In my entire life I had never seen my father's uncovered body. Everyone was expected to be fully dressed at all times, morning, noon, and night, either dressed in street clothes or sleepwear. There were no exceptions. Daddy would send you away from the supper table if you dared expect to dine in a T-shirt. But the times were different now. If my father needed to be moved or roll over onto his side, I helped my mother.
I was shaving. One day at the age of 14, when my father saw what I was doing and asked if I was going to get some of that shaving cream out of my ears before I left the house. I continued trying to shave even though there was little if any hair on my face or for that matter any where else. Daddy also asked where I was headed to anyway. I said I was going to a movie.
"Really," he said. He probably figured I was headed to downtown Kernersville, NC with my brother or sister, or perhaps even the cute girl across street. But he asked anyway. "Who are going with to the movies?" he calmly asked.
He was not really prepared for my response. Not many fathers are, and frankly, I was not prepared for my response to his question either.
With my face covered with shaving cream, I looked up at my father-a mountain of a man, standing six feet tall with chiseled muscles on a large frame, and with an expression of such affection and love glowing through all that form-and I said, "with Gat!"
When Wit Taylor, my father, was bedridden, weak from radiation and chemotherapy, and nearing death, he showed me for the first time his collection of photographs that he kept locked in a safe. I asked him to tell me about the people in the photographs, all my relatives, and when he did I would write a small number on the back of the photograph and log the names, dates, place with any other information he could remember on a separate piece of paper. Dad and I did this for almost three days. He gave me his collection of photographs. The oldest one is a photograph of my grandfather, Robert Paul Taylor, in his World War I army uniform. I have pictures of my grandmother and my great-grandmother.
With that, the expression of tenderness and joy upon seeing the only male heir, the only Taylor left to bear the family name, taking his first steps toward so-called manhood by shaving, were replaced with the heavy concerns and burdens of fathers everywhere. He knew that look on my face and the sparks in my eyes for a boy who lived across town meant that this was no ordinary friendship. I was in love, and it was not the neighbor's daughter that caught my fancy. He moved closer and said, "Didn't you have dinner with him last night, and lunch today, and the two of you are going to a movie together tonight?" "It is just a movie," I said sheepishly.
He moved closer; I grew frightened, and he said, "We already have one Mark in the family. We do not need two!" That was all my father ever said to me about being gay. He wanted me to know he was no fool.
I shaved daddy for the first time in my life, and he would let me, calm and smiling. One time a friend of my mother's from church brought daddy some clears oils I believed had been blessed by our pastor. Daddy wanted mother to rub it on his back. She bristled and instructed me to do it. What! Me?"
I had never touched my father's shoulders. I proceeded to rub the oils and became more aware of the moment, and of his pending death, and of my own someday. While I was rubbed the oils, his physicality, even at seventy-six years of age, shockingly resembled my own. Even though I was forty some years his junior, I could see the shape of his fingers, how they remind me of a childhood memory of the way his fingers resembled fat cigars, and now how my own fingers look the same. How his skin, though weak and old, draped on his body over his bones and muscles felt familiar to me. His muscles, that at one time fought for more room insides his work clothes, are the same pine cone-brown color as mine. It will all become a memory, causing me to wonder if the dead ever remember that at one time they were alive.
But he never stopped me from seeing Gat, or anyone else for that matter and years later he often encouraged me to bring my boyfriends to the house. "I will deal with your mother,"
My father knew who and what he was raising and he never mistreated me--or tried to make a man out of me. And because he never beat me or abused me in an attempt to toughen me up in a time during the late '50s and early '60s, when doing so would have been consider the right and proper thing for a father to do when confronted with an effeminate son, I will always cherish his memory. I know at least one man in my life truly loved me, and that man was indeed my father.
"If you don't want these I am going to throw them out," my mother told me when I was back home visiting. They were love letters written to my father before he and my mother were married. She also gave me a 1922 silver dollar from my father's coin collection, his drivers' license, and a pair of shoes, cuff links, handkerchiefs, and key chains. And a photo album. An album of proud men: strong men, and their wives.
When "daddy's little boy" wanted to be "mommy's little girl," I knew I was in trouble. I wanted to knit, sew, bake cookies, quilt, and paint, kiss boys, and play nurse. Now at forty-five years old, I create art by adorning women's handbags with colored pins, puzzle pieces, beads, mementos, and charms. I know I can do these things because I have the support and grace of a loving father in my heart.
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