I Married My Father

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I Married My Father
by Linda A. Prussen-Razzano, Dallas Bureau Chief

August 28, 2003

"Candidly Yours"

Linda A. Prussen-Razzano On August 7, 2003, my husband and I celebrated 10 years of marriage. Several months before we married, we decided to gut our “honeymoon” fund to buy new, matching, economy-sized vehicles. Both our cars were quickly falling out of the reliable category and it seemed the sensible thing to do.

We promised ourselves that for our 10 year anniversary, we’d spend three glorious weeks touring Europe. That promise collapsed to a weekend getaway, which was subsequently replaced by an overnight stay at one of Dallas’ marvelous hotels, to…well…dinner for two, sans kiddos. These plans are also subject to change, dependent upon my daughter’s raging summer cold.

We’ve had our fair share of trials over the years: members of the “downsized” club, years of failure in starting our family, nearly losing both children before they were born, losing one before it was born, and staggering medical bills. Yup, our fair share.

But I wouldn’t trade my husband for any man in the world. He’s not rich, he’s not famous, and he’s not a mover and shaker. He is one of the many quiet Atlases that works a tough job with long hours to provide for his family, who wears outdated clothes so his kids can go to a religious preschool, who has a nonexistent social life because he’s busy teaching his kids the alphabet, how to swing a plastic baseball bat, how to brush their teeth.

I knew I was madly in love with him when, a few months after we started dating, my car blew a piston. I quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road and asked a nearby homeowner for use of their phone. I called my husband to let him know I wouldn’t be able to attend his evening baseball game.

He arrived 10 minutes before the tow-truck, tool box in hand. He popped the hood, asked me a few quick questions, and then, barehanded, reached into the depths of the still hot engine. I can still remember sitting in the driver’s seat, watching him through the arch in the hood, feeling the entire car rock as he yanked and pulled and methodically tore it apart. Then, a few moments later, he appeared at my window, showing me the damaged part. “I can’t fix it here,” he advised. “I don’t have a replacement and you can’t drive it this way.”

He was so utterly magnificent, so focused and purposeful and unintentionally but ferociously masculine. Sweating, dirty, the damaged part still warm in his calloused hands, protective and gallant and thoughtful. You see, I never asked him for his assistance. I called him only to explain my absence, so he wouldn’t think I had forgotten or didn’t care.

I instantly recognized I didn’t have to ask. He had already assumed responsibility for me: my safety, my comfort, my well-being. I didn’t even have a ring on my finger, but already, in his eyes, I was his.

Yes, I realized, and he was mine.

Initially, my friends liked my husband but were hesitant around him. They expected me to marry a white-collar professional, settle into an expensive neighborhood, and enjoy the life of a successful suburbanite. They thought I would marry someone like my father, not tattooed Tony, the muscular mechanic.

In the most important ways, I was marrying someone like my father. Strong, protective, purposeful, intelligent, humble, and devoted. A man who instinctively acted like a man, assumed that I would act like a woman, and treated me with reverence and respect. A man who put his family first, his wants second.

My friends did not know the struggling my parents endured to provide for five children: how my father had the same ratty pig-skin wallet for years because it still held his money; how he fixed appliances, bikes, toys, and cars himself just to save a few dollars; how my mother wore A&P sneakers so we could have nice new clothes when we wanted them; how they never took a vacation; how my father worked across the country for nearly three years while my iron-willed mom raised us almost single-handedly because the money was flooding in. They only saw the end result of those sacrifices, the expensive neighborhood, the private schools, the standard of living that implied, “Of course I can have it.” They didn’t see the tremendous sacrifices in between.

Today, I realized my father and my husband also have another thing in common: an aversion to discussing painful points in their past.

August 7, 2003 is also my father’s birthday. I called him to offer early birthday wishes. Near the end of the conversation, our talk shifted to his service in Korea, a subject he often refrained from speaking about in any detail. He attended the recent memorial service to commemorate the end of the Korean War. To his dismay, only two other veterans were at the park.

His voice caught with tears as he asked, “I wonder if others feel the same way I do when they think about the war. Every time I think about it, I cry.”

I had no answers for him, just as I had no answers for my husband when we touched, ever so briefly, on unpleasant memories. You see, my father, too, was a quiet Atlas that did not achieve a selfish, superstar status, but made America work with his daily contribution and substantially improved the lives of those he loves.

Americans may cease to acknowledge my father’s service to the country, may never acknowledge my husband’s loving devotion to his family, or scoff at the countless millions of men like them who are their own quiet Atlases, but future generations will be lost without such men to keep the country strong. ***

Photo of Linda Prussen-Razzano courtesy of staff files