“Dad, Saguaro Rib, Arizona” © Stu Jenks 2021, 54 inches tall.
Price: $195, shipping included in the price. Simply contact me via my email address at stujenks@gmail.com or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall. Love y'all, Stu. (This piece is no longer for sale)
"Dad at Ed-Lil, Virginia"
My father in 1999, during happier times. Photo taken by me using a 35mm Pentax, loaded with Ilford SFX 200 black and white film.
So here's the good, the bad, and the ugly about Stuart C. Jenks Sr., at least how I see it at the end of April, 2021. I have a lot to say. And I might change my feelings about some of this at a later date, so take this post with a container full of salt. Here goes.
Dad's been dead almost 20 years now, dying in September of 2001. We had a complicated relationship which took me a couple of years of therapy and a couple of decades of recovery to be OK with. Mostly OK with.
Dad didn't want to have children, didn't like having kids. He made that clear often when I was young. He felt obligated to reproduce the species he said, and he did enjoy having sex with my mother, so said Mary when she lost most of her boundaries when she was dying of dementia. Pamela and I knew he didn't like kids. He barely talked to us. Mostly just gave us harsh looks. That hurt both of us a lot knowing that. Me? I moved through most of the pain after a time. A long time. Lot of work. Pamela? She carried that bloody wound throughout her entire life, trying to drink it away and never fully succeeding. She died bitter.
Dad was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps, fighting in Okinawa in WWII and stationed in Japan during the Korean War. His only son, me, was a conceptual artist and sculptor at UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1970's, a young man who felt things deeply and voted Democratic since he was 18. Dad voted for Richard Nixon in 1960, 1968, and 1972. Two of the few things we had in common was we both liked NASCAR auto racing and we both found his wife, my mother, irritating.
But Dad did share a love of 12 Step Fellowships, his brother Edgar Jr. having gotten sober in AA. Dad would come with me to my Sunday Morning Cocaine Anonymous meeting when he would visit Tucson, mostly to get out of going to church with Mom, but also because he liked colorful people. CA and AA have colorful people in spades.
To his credit, Dad had some form of epiphany when I was in college and started telling me that he loved me when we would see each other. I think Dad figured out that he hadn't paid much attention to me in my first 20 years of life and maybe he should start.
He tried to be a good father. Still wasn't very great at it but he tried.
We worked to get along, but we never completely bridged the gap. Dad was intrinsically judgmental and silently angry a lot of the time and even as an adult, he scared me. I think if he was alive today, that would make him sad to hear me say that. But it's true. Mom and Pamela were scared of him too.
However I am my father's son in a number of ways. Both he and I are creative people. He was a good photographer and so am I. Dad knew how to tell a story, as do I, and Dad really liked people. Me too.
However, in other ways, we were very different. I believe Dad felt trapped in his marriage with Mom, him being too cheap to divorce her. I love my wife Alexa and am happily choosing to spending the rest of my life with her.
Dad was not generous with his cash. I am, perhaps to a fault. Got my generosity from my mother. And Dad would on occasion say something extremely racist. "Son, you're spending money like a n----r on a Saturday night." In my 40's, I would ask him to not say the N word around me. The best I got was, "Well, Stu, I know you hate it when I say this, but you are spending money like a n----r on a Saturday night." Yeah.
On the other hand, I can see me through his eyes too. He wanted a tough guy for a son. He got a sensitive artist-type who cried easily and felt the pains of the world. He felt saddled with two children, one of those kids, my sister Pamela, had no boundaries, was loud and impolite, and started saying the word 'fuck' at age 17 and never stopped. He really hated that. He might have loved Mom but I don't think he liked her very much. I don't think he was really that happy, but I could be wrong. He could have just been a jerk, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Yep, I cut Dad a ton of slack nowadays, even though it may not sound like I do. He didn't want kids but I'm glad he had sex with Mom so that I'm here. He did pay for my college education. That ain't nothing. And he was supportive and proud that I got sober and stayed sober. He wouldn't admit it but he was scared that he would, at some point before I got clean, get a late night phone call saying that I was dead.
There is an old saying in recovery, that we should look for the paradoxes. Two contradictory ideas when put together often show a greater truth and a pathway to wellness.
He's one. "My Dad did the very best he could with the tools he had, and he did a shitty fucking job being a father." And with me holding those two opposing thoughts in my head, I feel a greater compassion for Dad. It's weird but I do.
One last sweet story about Dad.
After he died I felt his presence often. He was kind, generous, happy, forgiving, and encouraging me to spend money on my art business. At one point I said to the spirit off to my left “Who is this guy?“ I had a chat with Dad’s ghost at one point saying “I need you to go away for a little bit because I’m still mad about what are used to be like when he were alive. But don’t worry, I’ll call you back.”
He went away as I asked and I called him back in a couple of weeks. He was sweet and kind as ever. I got used to it. After a year or so, I didn't feel him around anymore. Maybe he had Angel Ghost work to do.
Dad's ghostly presence reminded me that underneath all of our failings and crap is pure light, pure love, and joy. That’s how all of us are in our soul of souls, don't you think? If we choose the light, the love, the joy as we live our lives. As the old Todd Rundgren song says, love is the answer. It really is.
I miss you Dad. I wish you had met Alexa. You would have liked her a lot. A lot a lot.
I'll see ya when I see ya. Love ya Dad.
"Stu & Stuart Sleeping, Virginia" Photograph taken by me, using a cardboard pinhole camera, loaded with Ilford HP5 400 ISO film. The camera was given to me by Mom and Dad for Christmas, a couple years before. Exposure time: 90 minutes or thereabouts. Photo taken a few days before my father's death from cancer in 2001.
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