to you?” Walking into his office and seeing the name “ADOLF” lipsticked in Chanel Red onto the mirror above his fireplace (my mother’s doing, clearly following a fight). Sending me away to boarding school in Switzerland for “French Immersion” and “Gay Aversion Therapy” following the discovery of me in bed with my male best friend. Telling him that I would not be attending Yale, but would instead be attending Sarah Lawrence, and hearing, “You will not receive a single penny from me for your higher education if you do not attend the school that I choose.” (That was when I told him, “Well then, fuck you!” and never spoke to him again.) And then there are the memories of evenings spent in bed with him, when he was comforting me during my phase of “Pelican Man” nightmares, and wondering, now, if he was not the cause of them.

I still loved him. I still admired him. I still do. Why else would I still be wearing his platinum wedding band after all of these years since my parents’ divorce? I wear it to remember what he taught me, despite the bad memories: to excel, to achieve, to be strong, and to be (or, at least, to appear to be) absolutely blameless; to live your life in a way that will please you when you are reflecting on it while laying on your deathbed dying of colon cancer (Who knew? He smoked so much it really should have been lung cancer); and to never, ever give up.

No matter what.

I wear that platinum wedding band to remember one of the people who made me who I am today. And to remember that day, long ago, in a Winnetka village park, smiling up at my father, who was, oddly, and uncharacteristically, smiling back at me.

And you know what? He never once told me that he loved me.