The Collapse of Saturn’s Rings

Reflections On a Lifetime of Trying to Prove My Father Wrong

My father knew things. Random things. He knew that humans have a natural compass in their ethmoid bone. He knew that live trees are more likely to attract lightning, and that oaks are most commonly struck. He knew what a **whifflepoof was without having to look it up.

Perhaps there’s nothing particularly interesting about this. Maybe as we age our brains become so well seasoned by a lifetime of experiences that we’re able to spout out slapdash bits of info with ease. Can the air temperature be estimated by a cricket’s chirp? Well, if my dad caught wind of a conversation about this, he’d likely chime in. By counting the number of chirps in a 14 second period then adding 40, you’ll nail the temperature to within one degree Fahrenheit. This is how he rolled.

I, however, was rarely impressed. My dad's ability to pull arcane facts out of thin air did nothing but infuriate me. Depending on the situation, my irritation would take the form of embarrassment, disgust, jealousy, or at times, even rage. Never did I allow myself to marvel over my dad’s arbitrary genius.

How hot is the sun? Who cares.

Perhaps it was his delivery that smote me—his smug look coupled with a tone that implied, doesn’t everyone know this? His poised affect always made me feel small, which only exacerbated my annoyance. I’m sure he noticed my reaction to his astute wit, but he never did anything to assuage it.

As a kid I hated watching Jeopardy with him. He loved when someone jumped the low dollar questions and took, for example, Medical Meteorology out the gate for $1000. For which the clue might be: A common set of symptoms occurring to many people in the temperate zones around mid-April, particularly with the appearance of a sudden warm spell following a long cold period.

Of course my dad knew the answer, he always knew the answer. He’d burst out, beating the player to the punch—What is spring fever, Alex? Then he’d slap his leg with a jump in his seat and fill the living room with a big breathy laugh. I could only snarl, which I’m pretty sure only further elevated him.

My dad loved when his intellectual prowess caused me any degree of disdain, or seemed to, anyhow. And it was precisely this disdain that led to my own uplift. Over time I learned I could garner his regard if I refuted his big claims. Some people can actually smell an approaching storm, he’d say. I’d scour our family’s wall of books on a mission to prove him wrong. Joyfully fueled by the prospect of discrediting him. But inevitably my search would turn up nothing substantial, leaving the air between us thick with contention. Or worse, I’d find evidence to support his cryptic wisdom. An incidental page of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, perhaps, with whimsical lore in rhyme, no less, verifying his words while poking my palpable disgust: When the ditch and pond offend the nose, look for rain and stormy blows!

What is visible light? Who gives a shit.

More than anything else, I wanted my dad’s attention. And I now wonder if he sought the same thing.

My dad came from a family of five children—same as me—where it’s common for kids to get lost in the shuffle. Each moment together becomes a desperate fight for the spotlight. Being loud and aggressive gets basic needs met, but other strategies are deployed, too. They may be manipulative, harm-causing, ineffective, or dysfunctional tools, but they are commonly used nonetheless. In many cases, our methods of endurance become markers of our personalities.

One of my dad’s primary coping mechanisms, or so it seems, was having a keen knowledge of rarefied particulars. He might not have had any hardline academic degrees, but he was a goldmine of illuminating material. A know-it-all. Mine, however, was more scrappy—I sought out and exploited any available angles of opposition. I looked for holes in an effort to create conflict and rifts. I self-served. I ruffled feathers.

I wanted so badly to be seen, and most especially by my dad. And yet as time went on, my strategy for connection was in contradiction with my desired outcome. I excluded. I pushed away. And I don’t think my tactic was one-sided.

Can two people ever see the same rainbow? No. But whatever.

Maybe it’s common for a son to combat his father for power. For attention. Maybe it’s predictable for a father and son to pridefully skirmish for each other’s recognition, encouragement, or kudos. Maybe it’s normal for a father and son to spend a lifetime trying to outdo each other. But also maybe such shenanigans are formulaic disguises for what’s really at play—a reckless yearning for each other’s love.

When my dad died, I cleaned out his corners of my parent’s house—spaces like his basement, his workshop, his den, the garage—I found the culprits of his acumen. Piles and piles of it, in fact. He had hoards of books of facts, trivia card decks, folders with printed out data sheets for all sorts of aimless things, and a myriad of other educational resources for this-and-that all piled within endless bookshelves and jam-packed three-ring binders. For the first time in my life, I was suddenly interested in this important part of his.

For hours I rifled through the sorts of things that nourished him—things I had spent my lifetime admonishing. I piled the sources of his uncanny knowledge in a circle around me, fascinated by their disparate insights. In one I read, In approximately 100 million years, Saturn’s rings will have collapsed. Which made me wonder, Will Saturn still be Saturn without its most identifiable feature? I could hear my dad laughing. Because of course Saturn will still be Saturn. It is far more than the rings surrounding it.

As the dust settled, I set aside a few items to bring home, including: A four-volume hardcover set of the beautifully illustrated, How Things Work, a book on identifying animal tracks in the eastern United States, Knots: Useful and Ornamental by George Russell Shaw, a how-to manual of wood frame house construction, a deck of obscure camping skills, and a two-sided planisphere that showed the constellations of the night sky.

What causes a star to twinkle? My dad would know that as starlight moves through deep space, in and out of varying temperatures, it alternately strikes and misses the eye’s pupil, which causes a scintillating flash or sparkle of light.

Included in the stash was 1001 Questions Answered About the Weather, which currently has my undivided attention. As I nose into it again this week, it reminds me how similar my dad and I actually are. Our temperament, our work ethic, our appetite for love, for knowledge, our penchant to judge, our insecurities, our need for validation, and even the shape of our hands. And also, after having studied the contents of his journals—we are the same in our longing to better ourselves.

There are no mistakes, only lessons. And a lesson will be repeated until it is learned.   

I am my father, even though I still want to dispute it.

**Whifflepoof: A log with a various number of nails hammered into it that is dragged through the forest as a tool to teach tracking skills, typically to young campers. More nails was easier to track, less was more difficult.