I used to hateJimmy Cartermore than anything else in this world.
Its November 1979 in Oak Harbor, Washington, and Im counting days.
24, 23, 22.
President Jimmy Carter announcing new sanctions against Iran in 1980.Marion S. Trikosko/Photo12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
Im in the eighth grade.
The voyage will take six days, longer than Ive ever spent alone with him.
Finally, there will be time.
I can come clean about faking sick so I could watch the Red Sox-Yankees one-game playoff last October.
The Sox are Dads team.
Finally, I can learn what my father does.
I know he flies jets off carriers, but how?
Finally, I can ask him why things seem so hard all the time.
He is counting days, too.
He asks her to hold on a little longer.
Shes taking care of me and my two sisters alone and I can be a pain in the ass.
I read the paper closely as I fold and rubber band them into my carrier bag.
I begin to see photographs on the front page of American hostages in Tehran, blindfolded and terrified.
But I dont connect all the dots.
I turn 13 and receive a note from Dad: Happy 13th, Welcome To Being A Teenager Yuck!
The Kitty Hawk is just running out the clock.
Dad needs to talk to you.
Im half asleep and he is shouting through a bad connection from the Officers Club bar at Cubi Point.
All I get out of the conversation is the trip is off.
He wont be home any time soon.
On the Kitty Hawk, the stereo equipment is thrown overboard and the bombs are reloaded.
I read more the next day.
President Jimmy Carter has ordered the Kitty Hawk to head for the Straits of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf.
The Midway is already there.
Things go back to a dreary level of normal.
A week passes and we spend Thanksgiving with other families at the Navy mess on base.
And then my teacher taps me on the shoulder and points toward the lobby.
There, my dads best friend sits in his dress uniform.
And I blame it all on Jimmy Carter.
I KNOW IT isnt rational, but I base it on some facts.
I remember them sitting around our house the summer before, drinking Coors and declaring his presidency a disaster.
I wish I could say the feeling passes after a mourning period, but it does not.
I dance around like a madman in an end-zone celebration when Carter loses to Ronald Reagan the next year.
By then, we have moved to Flint, Michigan, to be closer to family.
I attend Catholic high school, because thats what Dad would have wanted.
Occasionally, Carter appears on our television.
I curse and ball my fists together in rage.
The phase does not pass quickly.
I sneer and shout at them, We all have to make sacrifices for our country.
The therapist tries to reason with me, but I do not hear.
Then something happens, not connected to my father or Carter.
And I remember thinking that my father would have wept at all of this urban despair.
My heart begins to unfreeze.
Eventually, I embed with my fathers old squadron and deploy with them.
My son is born on Nov. 28, 2013, 34 years to the day after my dads crash.
I name him after his grandfather.
But I never reach out to Carter.
I think I knew I would have broken down in the kind old mans arms.
I would have said I was sorry for hating him.
And that I forgave him for simply fulfilling the hardest part of a presidents job.
And I know he would have said he understood.
Maybe he would have shed a tear of his own.
But I never did it.I guess I am doing it now.
President Carter, rest in peace.
