Seth Trent’s father was a bastard.
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My father was a bastard.
I’m sorry, let me rephrase that; my father was a pathological liar and a sociopath; and my step-father was a bastard. I mean…adopted, mostly a good man but with bastardly moments.
My point being that I, (and probably some of you) live in a hyper-critical state of self-examination and fear that you will turn into some variation of your father-figure. For some men that’s not a bad thing. Worst case, you find yourself duplicating your father’s more unforgivable mistakes: cheating, splurging money on un-needed objects, being abusive, abusing alcohol or drugs, and other bad habits.
Bruce my bio-dad was a brilliant pathological liar with sociopathic tendencies that didn’t come out until after I was already born; luckily my mom had enough sense to get the hell out of that marriage long before I slurred my first “Mama”. I never saw him again, he died two years ago according to a newspaper clipping, and I do not miss him.
Mom remarried when I was four, to a charismatic, funny, caring man in his early thirties, who was divorced with two kids and a bushy mustache and a perm. Jim was the blue-collar man’s man; working very hard (and making decent money) driving delivery trucks for Pepsi. It wasn’t all rainbows and sausages but it worked, I was an independent only-child who had siblings every other weekend. He loved us all equally and treated us all fairly, and he appeared to love my mother unconditionally.
If I had to describe what fucked it all up, I’d say it was a sense of eternal restlessness, coupled with an addictive personality. Jim (who I started calling Dad) was never happy with any one job, one place, one car, one way of life for more than a few years. I admired his work ethic; he had been a delivery driver, climbed electrical poles, dug ditches and gas lines, sold used cars, ran a plumbing store, and had other jobs I probably never knew about. Though he wasn’t terribly useful in the handy-man department he did his best, and it was usually enough.
♦◊♦
I was around thirteen when he had his first mid-life crisis. He smoked like a semi, took up golfing at the local green every day, and traded his sensible commuter vehicle for a University of Kentucky blue Camaro (University of Kentucky basketball was his religion). None of which we could afford. I remember that’s the first time Dad stumbled on his pedestal. Most men remember the moment they saw their fathers as less than a perfect ideal, it’s usually the first time a boy learns to question his own habits, if only briefly. After a few months of soul-searching he eventually traded in the Camaro for a Jeep for Mom, quit golfing, and started paying attention to the family again.
It didn’t last. Over the next decade, surviving a heart-attack, failed attempts to quit smoking, more career changes, more restlessness, he would keep slipping.
♦◊♦
In 2009 Dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, all at once his passed mistakes were nullified. We wanted him to live, faults and all, and nearly stretching us all to the breaking point, he beat the cancer.
In 2010 he fell off the pedestal with an earth-shuddering crash when he left my mother after nearly twenty years of marriage for a women he met online. I gave up on him. The cancer came back, and he was dead by December, marrying the homewrecker in his last few hours of life in a morphine stupor.
That…bastard. THAT. BASTARD.
No, I didn’t see him, and I didn’t go to his funeral. Some days I’m ok with that, others I’m not.
I told you that story to tell you this one, it’s the story I’m living right now, the one all sons are living. It takes convincing, but I know deep down I AM NOT MY FATHER; and good or bad YOU ARE NOT YOUR FATHER!
I feel the restlessness, the addictive personality. I have to check myself daily to be patient and humble, and remember to ask myself how long I’ve been doing something that could be interpreted as neglect. I have lied and cheated, I have smoked more cigarettes and picked up more bad habits than I will ever admit to anyone.
But all of that is mine, my dad’s mistakes and mine, I own all of it. I always will.
And that is okay.
If you have the same fears and trepidations as me, remind yourself daily that the very fact that you can question your own behavior means you have a chance to change it.
You are not your father you are YOU. You can be a better man if you simply have the balls to become one. It is an every day struggle, but it’s one worth having.
Photo credit: Riccardo Cuppini/flickr
Well put.
Thank you for writing this! All mothers of sons in your situation want their sons to get this very message, that they are NOT their fathers, that they do NOT inherit their mistakes, faults, dysfunctions. Good for you for recognizing and rising above all of that and owning your own character as well as life!
Speaking as one born out of wedlock I’m curious as to what it is about us that makes us the paradigm of everything bad in humanity.