TASK #23: OUR FATHER WHO ISN’T NECESSARILY IN HEAVEN…
“It’s a dull child that knows less than his father” Unknown
I’ve had better Father’s Days…
Yeah, there was the obligatory brunch, from which I am still salted out–it was probably the eggs benedict, or the hunk of frittata that my wife didn’t finish, which I was not going to let go to waste, not at $24.95, which is what I paid to eat enough salt to last me a year, and be the recipient of yet another pair of socks and, for good measure, a crossword puzzle book…
Maybe it was the salt headache, or the argyle socks that I won’t wear, but something got me thinking about the complicated relationships that fathers have with their sons.
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It shouldn’t be complicated. It should be simple: Son loves Dad. Dad loves son.
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It shouldn’t be complicated. It should be simple: Son loves Dad. Dad loves son. It’s complicated for many reasons but I think the main reason is that as boys we never thought about growing up and becoming dads, so we didn’t plan for it–hell, it never crossed our mind. As a matter of fact, I don’t think men think about parenting until their woman says to them, “I think my water broke”, and then, 24 hours later, they’re fathers.
My own father was simple. Primitive. He was not an intellect. He looked rural and he acted rural. He was mildly racist, sexist and homophobic: if he’d seen a man kiss a man, he would have fallen to the ground and died, not necessarily in that order.
I loved him but I didn’t necessarily respect him. In my opinion he was too passive, too pliant. He didn’t control his surrounding–his surroundings controlled him. And that which he couldn’t change, or understand, he lashed out at. I wanted to be close to him, but I was wary of him.
Complicated.
You don’t get to pick your father, of course. You get what you get. The question is: what if we could pick our fathers?
TASK
You are going to create your perfect father. Open your notebook, find some crayons or colored pencils or just cut pictures out of a magazine. Create the father you see in your mind’s eye. Give him the house he should live in, the car he should drive, the job he should have–and if that man even remotely resembles your actual father–congratulations. And if he doesn’t, well at least you have the drawing, and a notion of what kind of father you want to be.
