MY FATHER’S LEDGER
“He didn’t have much money, but he did everything he could to be with us.”
After my father died, just shy of his 65th birthday, I found this ledger in his desk. The first entry is dated April 20, 1954, when I was almost 6; the last, June 10, 1958, right before I turned 10. Sample entries: food, $1.20; gas, $2.40; speeding ticket, $5; cigarettes, 50¢; ice cream for children, 20¢; Halina’s party, $2.50. Halina—that’s me.
He’d studied engineering at the Polish Naval Academy—until 1939, when Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviets invaded from the east and he was captured and sent to a Siberian gulag for two years. Then Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviets resumed relations with Poland and he was released. He joined the Allied Merchant Navy as an engineer. The ships he worked on—big, slow, unescorted, carrying vital supplies—were prime targets for U-boats and bombers, but my father survived. In 1945 he was sent to New York, where he met his Polish bride. They were married within three months and divorced within six years.
I was three when they divorced. We had moved from Queens to New Rochelle, but I don’t remember where he went to live. I just know I missed my tata terribly, as he missed my brother and me. He didn’t have much money—a young Pole with an interrupted education and poor English skills, in a labor market overflowing with newly employable American GIs—but he did everything he could to be with us. One year he took off all July and August and rented a farmhouse just to be nearby. It almost broke him.
Eventually he found an unfinished house in Mastic Beach, Long Island. On our first visit, we slept in a small shed with an outhouse in back—an exciting adventure for two kids. At night he told us our favorite story, about the many puddings we asked him to make, only to change our minds each time and say we wanted a different flavor. We would giggle all through the story and shriek with delight when he described our refrigerator overflowing. His ever-present cigarette glowed as we listened in the dark.
By our next visit, just months later, the house had a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. He could build or fix anything (including cars; I’m sure he never bought one for more than $100), and he was resourceful. As homes were being demolished to make room for the Long Island Expressway, he’d load his old van with doors, windows, molding; nothing matched, but when it was all painted, who could tell? He hung a swing from the rafters in the unfinished living room, laid mattresses on the floor to pad our leaps. He let us draw on the walls and made us “cheese dreams”: white bread and Velveeta, Crisco from the can, fried up in a pan. Magical.
It was around this time he started the ledger. It includes only expenses, but he had many interesting sources of income. When he fixed a freezer at a Carvel, I got to go along and eat free banana splits and chocolate-dipped cones. After repairing machinery on a duck farm, he came home with three ducklings. In the end, he was hired by Brookhaven National Laboratory as a technician. He worked on a particle accelerator—the atom smasher, we called it; the scientists would tell him what parts they needed and he would adapt and build them. Lacking a degree, he was vastly underpaid, but his co-workers valued and loved him.
He had a great sense of humor. If my aunt admired a new car, he just smiled and said, “It will be mine in ten years.” He let his pet flying squirrels—he had two—make a nest from his divorce papers. He was also naturally kind. One day when I was 11, he let me cut off my braids, then spent the evening gently rolling my hair in a Toni permanent and making me feel beautiful. The perm came after the ledger ends, so I don’t know how much it cost him. I’ll just say this: I always thought my father had a carefree spirit about money—he never said no to my brother or me—but it turns out his careful accounting of every penny is what allowed us to be carefree.
—Halina Fitzpatrick
Halina Fitzpatrick lives with her husband in Manhattan. She started writing to share stories with her adult daughters and now writes for herself.
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What an interesting person, and so full of love for his kids! Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
We hear so much these days about fathers who abandon their families and children. I'm grateful to read this beautiful piece about a father who did his best for his children with what he had -- an example for our turbulent times