I have not written about my old man in a while. In a sense, I lost my place. After Megan was born was the part of the story that is most challenging to record. There are at least 4 different versions of the story I know, and it is not my place to detail the versions that Megan, Kevin and Mom have, although I have a shorthand way of thinking of them. My version, perhaps, is closest to Mom's, but maybe not.
Everyone thinks that they know their parents the best - and I am no exception - and I suppose that parents exists, somehow, in their children, so it is partly true.
Megan and Kevin were born 10 years apart, and I have always suspected that they had 2 different dads. But, what about me? I was in the middle. Which one did I have? Well, more like Kevin's, I guess, but different, very different.
There is a Eugenides story in a recent New Yorker that deals with the "irrelevancy of fathers," using the gorgeous Roeg fil "Walkabout" as a pretext. I think that my dad was very very relevant, but my expectations were so very low, somehow. I got what I needed from him. More than I did, actually. Kevin did not, perhaps.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/11/070611fa_fact_eugenides

This photo is dad at some family gathering. Which one? An anniversary party? Aunt Nancy, Mom's younger sister, a fun and successful entrepeneur, and my grandfather, called Poppop by one and all. Can you see what a bon vivant Dad was? He was that...Irish, charming, with a commanding, "booming" voice, and actually he was a remarkable diplomat when he wanted to be. Drinking, too. What can I say? Does it match the other characteristics? Does it irrigate them?

Retrospectively, it is easy to look at the habits of the departed and surmise what pysiological reason there may have been for their attributes - to understand - to excuse - to better contextualize them. I have 100 versions of such things: stories about how dad was "self-medicating," and I won't foist my own notions on the readers here.

I mean to be more descriptive than analytical or critical.