Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun

Author:Ada Calhoun [Calhoun, Ada]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Literary Figures, Women, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9780802159786
Google: w5aHzgEACAAJ
Publisher: GroveAtlantic
Published: 2022-09-15T20:41:05+00:00

O’Hara didn’t have a death wish, but at forty he was drinking an awful lot and throwing himself into the surf. I wonder if O’Hara is where my father got the idea that healthy lifestyles were for boring people, that it was cool to be cavalier about one’s health.

“I don’t bother my body and my body doesn’t bother me!” he has always crowed.

But it was a lie. He smoked three packs of cigarettes a day from his teens on. He drank heavily until he was fifty. He never exercised, didn’t take care of his teeth, and most mornings he would eat Entenmann’s chocolate donuts or bacon for breakfast. I asked him to at least take vitamins, but he said he was suspicious of them. He seemed to believe that he could miraculously get whatever nutrition he needed from snacks of corned beef hash out of the can.

And his body bothered him right back. It had been decades since he’d been able to sleep without Ambien. He was weak and easily fatigued. He had almost none of his original teeth left. That he’d stayed relatively healthy for so long seemed to be more of a tribute to his parents’ hearty Norwegian genes than to some internal deal he’d brokered.

Perhaps Frank O’Hara’s death at forty, while he was still a strong swimmer and first-rate party guest, let my father believe that there would never be a reckoning. Cigarettes and drinking didn’t kill O’Hara, and so maybe they wouldn’t kill him either.

The winter Oliver was four, he refused to wrap his scarf around his neck. When I asked him why he said: “Poppa doesn’t take care of himself, and I don’t either!” I was relieved when a few years later, no longer enamored with my father, he chose instead to model his diet and exercise habits after those of my stepson, Blake, a physical therapy student with a black belt in kung fu.

PS: I think I turned some kind of corner on this book. I’m starting to live with him.

PSo: Oh good. He’s a fun person to be with.

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