No. 636 – Give Blood

Performer: Pete Townshend

Songwriter: Pete Townshend

Original Release: White City: A Novel

Year: 1985

Definitive Version: None

I wasn’t a big fan of Townshend’s solo stuff during the Eighties, probably because it wasn’t The Who more than anything else. It wasn’t until the Nineties that I came to it through his greatest hits album. It doesn’t quite fit the timeline, but this song sure seems appropriate for today’s story.

When the Great Rift occurred, the only reason I didn’t just tell Dad and Laura to go jump in a (Torch) lake was because of Matt and Casey. I wanted to maintain some relationship with them.

But Scott’s wedding in April 1996 was the final straw. The wedding was stressful enough as is, for reasons I’ve recounted, but afterward, Debbie told me that when she arrived at the church with Mom before the ceremony, she saw Casey and said “hi,” but he didn’t say anything and just looked down—which was completely out of character for him. Casey was—and is—as friendly and outgoing as anyone. He never DOESN”T say “hi” back.

Casey was 7 (Matt was 11), so he didn’t know enough to have any sort of independent opinion. But it seemed obvious that at least Casey had been instructed as to how to act around Debbie.

Well, that was the final straw. Because of Matt and Casey, I continued to visit—once per year, at Christmas. I’d stay for dinner and open presents, and everyone would pretend that I still was part of the family. It was all so fleeting and totally fake.

After Christmas of 1998, I was done with that. I still would get presents for Matt and Casey, at least for a while, but I felt like a hypocrite in accepting anything from Dad and Laura. Before Christmas of 1999, I decided I would tell them in no uncertain terms that I didn’t want them to get me anything and that I would stop coming over at all; I would just send the presents to the boys through the mail. This, then, was going to make the Rift total and permanent.

But in the late summer of 1999, I got a large manila envelope in the mail that had a return address of Bellaire, Mich.—Dad’s place at Torch Lake. Inside was a copy of a sailing magazine that had a picture of Casey (now 11) crewing on a sailboat at a regatta on the cover. That was kind of cool.

But more important, inside was a note from Dad that said essentially enough was enough. It was time to bury the hatchet (and not in each other’s head). He said that when he got home in the next week or so, he wanted to talk.

Debbie was shocked by this turn of events, but I wasn’t, not completely. I might not be as smart as I think I am, but I’m not a complete idiot. The timing of this turn of events was in no way coincidental.

In early summer, as I had learned, I think, through Scott, my grandfather had suffered a massive heart attack. He had a septuple bypass—the most I’d ever heard of. I have no doubt that the incident shook my Dad to his core.

Dad probably was closer to my grandfather than anyone else in his life, even including Laura. And if Dad had successfully put off feelings of mortality by having a second family that kept him feeling young, he now was confronted by those feelings whether he was ready or not. My grandfather recovered, but the reality of the situation was he was 85, with a weak heart. There was a finite time limit on his presence.

This is pure speculation, of course, but I’m as certain as I am writing this that this was the thing that made him conclude, look, this is ridiculous. I have a son who lives in the same city (during the winter), and we have no relationship.

And, perhaps as much as they might have hoped differently, there was no reason to believe that Debbie was going to go away. We owned a house together; we had been together 5 years now. This was no longer some potentially family-tearing fling. We had proven that maybe we were onto something back in 1994. So he made a move toward reproachment, toward rebuilding a burned-up bridge.

This was absolutely essential from my perspective. I didn’t require an apology, but as far as I was concerned, he had to make the first move, because he was the one who had pushed me away. Now he was making it, so I quickly agreed to meet him for lunch.

It went great, and with Debbie’s permission, I invited him over to our house for dinner with me and Debbie—his first appearance there, two years after we bought it. The evening also went very well. I don’t remember what Debbie made that night, and I don’t know how uncomfortable Dad was, but everything seemed fine. Maybe he felt it was as fake as the times I had been to his house over the past few years; I don’t know. But it didn’t matter.

The fact was from that moment forward, the Great Rift was over. The Great Mending had begun. Thank goodness.