BOISE, Idaho — We sit and talk about our fathers.
And other mysteries of life.
My cousin Melissa and I came to Idaho to visit Julie and Susan, the cousins who were almost lost to us. We came to restore a connection and to fill in missing pieces — to try to put together a puzzle that has shaped all our lives.
Almost a century ago, a day laborer and his wife, a farmer’s daughter, became parents to three little boys. They lived in an isolated part of Minnesota as the Great Depression took hold and then deepened.
The first born of the boys was Ray, Melissa’s father. My father, Ed, came next. Julie’s and Susan’s father, Don, was the youngest.
Not long after Don was born, something happened with our grandmother. It was scary enough that, a little more than a month after Don was born, she was committed to an institution. She lived in institutions for the last 45 years of her life, until, authorities say, she walked off the grounds of the last one, never to be seen again.
The Depression made for tough years for America — and particularly hard ones in the farm belt. Unemployment in Minnesota climbed as high as 40%.
My grandfather was fortunate enough to have a job. With his wife institutionalized, though, he had no one to care for his three little boys, the oldest of whom was three at the time.
Minnesota law wouldn’t allow him to divorce my grandmother and marry again — the typical solution then for widowers with children — for seven years. He also could not afford to hire a nanny.
So, he settled on desperate solutions. He placed Ray and my father in an orphanage, where they remained for several years.
And he allowed a friendly childless couple to become foster parents to Don.
That anguished period and the choices it required shaped lives, including all of ours. Ray and Ed emerged from the orphanage with a wariness embedded in their makeup, an emotional guardedness that was welded to their very cores. They maintained a protective distance, even with those closest to them, including wives and children.
Don grew up differently.
His foster parents doted on him. Fretful that my grandfather might try to reclaim him at some point, they moved often because they did not want to yield the boy they came to see as their son.
Julie and Susan say their father was a sensitive man, one who shed tears unashamedly when something moved him. Melissa and I can count on one hand the number of times we saw our fathers cry and still have fingers left over.
All three brothers had natural athletic abilities.
When he was young, Ray could throw a football a country mile and had a grip that could crumble stone. My father mastered any sport that required eye-hand coordination, becoming a world-class horseshoe pitcher and a wizard at both pool and bowling, even though he didn’t care much for either game.
Don was a crackerjack baseball player with a legitimate shot at turning pro before the Korean War altered his plans. He enlisted in the Air Force ahead of being drafted so that he could have some control over how he served.
It was the military that brought the three brothers together again.
Ray and my father both served in the waning days of World War II. Ray figured he could use service records to find their missing brother.
It worked.
Ray, Ed and Don stayed in touch for the rest of their lives.
But their connection always seemed a fragile thing, haunted perhaps by the moments that separated them.
All three brothers married and fathered children. If they were still alive — Don died 10 years ago, Ray and Dad two years ago — they all would have great-grandchildren to dote upon.
Melissa and I, along with our siblings, have spent long hours puzzling over our fathers’ childhood years, trying to determine how they became, to use Hemingway’s memorable phrase, “strong at the broken places.”
We learn that Julie and Susan did the same thing. They, too, have wondered about that time that altered their dad’s destiny — and theirs.
So, we sit on Julie’s patio as the night settles and discuss the long-ago choices that drove us apart and the family bonds that tie us together.
We talk about our fathers.
And other mysteries of life.