Dads. Real and Otherwise

My mom was raised by a Marine.

Bob wasn't her "real" dad, but he was as real a dad as my Mom could hope for. Her biological father had abandoned her before she was born; she would not meet him until she was grown with children of her own. As a child, she remembers a man coming to take her older brother to the movies and to the amusement park, a man her brother called their dad although this man never looked at her twice, never brought her gifts, or even spoke to her. She thought he looked a lot like "Slipper McGee" in the movies, Or maybe Jimmy Cagney. But he was as aloof a figure to her as the actors he resembled.

Mom's "step" dad arrived in her life when she was three. Three months later, he had shipped off with the Marines to Europe.

Like many during the years of WWII, my mom and her mom were movie-goers. Back then, pre-TV, radio was king and movies offered short reels of news, sports and celebrity highlights before showing their feature films. For a nickle or a dime, you could spend an entire day in air-conditioned comfort, watching the stars of Hollywood. My mom recalls once when she and her mom watched one of these newsreels. This one showed the storming of the beaches at Normandy during Operation Overlord. Her mother explained that her dad was one of those men jumping from the boats and running toward the bombs and bullets. He was a soldier. He had a helmet and a rifle and he was winning a war.

And he had his picture in her pocket.

Somewhere in my mother's young mind, her new dad became confused with the leading actor in the featured movie that followed the newsreel. She recalls being a bit amazed that her mother showed no spark of jealousy when he kissed the lead actress in the film. You can't blame her. Even today we can find ourselves confused by an on-screen reality that looms somehow larger than our own lives.

Bob returned home from the war in 1945. He was a steady provider and a constant presence in her life, unlike her "real" dad. Life wasn't perfect for Mom. There was illness and alcohol and hard work, as there so often is even in the best families. But she knew that she was loved and she knew that she mattered. And she knew her dad was proud of her.

Because on that day, far away at a beach at Normandy, my mother's dad really did have her picture in his pocket.

The image attached is my grandfather, Bob Baker, looking out over an historic Houston from a balcony of the Lamar Hotel where he worked for many years.