A Father's Story

A man receives a catalog in the mail advertising bicycle trips all over the world. The catalog is printed in what used to be called ‘4 color’ on a thick paper stock that takes color well. It’s inconspicuously well-designed in what I’d call a up-to-date midcentury modern style that doesn’t call attention to itself but quietly gets you to dream of traveling to exotic places and pulling out your credit card at almost the same time. Upon surrendering your CVV number, you will be met at your chosen destination by a small select group of handsome, experienced, youngish but not too young, men and women, the tour leaders…

…the story goes from there, and it’s all yours to tell. I passed on it some time ago, thinking it looked and sounded like something I’d already written.

I’m looking for new material in the hope of writing like I’m really searching for something—the best kind of writing—because I am really searching. I’m searching for my father, George John Roddan, born 1915, died 1967. I was 16 when he died so unexpectedly, both too young to know him and just old enough to know he would be a mystery to me the rest of my life.

I have a birthdate and the date of his death, a few pictures, the note he left my mom, the obit in the local newspaper, The Palos Verdes News, and a little box of his cufflinks of all things. That’s it, that’s all that’s left of him, all that’s left of 52 years of living.

So the story, if I’m strong enough and live long enough to tell it, will be a reconstruction, in a weird way both confrontation and escape. If I have the courage to look him in the eye I fully expect him to tell me the truth, whatever the truth may be, and not run away from it even if it’s not what I want to hear. There will be no 4-color catalog to leaf through with pretty pictures suggesting that my life will be more interesting if I live it for a time in a foreign place, or tour guides to help me along the way. Just my father answering any question I can think to ask and me, wandering around, no destination in sight quite yet.