My grandmother was married and divorced three times, which was scandalous for the 1930s. It wasn’t a topic she talked about when I was a kid, but I once asked my dad about it.
Grandma’s first husband was my father’s first father, a lout and a drunk named Fritz Parker. My memory of Dad’s memory has faded, so I’m not sure whether Parker ignored him, or screamed at him, maybe punched him, but at age 8 my old man was not sad to see his old man packing to leave.Grandma’s second husband stayed such a short while, he’s irrelevant to this story.Some years later, Grandma married her third husband, Harry Holland, who quickly became my father’s favorite father. He was a kind and patient man, who played catch with my dad and had good advice when it was needed.And then, because it was God’s will or some such stupidity, Grandma’s third husband died. After the funeral, my dad, then 12 or 13 or so, asked if he could call himself Holland instead of Parker, as a tribute.His mother waited a few weeks to make sure the boy was serious, and during that time my dad asked friends, neighbors, people at the church, and teachers and students at school to call him Holland. So his mother went to the county courthouse and made it legal.Born Bob Parker, my dad became Bob Holland, to honor the man he thought of as his father. It’s one of my favorite family stories — the one where nobody gets angry.Now it’s 2023, and my brother Clay is writing a memoir, not for publication, but for his very young grandchildren to read when they’re grown. Sometimes he shows me what he’s written, and last weekend he shared a Holland family tree.
It’s arranged in the traditional man-and-wife flow chart. A box has my grandmother’s name, beside the box for her husband — Fritz Parker. I’ve spoken about this with Clay, and said that in my opinion — because it was our dad’s opinion — my father’s father was a man named Harry Holland. Clay says Grandma’s three marriages won’t fit on a family tree, and he doesn’t want to bother with footnotes.All three of Grandma’s husbands were dead before anyone in my generation of the family was born, so it’s not worth an argument.Guess this is goodbye, Harry Holland. Everything in life is dust when it dries. Love, family, morals, politics, debts and regrets — it all seems very important while we’re here, but we’re not here for long. When we’re dead, very soon we’re forgotten, and at best we become names on a family tree, but even that isn’t guaranteed.10/9/2023
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