My Father
last updated on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 3:54:11 AM CST

regarding events somewhere about 1 July, 1976

Albert Snyder, whose last name I carry (and will 'til the end of my days), is the only real father figure I had in my life growing up.  He had something that none of the rest of them (oh yes, we'll get to the rest of them eventually) did:  An interest in being a parent.  This is something I sometimes believe my mother lacked, though I'm certain she will vehemently argue and deny this.  It's hard to say, given the huge amount of negative crap to come.

I remember very little of the trip with my mother and father-to-be, but I know they were married in Atlanta, Georgia.  I don't really remember the road trip itself, but I remember just the vaguest hints of the courthouse and the courtroom in which they were married.  Twenty-seven years to an early-childhood memory is a long, winding road, but I do remember some of it.  At any rate, they were married, and that was a good thing.

Al was a great father.  Years later, I would tell him exactly what he meant to me.  At this age though, I just enjoyed having a father-figure who was actually, you know, a father.  It's said that I was always asking if we were going to see "Daddy Al" long before they even got married, which is probably a good sign.

I still, to this date, have no idea how he pulled it off, but the last Christmas before my sister was born (I would have been four, which means that my earliest Christmas memory had to be age two or three... love my random nature yet?), he managed to bring such meaning and awe to the holiday.  It was nearing midnight on Christmas eve, and we weren't allowed to touch our presents until it was actually Christmas day.  This year was certainly a problem though, because Santa hadn't brought any presents.  It was great being naive enough to still believe in Santa, but I was starting to think maybe I'd been a bad kid (because, of course, Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom all put the presents under the tree early, and all one my age typically understands about Christmas is the presents... it isn't until years later that we come to understand the true meaning, and some of us never do).  So I was getting antsy.  I wanted my presents.

At the stroke of midnight, the lights go off.  I remember this like it was yesterday.  Mom and Dad were sitting on the couch, and to the best of my recollection, they were nowhere near the single light-switch in the room (the second one wouldn't be installed for a couple of years yet).  And the lights were only off for the briefest of moments... no more than a minute... and my ears were straining to hear any sound, any noise.  Nothing met them.  But when the lights came back up, Mom and Dad were still on the couch, and there were all kinds of presents under the tree.  I couldn't believe it.  Santa had come and left me presents.

It's funny, because every time I tell this tale (even now), I get all misty-eyed.  You see, that's the kind of man my father was.  I mean, can you imagine the complete shock and joy in the eyes of a four-year-old because of this one little event?  And who would have thought this would stick with me for the entirety of my life?  In one act, Al managed to renew my belief in Santa Claus for years to come.  Other kids could tell me all they wanted that Santa didn't exist... He'd been to my house!

I often say that life with Al wasn't easy.  He was strong on discipline, and I was constantly threatened with military school.  Of course, this stems from my lack of interest in school, and we'll get to that in another entry.  I remember helping dig out a new "room" in the basement for a month.  I'm not even sure what I did to get it as a punishment, but I'm certain, whatever it was, it was probably well deserved.  And yes, my hide got tanned quite a number of times.  Always with the catch phrase of "this will hurt me more than it will hurt you."  Yeah, right.  I always thought he was just saying that, and after he applied his hand to my hind end, I was certain he was just saying that.  But in retrospect, I can say two things... First, he was disciplining me the only way he knew how; and much more gently than he himself had been disciplined as a youth.  Second, he never punished me unjustly.

Another thing I often tell people when I'm speaking of my father is that the thing I remember most about him is the time he would spend with me.  I wasn't all that interested in fishing, though we went fishing quite often.  It wasn't about catching trout and catfish and other aquatic life though.  It was about spending time with the kids (yes, even my little sister came along... this wasn't such a curse in the earlier years though).  He was always willing to take time to explain things to you as well.

See, Al worked at Caterpillar (and did for the remaining years of his life, well over twenty years, and much closer to thirty as I recall).  But that was his job.  In his spare time, he worked on cars, he rewired the house, he did woodworking in the basement, and metalworking in his shed.  I often think to myself I never really learned as much from him as I could, but if I took away one thing, it was his love of woodworking.  You would think that would be enough to keep him busy, and you would also think a fourty-five minute drive to work every day, working at Caterpillar in hot, sweaty environments would leave him a tired, old man.  Yet, he had time to play video games with me, or sit and watch bad B-movies on Saturdays.  He was always doing something, and as often as possible, he would include his two children.  I think, perhaps, that is the biggest reason I will always consider him my father — he never treated me like a step-son.  He never even called me his step-son.  I was his son, his child.

It's funny, the things you remember years later.  I remember that nearly every Friday night was a trip into LaSalle/Peru, to the Long John Silver's, or as he remember it, Arthur Treacher's.  I remember him cooking huge pots of pork and beans (one of his favorite meals), and frying up tons of green tomatoes (believe it or not, I actually liked those).  I also remember him whistling.  He would whistle while working on the car, or putting together a puzzle, or you would hear his whistles echoing from downstairs, above the band saw.  These are just a few of the things I remember about him, and I could go on forever with memories.  Maybe someday I will...

I was important enough to him for him to want to adopt me though.  The first step along the way was a legal namechange.  Because my sister had been born, Veronica Lynn Snyder, he eventually decided that to make things easier on us as siblings, a namechange was in order.  So in 1980, I became James Leonard Snyder.  My mother tells me that the reason the adoption itself never went through was because my biological father refused to sign over parental rights.  An anonymous relative whose name I shall keep quiet about (who also spoke to my dad's lawyer later on in life and found out the truth), my mother had simply never paid for the paperwork to start.  That the namechange had been done to show the courts that my father was serious about me being his child.

Things eventually went bad between him and my mother though (for reasons I'll detail elsewhere).  And before long (nearly seven years, but just not long enough), she was divorcing her second husband.  That she was already in the arms of he who would be her third husband is a point of contention she and I often argue over these days.  Like any good parent going through a divorce, she tried to convince me of the horrible things he'd done, of the endless days of drinking, and the abuse, and all of the fun stuff she went through, and how Albert was a horrible person.  Maybe I'd have believed her if I did not also know her, if my eyes were blind, if my ears were deaf, and if Al had not been my father.  Maybe too I would have believed her if I was not intelligent beyond my years, and possessing of cognitive thought and reasoning.

Sadly for her, I never really bought into the horrible things she said about him.  The best she could come up with was one time that he sent me to bed without dinner, and how hadn't she been just this great mother for sneaking some food into me, as though one night without food would have killed me.  What she failed to keep in mind is that I remember why I was sent to bed without food.  It had been because I had refused to eat what had been cooked.  Believe me, if I was hungry, I never again refused food.

I'll talk about the interceding years later, but I want to share the two last important events in my father's life with you.  The first is the day I told him how much he meant to me.  I was sixteen, maybe seventeen, and he, his second wife, my Uncle Kirby, and maybe one of the step-sisters (Sandy, I'm thinking) were sitting around the dining room table, just talking about all kinds of things.  I couldn't really tell you how we got onto the subject, but it might have been that we were talking about one of Al's favorite recollections of my childhood antics:  Cutting paper with scissors, and when he asks me why I'm cutting paper, I say to him, "I'm not cutting paper."  As you can imagine, he cured me of bold-faced lying quite quickly that day.

So I looked over at him this day around the dining room table, and said, "You know what?  Thank you."  He just gets this puzzled look in his eyes, and asks, "For what?"  I told him that he used to tell me when I was younger that someday I'd thank him for being spanked.  That someday I'd understand what he meant that it hurt him more than it did me when he spanked me.  And I'd reached that point in life where I did understand.  You'll find out later that the years between the divorce and this conversation were no real joy, but I'd made it through them.  Mostly because someone very important to me had instilled values and morals in me, had taught me right from wrong, and had taken the time when it was most important to be there for me.  And I told him how much he meant to me.  That I didn't think I could have made it through those years without him having been my father, and that the weekends I had come to visit him, and the weeks over the summers over the years had meant more to me than he would ever know.

As I spoke to him, I could see the pride in his eyes, and it was the first time I'd ever seen him nearly shed a tear because of something I had said.  I'd only seen him cry three times in his life, and one was yet to come.  The first two were over the death of his favorite cat, Fluffy, and his dog, Fluffy.  So he wasn't exactly hot on original pet names... they were his companions through many years, and when you're a single man, your pets become your confidantes, those who sense when you're upset, and who come over and curl up next to you just to say, "I love you."  One can hardly blame him for mourning their loss.  And though he didn't shed a tear, he was very close, and I knew at that moment, he would always know just how much he meant to me.

Looking back, I'm glad that I took the time to tell him that.  In December of 1997, he passed away due to spinal meningitis, probably contracted during back surgery.  He fell into a coma one day, and three days later, he was gone.  I never got to say goodbye to him, and the last time I had seen him was at Uncle Kirby's funeral.  The days since his death have been filled with the rare random tears shed in memory of him, thinking back, remembering something we'd done, or maybe when I find myself whistling the odd tune in the air, thinking about him because it's what he always used to do.

At his wake though, I wasn't sad because I hadn't said goodbye, or because there were words I had always meant to say to him.  Of course I was upset that he was gone, that I would never speak to him again, but I was able to stand and look at him lying there in the casket with a smile on my face, knowing he knew how much of an influence he had been in my life.  When I saw him lying there, a pack of his favorite cigarettes, and a poker chip, and a cap or coaster with his favorite beer logo, I was able to smile, thinking how appropriately we were all sending him off.  He looked peaceful in death, but I didn't want to remember him as a corpse, so I only looked for a little bit, and then stood off to the side talking about him with his wife and my step-sisters, Sandy and Susie (his second wife already had five kids, but these two were the closest to me, and I've always considered them real sisters rather than step-sisters).

There doesn't seem to be a week that goes by that I fail to think about him in some manner.  He was only in his fifties when he died, far too young by my standards.  But I will never, ever forget him.  How could I?  For all of the formative years of my life, and on through my 24th birthday, he was always there for me.  I often think I could never be the man he was, and yet, I know he'd be proud of many of the things I've done in the years since his death.

So when someone asks me who my father is, you'll understand if my answer is Albert Snyder.