My father married my mother in the late 1960s; she was 17 and he was 34. She was a Unitarian Universalist and he was a Jew. My mother doesn't say so, largely because of her love for her children, but it was probably one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
My sister was born nine months to the day after the wedding, one day after my mother's 18th birthday. I was born about two and a half years later. Sometime between, my mother converted to Judaism, and in the process became probably more knowledgeable about the religion than my father was. I'm pretty sure my father had a very secular Jewish upbringing; he hardly spoke any Hebrew, and didn't seem to understand kosher rules. (My mother told me one time my father asked for a ham sandwich for lunch, but he wanted it on matzoh because it was Passover.)
My parents divorced when I was two. I actually have two faint memories of them being together; in both of them, they are fighting. My mother didn't tell me until years later that the reason she left was because he was physically abusive. She took us kids and went back to her parents. On the first day of my sister's first grade, my father showed up and took her from school. He hid her away somewhere and came to take me; I also dimly remember this happening, and my grandfather blocking him from coming in the house. Eventually, the court gave my father custody of my sister and my mother custody of me. There was a joint custody arrangement that focused on Jewish holidays; if Passover fell on school's spring break, we would spend that week with my dad, and if Hannukah fell on the winter break, the same. I took a lot of flights as a child, as my father lived in Silicon Valley, and my mother lived in the greater Los Angeles area.
My father was abusive, mainly emotionally and not physically to us. (He actually spanked me just one time, but I honestly feel it was appropriate and I respected him for it.) My sister told me one time she forgot to take out the trash the day before her birthday, and that next morning, dad dumped the trash on her bed and told her that her party was canceled. Most of my fights with my dad were over food, as I was a picky eater, and he wouldn't accept it. If I didn't clear off my plate, he would often save my leftovers to serve to me at the next meal, refusing to give me any other food. This was a battle we both lost, as he wouldn't get me to eat it, and I would starve until my visit was over. One time, I remember completely finishing everything on my plate and he loaded me up with seconds I didn't ask for; when I didn't finish, he refused to give me dessert. This happened to be at my aunt's house, and everyone in the family told him he was being unreasonable, but I got no dessert anyway.
While my father worked as a disk jockey in the early years of his marriage to my mother, eventually, he got a nursing license. He seemed to really love the job, and took a lot of pride in his work. He worked in the emergency room most of the time, I think, as he often had stories of people coming into the hospital in very bad shape. Something that my father managed to drill into me effectively was a fear of motorcycles. He somehow found out that my stepfather had a motorcycle, and he always told me that he wanted to take me on a tour of the ICU to see all the mangled bodies of people who had been in motorcycle accidents. I would always turn him down and assure him I didn't need to be convinced, and I really didn't. I've only been on a motorcycle once in my life, and I was terrified.
While I tend to say a lot of bad stuff about my father, because I think it's the traumatic stuff that sticks in your head, I think the majority of the time I spent with him was positive. He had a great sense of humor and was always trying to find fun things to do with us. I really loved my dad and looked forward to visiting him, despite knowing there were bound to be unpleasant parts to every trip. He knew I liked visiting (and I think my sister did too after my mother regained custody years later) but wouldn't want to live with him year-round.
Most of the family was convinced he had undiagnosed mental illness of some sort. Part of that problem was his apparent inability to understand that love wasn't like pie where he had to compete with my mother for his share of our love. I truly loved him as much as I loved my mother, but could never convince him of that. He spent far too much time trying to convince me that my mother was a terrible person, something my mother never did in return. The fact that I preferred to live with her convinced him that I didn't love him enough, and his insecurity showed. One time, he actually offered to buy me an Apple II computer if I agreed to live with him. I was dismayed that he would stoop to bribing me for choosing him; although I knew what bribery was, I couldn't put into words what I felt, as I didn't want to put it that bluntly.
We went to synagogue with my father, and as a child, I was just as curious about religion as I am today. I would often ask him questions about Judaism, to which he would usually tell me not to question. I thought you weren't supposed to ask questions as a Jew, which was very unsatisfying for me. I really believe that if my questions had been answered, I'd very likely still be an observant Jew today. I realized as an adult that it was just my dad's ignorance that stopped my questions, and Jews are actually generally encouraged to question. My father should have directed me to ask the Rabbi instead of shutting me up, or maybe supplied me with books about Judaism. I actually believe I learned far more about the Jewish religion after I became a Christian than before. Knowing so little was a big part of why I left Judaism.
When I was twelve, my father called me on the phone and told me he had just returned from a trip to Israel. He had decided that in order to be a good, observant Jew, he had to go and live there. He asked me if I was coming with him. My mind reeled at this question. Leave everything I had ever known behind? I'd never been outside California, much less the country. Do they even speak English in Israel? My Hebrew was very meager. Except for apparently my dad now, all of my family was here in America. I told him no. "You don't love me then," he said, and hung up. Nobody in my life has ever approached saying anything that hurt me as much as those five words. It was like being stabbed in the heart.
I canceled my bar mitzvah, and walked away from Judaism. I realized that everything Jewish I was doing in my life was to please my dad, and not to please God, so why bother? For years, I called myself an atheist, although it wasn't that I didn't beilieve in God, I just didn't believe in religion.
Somewhere around 25 years later, my sister informed me that she had discovered that my father had moved back to the US, and had lost his nursing license. There was a legal document describing an incident when he was working at a nursing home, and after an elderly patient soiled himself, my father beat him with his fists. We didn't attempt to reconnect.
At about 30 years, he wrote my sister and me letters expressing a desire to catch up with us. It didn't seem particularly sincere (he said he had been searching for us for years, but my mother had the same mailing address she had when I was twelve), and both of us forgave him for the hurt he had inflicted on us 30 years previously (which he claimed to not recall, perhaps sincerely, perhaps not) and told him we were only interested in reconnecting if he truly wanted it. He didn't write back.
Now at about 40 years on, this week my sister received a letter informing her that a reading of my father's will is taking place in mid-January, so it seems he is dead. I didn't know how I would feel about this until now. It seems I feel nothing. I loved my father very much, but perhaps he died to me when I was twelve years old, and he hung up that phone on me. I wish I could have told him that he was being unreasonable, and we didn't have to end our relationship because he was leaving the country. I wish I could have told him that if my mother had gone crazy and decided she needed to join her ancestors in England, I would have moved in with him. I wish he had known that I loved him as much as I loved my mother, and in the time he was in my life, one of the driving emotional needs in my life was to have him approve of me and be proud of me, and it was sad that that never seemed to happen.
.נוח על משכבך בשלום, אבא