The Folly of Attempting to Outrun Yourself Forever

Well you can run away a lot for a little while,

But you can’t run away for it all forever,

You certainly can’t outrun yourself.

“Chasin’ Wild Horses” (Intro)

-Bruce Springsteen

I have found myself thinking about my father quite a lot recently.  Given that I rarely - if ever - think about him, even a small amount of time devoted to him daily would represent a substantial uptick.  Recently, he has occupied considerably more than a small amount of time in my day-to-day. 

The older I get, the closer I inch towards the age at which he died.  I turned fifty-three this week.  My father was roughly five-and-one-half months past his fifty-seventh birthday when he died.  He had a massive heart attack while he slept.  It was May 31, 1981.  He died less than one week before Kara's high school graduation. He died ten days before his and Mom's anniversary.  He died fourteen days before Mom's birthday.  He died fifty-five days before Kara's eighteenth birthday.  Jill was sixteen.  I was fourteen. 

During the 1979-1980 school year, the long-time Headmaster of the Wardlaw-Hartridge School, (a/k/a "Dad's boss") announced he would retire at the end of the 1980-1981 school year.  The school formed a Search Committee to find his successor.  Dad should have known that qualifications notwithstanding he had zero chance of winning the Search Committee's beauty contest.  All these years later, I am confident that he did.  He was simply too fucking smart to not know.  Nevertheless, or perhaps because of that knowledge, he applied for the position.  

Ironically, given the years of his life he dedicated to the education of young men and women in college preparatory schools, and the immense talent he brought to his calling, Dad was not cut from the cloth that old, moneyed prep schoolers valued most.  He neither came from money nor pretended that he did.  My old man was a lot of things.  An effete douche bag afraid to dirty his hands or worse yet to see a callous form on one was not one of them.  

As I approach my mid-fifties, I realize that my father knew that he would never be permitted to break the glass ceiling through which lesser men with more favorable genealogies peered down at him from a rung, or two, above him on the ladder of his profession.  He knew that because he had not been educated at Eastern prep schools, Wardlaw-Hartridge was perpetually comfortable making him the "Associate" Head of its Lower School (and the person who ran the joint) but was equally uncomfortable with the thought of ever making him its Headmaster.  Had he been a blue-blooded WASP, they would have embraced him.  He was a green-blooded Catholic Mick, so they simply used him instead. 

Several months before Dad's death, Wardlaw-Hartridge named the Headmaster's successor, a properly-pedigreed empty suit who proved to be utterly overwhelmed by the job.  Even though Dad knew that rejection was coming even before he formally tossed his hat into the ring, it struck in his craw when the new Headmaster was formally announced.  Meeting the new guy, which my father did for the first time a month or so before he died, did little to tamp down his anger.  

Following Dad's death, we had a wake/viewing for two nights at the Hillsborough Funeral Home.  I do not recall on which of the two nights the soon-to-be-retired Headmaster made an appearance, although I suspect he came on the first night.  How better to show your support for the widow and the family of your trusted lieutenant than show up to dispense hugs and hold hands opening night, right?  

I was standing less than two feet from Mom on the receiving line when he approached her.  Rather than offer condolences to her, he used that evening as an opportunity to offload some of the guilt he had apparently been carrying since having done nothing to support Dad's quest to be Headmaster.  Leaning into my mother, he reminded her of how lucky it was - for Wardlaw-Hartridge - that he had not supported Dad.  Had he done so, he told her, Dad would have gotten the job and now, rather than simply losing its much-loved Associate Headmaster of the Lower School, Wardlaw-Hartridge would be trying, in early June 1981, to hire a Headmaster for the 1981-1982 school year.  

To her credit, Mom did not tell that preening asshole to go fuck himself.  To my surprise, neither did I.  I cannot speak for Mom but to my memory, it took more than a few minutes to fully appreciate the king-sized portion of unmitigated gall he had served her.  

Mom had retired and relocated to Florida several months prior to this old fool's death.  He died in January, 1998.  If memory serves me correctly, he died during a terrible storm of some sort that had left him stranded in a cottage he and his wife owned in New Hampshire. Wardlaw-Hartridge apparently organized some type of on-campus memorial service for him.  

At the time, I was quite friendly with the woman who ran the school's Alumni Relations Department.  Having not been connected with W-H while my father was there, she knew nothing of his statement to Mom at Dad's wake.  Unaware, she telephoned me and invited me to participate in it.  I declined after telling her that I presumed saying something to the effect of, "I hope it fucking hurt", when speaking of the faux great man's death did not match the hoped-for tenor of the event.   

To the surprise of no one, including me, a January 1998 nor'easter did not deprive this planet of its very last effete douche bag.  I must confess, however, to having been surprised rather recently by the presence of a heretofore undetected glass ceiling in my own professional life.  Having discovered it, I am constrained to admit that its presence does not simply anger me or sadden me.  It disappoints me. More than that, it has enlightened me. 

In the past several months, I have developed a far more keen sense of the frustration that my old man tamped down every day, torn between his love of what it was he did, and the actions of at least certain of those in whose company he did it.  Having resolved to live past fifty-seven, and having seen up close what a lifetime of abusing alcohol did to my father and to all who shared space with him, I have not taken up his pitcher-a-night Manhattan habit.  To each his own, right?  I had not known that applies to coping mechanisms.  Now I do.  

You certainly cannot outrun yourself.  You can, however, always change the direction of your life.  Plot a new course.

Trust me on this...

...I know of which I speak. 

-AK