Valentine's Day is a sham
R.I.P. Grandma
“Tomorrow will be 24 years Grandma is gone. Just wanted to share. Thanks. Bye”
Boy, I tell ya — my mother has really nailed down the art of the text message. Aside from the fact that my grandmother passed away on February 24, 2002, making it 22 years and not 24, is beside the point. She died on Valentine’s Day. Which is sorta fitting, if you ask me.
I’ve gotten ahead of myself, I suppose.
Hello, I’m Aaron. I’m an actor, writer, and dad in Los Angeles. Welcome to my Substack newsletter. Don’t ask me what my plan is with this, aside from getting the thoughts about fatherhood, entertainment, and the like out of my head and onto your screen.
Welcome to my brain. My — wait for it — Dad Brain.
Since my first newsletter post is coming the week of Valentine’s Day, I suppose it’s fitting I spend the romantic holiday waxing poetic about generational trauma and the ways in which it informed my understanding of love.
Three years before I was born, a palm tree blew over onto my grandfather’s car. He was driving my grandmother to her surprise birthday party. The accident killed him instantly and put her in the hospital where she stayed for six months. This catastrophe fractured my family. It may have happened long before I was born, but I am still feeling the effects of it today.
My mother never visited Grandma in the hospital. I can only assume it was shock and her inability to grasp this new reality. Two years later, Bill Pruner came into the picture. I never knew my dad, aside from meeting him once for a brief period of time when he tried to gain partial custody of me and another, years later, when he verbally assaulted me over the phone for not knowing who he was.
I don’t have all the pieces regarding my mother’s childhood and how loving of a home she had growing up. But my dad — speaking as a dad — was not the type of man I’d want my daughter growing old with.
Throughout my 47 years on this planet, I’ve slowly gathered clue after clue about who my father was as I’ve tried to reconcile his absence from my life and understand the questionable choices he made.
Here are the things I’ve learned along the way:
He was involved with the Hells Angels biker gang in the 70s and 80s.
He starred in a collection of biker porn movies for the Hells Angels.
He was a high school dropout who went to prison for manufacturing and distributing meth.
He was married five times and had kids with every woman he was married to.
That’s a lot of info to take in. I’m sure I’ll talk about this a lot in future posts.
Growing up in the shadow of my grandfather’s death and my dad’s negative imprint on my mother left me with a tainted understanding of love and happiness.
I suppose this is one of the big reasons why I always viewed Valentine’s Day as a sham. Aside from my own shortcomings regarding self confidence and romance, it just felt like a consumerist excuse to buy shit. And I’m not even digging into the tragic martyr story of St. Valentine for whom the holiday was first created for.
The first time I was ever faced with a potential Valentine’s Day situation where I’d have to talk to a girl, and maybe more — which was something I had a debilitating fear of doing for the majority of my time in school — was when I was in the 8th grade.
For the first time in my life, a girl was interested in me. And hoo golly, I had no idea how to process any of this. On Valentine’s Day, I received a Mickey Mouse-themed heart-shaped box of candy and a card professing her love for me.
Eventually I discovered this secret admirer of mine was a girl named Bonnie. She had a crush on me, which was something that I was not prepared to handle. I froze at the thought of talking to her or trying to date her (what was dating even for a 13-year-old in 1989?).
I do remember Bonnie and I ended up meeting at the 8th grade dance. This was a big deal for me as I never went to those things, let alone with a girl who may potentially become my girlfriend. When it came time to slow dance, I buckled under the pressure my very first panic attack and hid in the boy’s locker room crying uncontrollably in the showers.
Basically, I don’t have a good history with Valentine’s Day. And this pattern continued, blossoming from the holiday of romance through to my romantic life as it developed in my 20s and soon imploded in my 30s. When it was time to finally face my demons, my therapist ended up having a field day.
I never wanted to be a father. The thought absolutely terrified me. Every father figure in my life had either died or disappeared by my early childhood. My mother and grandmother gave me constant reminders as a child that I was the only good thing to come from my dad. After a while, I began to think fatherhood was a curse. A death sentence.
So when I learned I was going to be a dad, my life sorta flashed before my eyes. All the calamity I faced as a kid came flooding back my brain. The fear that I’d pass my own mental fucked-up-ness to my unborn child lead to many sleepless nights. I lost a bunch of weight. I suddenly had a bunch of questions for my dad that would never get answered.
But as soon as my newborn daughter was put in my arms, all that chaos left my body. It was all noise to be dealt with at a later time, but in that moment I knew I had a new purpose: to keep this child alive, educate her, protect her, prepare her for the world. Things my father never bothered doing for me.
That is all in the past now. I have been married for nearly 10 years now. I’m the father of a wonderfully cool 5-year-old girl. Still, nearly every day something reminds me of my past, my dad, the generational trauma I was born into, and the cycle I am constantly working to permanently break.
My grandmother, for all her faults and all the ways the accident damaged her physically and mentally, has remained this ideal of true love in my mind. From everything I’ve heard over the years, her marriage to my grandfather was the quintessential 50s family life — white picket fence, two kids, and all.
It’s an ideal that always feels part solid, part ash as if frozen in the split-second reality after Thanos snapped half the world into oblivion. Because the real example I mirrored in my own life was that of my mother, through her own erratic process of kicking aside problems while running full speed into fire without thinking about getting burned.
Timing is funny sometimes. About an hour after my wife returned from a trip to the store to buy Valentine’s Day cards for my daughter to exchange with her fellow students in class, my mom texted me about the 22nd anniversary of my grandmother’s death.
There’s a full circle element here, I suppose. My grandmother’s name was Beatrice. It’s my daughter’s middle name.
Seeing the joy on my daughter’s face in response to the holiday and the heart-themed crafts she has been making at school brings vague memories of my own early childhood where my classmates and I did something similar.
It’s a weird thing for me, really, to think about Valentine’s Day now. As much as my grandmother was a difficult person to be around, I know that I get my sarcasm and biting sense of humor from her. I miss her every day. Her death is directly attached to my hate of this holiday.
But my daughter represents the other side of that coin. It’s her happiness that fuels me daily. Like any kid, she loves Valentine’s Day. Heck, any reason to get gifts and candy. Right?
I sorta hesitate to say it, but if it makes her smile — then Valentine’s Day (in all its sucky glory) can’t be all bad.