My Father, Myself
Car Trouble / "Mountaineer's Foot" / Tight Genes
My dad’s name was Robert (but he was better known as Bob). If he had a middle name, I never knew it. There was a lot about him I didn’t know. Like many of us, he kept his shadow side well hidden. Over the years, some of it has been brought to light. But questions remain. They will always remain. Forty years ago — on September 24, 1984, at the age of 54 — he died of congestive heart failure.
I’m dedicating this longer-than-usual, multi-media Substack post to my father. It includes three short pieces I’ve written about our complicated relationship. The first, below, is a chapter from my most recent book, “108 Beloved Objects.” The second is an abridgement of a travel story that ran in the Los Angeles Times in 2008, when I myself turned 54. The third is also from 108, presented as a 2-minute digital recording.
All three of the stories talk about my dad from different angles. If I triangulate them, a sketchy portrait emerges. I say sketchy because it fails to include the surprising and thoughtful things Dad did for me over the years — like take me fishing (once), or fly to Santa Barbara, rent a T-Bird convertible, and show up at the opening of my first one-man show (I was making art back then). But such acts were rare. The bottom line is, I wish I’d known him better. It would have happened, given time.
Kodak Beaker / Plainview, NY, 1984 (from 108 Beloved Objects)
The last time I saw my father was in early 1983. He was driving me to New York’s JFK to catch an overseas flight. I was off on a Rotary Journalism Fellowship to Nepal. My mom sat restlessly in the passenger seat. We’d warned my father not to take the Chrysler — Mom’s Ford was more reliable — but his personal anthem was the Frank Sinatra song My Way, and as always he had ignored our advice. I sat in the back seat, watching the minutes slide by.
The Chrysler broke down, as expected. We were already running late. While my father tried in vain to restart the engine I exited the car in disgust, pulled my backpack from the trunk, and stuck out my thumb.
During my 18 months abroad, I asked friends returning home to carry parcels of my exposed Kodachrome film. Reluctantly, I decided to rely on my father to process the film, review the slides, and write to tell me if my exposures were okay. At first, his notes were perfunctory. As the months went by, though, he wrote increasingly perceptive letters about my images: praising the beauty of Nepal, the clarity of light, the vivid festivals. He began to ask me for advice about how to get started in photography. Within a year he had bought a good camera, and set up a small darkroom in our basement laundry room.
Near the end of my trip, I phoned home from a stopover in Hong Kong. My dad had all the lenses he needed, but asked me to find him a pair of fine binoculars. “I trust your judgment,” he said. It was the first time he’d ever expressed confidence in me.
A few days later I landed in LAX. Jet-lagged and culture shocked, I called home again. My brother — who should have been away at college — answered the phone. “Jord!” I said. ”What are you doing home?”
“Dad is dead,” he announced. “He died of a massive heart attack last night.”
I was on a cross-country flight within hours, and home the next morning: sitting shiva, going through my father’s effects, and standing in his darkroom, bereft. I would never meet the man who, after 30 years of disinterest, had at last become a friend.
Here is the excerpt from my 2008 L.A. Times story. If you’d like to read the whole piece, you can download the pdf here:
My father had a good heart, but he had a bad heart, if you know what I mean. Musical and charming, he was something of a voluptuary. On sunny weekends he preferred sitting in our living room, listening to Chopin or Sarah Vaughan LPs, to playing tennis or jogging.
At 52, Dad began showing signs of heart disease. His doctor enrolled him in a modest exercise program and told my father that, if he could manage it, he should try to walk around the block once a day.
That was back in 1983. I was 29, away on an 18-month fellowship in Kathmandu. My adventures there included a trek into Nepal’s Khumbu region, climaxing with a grueling hike up Kala Patthar: an 18,450’ hill with staggering views of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) and its neighboring glaciers.
The following year — just days after his 54th birthday, in September 1984 — my father was rushed to the hospital with chest pains. I returned home from Asia just a few days later, but it wasn’t soon enough. Dad had died of a massive heart attack the previous afternoon.
Like my father, I love Sarah Vaughan and Chopin. I also share his hypertension, and a genetic risk of heart disease. Unlike Dad, though, my passion is the outdoors, with every free day spent hiking or biking.
I turned 54 in March of 2008 — a birthday fraught with long-held anxieties. A few months later, I accepted an assignment to return to Nepal, and trek back to that harsh aerie among the world’s highest peaks. It would be 25 years since my first visit. I knew the Khumbu had changed — as had I. I couldn’t help but wonder if, this time, the mountains might not get the best of me.
It’s amazing how, after a couple of days of walking, one can pass from an elfin forest into an austere landscape where only scrub and lichen can survive. At this altitude, it’s all about rocks. I cross creeks bubbling across rounded boulders, and rest at small chortens heaped with stones placed by the pilgrims who proceeded me. Hawks wheel above scree-covered hills. Above everything, the most magnificent rocks on earth carve the sky: snow-packed Ama Dablam, the sawtooth wall of Nuptse, and the forbidding black pyramid of Everest.
By the time I reach Duglha, 15,075’ above sea level, the true nature of the landscape is laid bare. Here the Khumbu Glacier, flowing from the slopes of Everest, terminates in a jumble of moraine. When I sit quietly I can hear it cracking and groaning, moving inexorably forward.
On a rise above Duglha, scores of memorials honor Sherpas and climbers who have lost their lives attempting to summit Sagarmatha. Were these here 25 years ago? I don’t recall. But I note that these memorials — like those found in Jewish cemeteries— are marked not with flowers, but stones.
The higher one goes, the higher one gets. Trekking above 17,000’, the scenery seems hallucinatory. Stone chortens tower atop ridges, as artful as earthworks by Andy Goldsworthy; the surrounding peaks stand crystalline against the sapphire sky. The sun is blinding, unmistakably a star. It’s epic, a cinematic backdrop of muting splendor. I could wring the blood out of every cliché in Webster’s and I’d still be stuttering like Moses, flabbergasted by the Burning Bush.
I reach Gorak Shep in two hours, stopping for lemon tea before facing the relentless, 1,450’ uphill grade of Kala Patthar.
It is much longer, and much steeper, than I’d remembered. I take thirty steps, then pause for a minute to let my pulse slow down. Soon it’s ten steps, and five minutes’ rest. At some point, every step becomes a negotiation. After an hour of this the top, festooned with prayer flags, comes into view. It’s just fifty yards away – but that’s one thousand, eight hundred inches. I recall H. W. Tilman’s definition of mountaineer’s foot: “reluctance to put one in front of the other.”
Reaching the summit I drop, panting, onto a flat rock. Once I catch my breath, the miracle of my situation overwhelms me. Before me, two miles higher, is the peak of Sagarmatha; below, the Khumbu Glacier; behind, the bell-like dome of Pumori. I feel a sense of achievement unimaginable 25 years ago. Having completed this trek — a feat I did not take for granted — makes me realize that genetics may be just a factor: one of many.
I unfurl a string of prayer flags, and tie them between two stones. They ripple in the wind, a memorial to my father. He had a good heart — and that’s the one he left to me.
* * *
And here is the final story, recorded in Mexico in 2019:
Writing about my dad raises a question: Is Parkinson’s hereditary? The answer is: Not so much. Or maybe. About eight years ago, I was foolish enough to look up my genetic medical data on 23 and Me. Everything seemed normal, until I came to the final entry: Elevated risk of Parkinson’s.
What nonsense, I told myself. Nobody in my family, as far as even my 90+ mother can recall, has ever been diagnosed with PD.
Though there are at least 18 genes associated with Parkinson’s, “Studies show that some cases are caused by genetic mutations, but hereditary causes are rare.” According to Healthline, “Only about 10 to 15 percent of those who have Parkinson’s disease have a family history of it. For the rest, the cause of Parkinson’s is usually unknown.” And even a family history, it turns out, is not a significant causal factor. An online AI search via Perplexity confirms this: “...the majority of Parkinson's cases do not have a clear genetic link and are thought to result from a complex interplay between genetic predispositions and environmental factors.”
Especially, the Healthline article goes on to say, “exposure to herbicides and pesticides.” So rather than indict my family tree, I’m more likely to have been put at risk by the thousands of allethrin-rich mosquito coils I burned during the months and years I lived in Kathmandu.
Okay. So... While we’re on the subject of plants (allethrin, a pesticide, is derived from Chrysanthemum flowers), I’ll end this post by pointing you to my most recent story for Craftsmanship: a feature about the marvelous Beatrice Thornton, and her revival of the art of plant-based photography.
Finally, as many of you know… In seven weeks, writing coach Laurie Wagner, poet James Hopkins and I will be leading the Wild Writing Nepal workshop to the Kathmandu Valley. It’s truly a life-changing experience, for writers and non-writers alike. If you’ve ever dreamed of visiting Nepal, this is a wonderful opportunity. The number of participants is limited to 14; there are two openings left.
Two months later, in January 2025, I’ll be taking a small group to Cuba, where we’ll celebrate Havana’s Plaza Jazz Festival and journey from the north coast to the south coast cultural capital of Trinidad. If you love music, and have been curious about Cuba, this is a great opportunity to experience the country.
That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading.
I only met your dad once, maybe in 1981, when he came out to Santa Barbara for one of your first art exhibits. I'm sure the evening had a theme, but what I remember is a collage of Picasso's head in the bull's eye of a super imposed dart board. (Where is that, by the way?) Your dad, all curly red hair and smiles, charmed me onto the dance floor. I thought he was a really good dancer, and I had a lot of fun. He seemed happy to see you in your element. And I never imagined I wouldn't see him again.
My dad also died at 54 - When I, and especially my brother, turned 54, we realized how we’d never really allowed ourselves to imagine living beyond that and now had to open up to the possibility of a long life. Odd. I loved the LA essay, especially this line: "hauling huge bags of goose feathers into the clouds."