Sometimes “good enough” is OK. (Most of the time, probably.) I’ve spent a lifetime being grateful for the fathering I received, even though it failed me at a crucial stage.
I’m a gay man just past the twenty-year mark with my partner. I came out to my father at the age of thirty-five, from which point I never again spent any holiday at “home.” For decades after, my partner’s name was never uttered there. My visits were brief, dutiful, and empty. My life as part of the family was effectively over.
Yet throughout my childhood and adolescence he was so present, so available, so empowering that I’ve been living on the strength and self-confidence he created ever since.
In a lot of ways he was the Best Dad Ever – who eventually had to be reckoned with as a flawed human. And I’m OK with that. He had already given me more than I needed.
◊♦◊
How did he do it?
Our family consisted of three boys (I’m the middle) plus my tiny, efficient mom, ever deferential and yet ruling an absolutely orderly household (worth an essay in itself). In this traditional formulation, most of the task of character-formation fell to the father, and he went at it wholeheartedly.
Somehow he made us feel loved, somehow he built our strength and independence while never for a moment relinquishing his authority. He challenged us to be enduring, alert, and gentle. Had us work alongside him so we understood what work was. Read the Bible with us on Saturday mornings. Took us to football games on Sunday afternoons. The works!
It’s a lot, my good fortune. So I’ve tried to boil it down: Seven ways he went about being a dad. For which I’ll always be grateful. . . even as the great silence divides us.
#1 Be the Adult
We called him “Sir” when being given instructions or reprimands, “Dad” other times – but always following a code of unhesitating obedience. Sassing him would have been unthinkable. Yet he clearly loved being with us, and would enter into our play quite… playfully. Summertime water fights, rough-housing in the big bed on weekend mornings, ping-pong round-robins… I think what made it work was that he didn’t harbor some desire to not be the adult. He wasn’t our “best friend,” he was our loving, attentive father. There’s a crucial difference.
It was a difference extended to other adults, whom we never first-named but always called Mr. or Mrs. or Aunt or Uncle.
#2 Show Up for the Little Stranger
He seemed to understand that we were not him and he accepted the relative strangeness of each of us three boys. In my case this appeared as bookishness combined with a startling lack of athleticism. He himself had been a very fine athlete. He had gone to the California state high-school championships in hurdles and high jump; he was a handsome well-made man. And me, in my taffy-pull body, uncoordinated, goofy. . . Well, I tried. I wanted to be excellent in this department (as in every department!), but ended up always on the “B team” even in junior high. All elbows and knees and long shanks, giving my all (which wasn’t much). Baseball. Football. Track. Year in and year out.
And how did he handle it? By showing up for every game or meet I ever played! He cheered and applauded. He took us out for Baskin-Robbins afterwards. And never – not once – belittled me for my lousiness.
Later I did discover a certain talent for endurance. I became a long-distance runner, a skinnybones in blousy track shorts flying weightlessly along the hillside trails and tracks of our Southern California meets. I won some of them! While looking like hell of course. These victories gave me little doses of self-esteem that felt very very welcome. In that closeted era being attracted to boys was a problem too unprecedented for me to solve, and winning the occasional race gave me cover, emotionally. My dad beamed, of course unaware of the secret drama.
None of it his fault. Just the usual ironic difficulty of being human. I solved it later, in my own time.
#3 Keep Your Powder Dry.
At my mother’s urging we belonged to a suburban Baptist church. I became fervent, of course – I am built for earnestness, and I was as born-again and Bibled up as a kid can be, all the way through my teen years and beyond. And Dad? He maintained an interesting position not quite outside the pale. He had been raised in a different tradition (Christian Science) and he seemed to neither resist nor join the sanctified doin’s at church.
He never argued. He sat placidly amidst the altar-calls and fervor. He gave money and brought us home again. I prayed for his salvation, of course.
But later, I rather appreciated his unobtrusive resistance. It was almost a kind of zen, the way he refused to register all the doctrine-thumping, and took his refuge in the beautiful language of the Psalms, which floated high above us all, Baptists and non-Baptists alike.
For a guy with but a high school education, a practical businessman and a lifelong Republican — this was something, no? As if he understood: Not everything has to be argued. Some of it is just to be lived.
#4 Assume the Strength You Wish to See
The parenting style featured an exceptionally long leash, and both my parents seemed quite unfazed by the occasional damage we incurred. We fell out of trees, scuffed knees, rode sleds into trees that failed to jump out of our way, tossed hatchets into those same trees on warm summer afternoons (sorry, trees!), wandered in the San Gabriel Mountains that rose above our suburb. Wild (or wild-ish) dangers and sharp blades were taken for granted as normal features of actual life.
Broken bones went to the doctor, of course. But for lesser casualties our folks never thought of stitches; we scarred up on our own. Big wounds or little were usually taken to my dad, who would patiently wash the blood off; place a hand on head or shoulders, calming the crying and carrying on; tell us to “Be a good Indian now,” which was our romanticized family language for a beautiful kind of stoic manliness. When he poured the fizzing hydrogen peroxide into the wound, or the considerably more painful rubbing alcohol, it was a point of honor not to flinch or cry out. Or… well, only a little.
What was communicated was a kind of realistic toughness: Don’t make a big deal of a bit of pain. Square your shoulders, stand on your balance point, breathe. Is it obvious that I think this training has served me well over the course of my adult life?
#5 Don’t be Shy about Tenderness.
Lest this sound like a lot of Spartan bravado, let me add the surprising softness of my dad. Quite free with a hug. Ready to put a hand on a boy’s arm, look admiringly at a school grade or a coloring-book creation, listen to some childish thing I just had to say.
Or this: a memory so hushed and strange I’ve literally never told it to anyone. My dad was embarrassed about his voice. Both his brother and his mother had been performers gifted with truly beautiful voices. Dad would not sing, even in church. Not a peep.
But sometimes, when he came into the bedroom to check on the sleeping boys, if I was still awake he would gently sit down on the bed, saying goodnight and stroking my head. And in the privacy of that darkness, that quiet we shared, he sometimes would begin to sing. In a quiet, small voice, almost a whisper, would come the hymn remembered from his strange church: Shepard show me how to walk, how to feed thy sheep…
The hand on my hair stroking, soothing, reassuring. The voice, not perfect but strangely undefended. As I drifted off into the sleep of a protected and beloved boy.
#6 Unconditional support.
All that said, it will be no surprise that as I grew into my life and made choices about career, where to live, what jobs to take or reject, my father never criticized and never substituted his judgment for mine. My insatiable love of language and books and poetry quickly took me into worlds he really had no experience of. But he cheered me all the way. He offered help if he could think of any.
I was no businessman, no Republican. A college prof by the age of 28. But I knew I could always count on his backing.
#7 Don’t forget awe and wonder.
Our good dad was a regular guy, grounded and practical. Yet as I look back I’m impressed at how frequently he took us to places where awe and wonder were natural. Inevitable. He loved forests. He made sure we knew the redwoods and sequoias. He stuck us all into a cabin in the mountains south of L.A., where we nestled summerlong in piny woods among granite ridges and peaks. He came and went from home each week, Mom and the boys left to long quiet days. No telephone in the cabin; no television.
Do you think I had a chance to read, to dream and read again? To wander the woods, even by myself? You bet.
The silent scale and otherness we absorbed – what price to put upon it? My life eventually found its own way to big vistas, to climbs and solo trips in high places, to books and poetry that challenged me to my core and offered hard-won truths. But I don’t kid myself that I was the sole author of those discoveries.
He put me on the path.
◊♦◊
Hearing tales from my upbringing, my partner is likely to say something like “You had the best childhood I ever heard of.” He’s right, and a lot of that is down to my father, who was an ideal dad in so many ways you’re likely to resent me.
But when it came time to reveal the kind of man I really was, he simply could not acknowledge me. It was too much for him. He faltered and, in this painful way, failed me.
Yet – to repeat: I’m OK with that. He had already given me more than I needed.
No father needs to be perfect. Being present and doing the best that’s in you – I think that has to be what a good-enough dad is.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all-access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class, and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group, and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
◊♦◊
Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
Photo: iStock