I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.
- Sigmund Freud
My father was a good and honest man who was incredible at managing conflicts. Wise. The type that only spoke when he had something important to say. At least this is how I see him now. His power was in his quiet strength. He didn’t have to tell anybody he was powerful. He showed it.
But when I was a teenager, I remember thinking as he sat between my brother and I wordlessly and watched us fight - with a slight grin on his face, head turning from side to side as if watching a tennis match - that he was powerless. The only thing he said was, “You have to learn to choose your battles.” I thought he was crazy. Why doesn’t he do something? Can’t he help me? What’s the matter with him? He’s my father, he should do something, not quote tired clichés! But he held to his silence. I held to my opinion for many years, somehow believing, despite the evidence, that he was, indeed, powerless. Recently, however, my older brother Mitch told me a story that reawakened me to what I had known as a child and forgotten as a stubborn adolescent: My father was a hero.
My father had taken Mitch and several of his friends to a Golden Gloves boxing match. The event was filled with excitement for this fourteen-year-old boy. Before each match began, he watched people in the crowd. Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians. But as soon as the match started, his attention was on the ring. He did not even get distracted by the fights that were breaking out in the stands.
When the event was over, Dad, Mitch and his friends piled into the car in the parking garage. They began to pull out of their parking space and realized they couldn’t go far, because random fights began to develop among people in the garage. “Random” because it appeared that no one knew whose side they were on. Black people punched black people; whites punched whites; Hispanics hit other Hispanics; and anyone who got stuck in the crossfire got punched. The next day the papers called it a “race riot,” but those in attendance knew it was a free-for-all: a bunch of people who had gotten pumped up by the boxing matches and wanted to hit someone, anyone.
My father and brother, both of whom were sitting in the front seat of the car, found themselves as spectators again. Next to Mitch’s window, several people were fighting and falling against the side of the car. Mitch watched, spellbound, until he saw one of the fighters pull out a blade that was as large as a butcher’s knife. The blade was headed toward a victim leaning against Mitch’s window.
Mitch looked over toward my dad hoping for reassurance, only to find Dad’s seat empty. He had bolted out of the car, slammed the door shut and was running around the car, headed straight for the man with the knife. He got so close to the man that they stood face-to-face, Dad yelling, yet completely controlled, “Put that knife away, get into your car and leave before someone gets hurt.” The man looked shocked, but actually complied. Dad yelled to the rest of the crowd, again in a commanding voice, a voice that sounded like reason, calm in the midst of chaos, “All right, break this up! Everyone get in your cars and go home.” Amazingly, the fighting ceased. All but one man moved toward their cars. Dad moved toward the last offender, and although Dad was six inches shorter and weighed a good fifty pounds less than the angry man, my father did not falter. They made direct eye contact, and Dad repeated, “I said, stop the fighting, get in your car now and leave.” The man made a move toward my father. In a whisper, audible in the silence of the garage, he repeated himself, “I want you to take your son, get in your car and leave. And I don’t want to have to say this again.” The man turned, grabbed his son and grunted profanities as he went to his car. My father returned to his car and as he drove out of the garage, he turned to the kids and said, “Let’s go get ice cream.”
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the blade of a knife in close proximity to his son triggered him to do so. I suspect that in that moment of decision - the decision to go out and face the knife - he was willing to give his life to protect his son. I suspect that this was not a conscious thought, but rather the selfless act of a man who lived from Love.
I understand my father better now that I know this story. I laugh at myself when I remember the day I decided my father was powerless. The truth? I was too young. It was his wisdom that gave him his power. He knew that the fight between my brother and me in my adolescence was trivial, that it was our battle and that we must learn to work it out. He was honoring our right to “learn to choose our battles.” He is gone now, and I honor him by choosing to adopt a value that he would have died for: Battle is a choice, and it is the choice of the powerful to choose not to battle.
- Beth Clark