Dad

Dad.

I am 60 years old today.   I am kind of amazed by this.     As you know, I have always been the wild one in the family, slept under more than my share of bushes and highway bridges, and have mixed with scurrilous crowds of questionable origin on way too many occasions.    As a result, I have dodged a number of bullets along the way.    Not real ones, mind you, but the there has been the odd moment here and there when I found myself in a precarious situation and known that - had the God of Chance nodded slightly another way than the way it turned out - it would have been the end of me.   Well, there you go. Maybe the Gods were never paying close enough attention, and is the reason why I am still here.       Maybe the real danger is in getting someone's attention.

I wanted to write this to you because, like all sons I guess, I have very mixed feelings when I think of you as my father.   I naturally love you because you are my father, so you immediately get a few easy points for that.  You loved the right woman at the right moment to lead to me being alive on this earth.   In addition, you also get well earned points for imparting to me a lot of the life wisdom that I carry with me to this day.   Its a Way of Seeing.   Seeing other people.  Getting an immediate sense of situations when I walk into them.  It includes, but is not limited to; judging myself by my actions; establishing a Strong Moral Code that I can live by; being responsible; always showing up 5 minutes early; don't take what is not yours; and finally, do what you say you are going to do, and do it when you say you are going to do it.   These are all Great Things that you have given me.   Hey, thanks.   I love those things about me, as they help make me proud of who I am as a person.   You did good there.

But then there are these other memories of you that make things more complicated for me.   Other things that you did, or didn't do, at the right and wrong moments.  Like how when I was 27 years old you decided to walk away from our family, and then stayed away for the next 30 years.    Then it was only after Mom died that you decided to come back and make yourself available to your grown children again.    Mom had desperately hoped her entire life that you would establish a relationship again with your children while she was alive, and you, you bastard, you waited until after she died to do so. You twisted the knife one last time.   I wonder what satisfaction that gave you.   I would understand this better if you had just had sons, but you had two daughters as well.    As a father myself, I know that you don't ever walk away from your daughters. Ever.   Your selfish actions meant that two daughters went 30 years without their father.

Now that you are back so to speak in the family fold after mom has died, however, it is turning out easier for my siblings to accept you back into their lives.    Much harder for me.   Even now, I can't fully explain that to myself.     Mom's ghost sits on my shoulder and whispers softly in my ear FORGIVE HIM, but I just can't just yet.   I'm sorry Ma.

Other things keep getting in the way.    I remember in my 30s somewhere when there was a moment when I was truly lost.   A bit like how I am now, actually.    I was walking away from a previous life, and had not yet found another life to walk into.    I was scared, and unsure of myself, and was not able to gain any bearing relating or solid footing onto who I was or where I was going.    I remember this unbalanced moment acutely as if it was yesterday, and I also remember sitting at the kitchen table and writing you a letter expressing my fear, and looking for some small response, anything, some measure of reassurance from you that it would all turn out ok.   I wasn't asking for money, or anything material from you.    All I was looking for, All That I Needed, was a pat on the back.   I needed that, Dad.   Instead, I waited and waited, and I never heard back from you at all.     You either didn't notice, or you didn't care.    Maybe you just threw my letter away unopened, figuring no answer from you was a response in another way, and would harden me a bit.   Welcome to life, son.

I have a hard time getting past these things.     This is why when I had two daughters of my own, I gave them Mom's last name instead of yours.    To me, you abandoned us.  You abandoned me.   I know that you eventually found out that I did this, and maybe you were hurt by this, but also know that until and including the day Mom died, whenever I needed a calm reassurance in my life - that pat on the back - she was the first to give it, as I would to her, in her own moments of weakness.    It was Mom that taught me what it was to be Family.    Love and Loyalty.   She earned her stripes, my love, and then some.

Then there is one more thing.  A memory I didn't even know I had until recently.  The memory goes back to a time when you and Mom were young and struggling together trying to raise four noisy kids.   I remember on multiple occasions you volunteering to take me to the airport for the day to get some paperwork done, and spend some one on one time with me.  Maybe to Mom this meant we were heading to some quality father and son time.    But then this is what I also remember.    I remember every time we went to that airport, you would take me up to a wood paneled meeting room and tell me to wait there, and that you would be back, and then - and then - you would not show up for a number of hours.    I must have been 10 years old at the time - a little kid - waiting alone for hours in that wood paneled room.   Eventually you would show up and then we would drive home.    I never told mom what happened in those days.   Maybe even then I was in the process of burying it deep.    Maybe that is why it is only recently that it all came back to me.   Of course it was years later that we all found out that you were having an affair with not only one secretary at that airport, but two of them at the same time.   Lucky you.   Not so lucky for your son though.  The son that would one day be me.

All in all, I wish I could say that I was a better father than you.   All I can say that is that I am trying.  We try to correct in ourselves our father's failings, but often find our own new ways to screw up anyway.   I know that you dealt with this very issue with your own father.    I find myself dealing on this with you.  In the end, maybe the best that fathers can hope for is to be judged as people.  You do some stuff right, and most of the rest of it is wrong.   One of the things you used to say was that you can't judge decisions you made in the past.  You have to believe the person you were did the best they could at the time.    I try to live by that.

Now you are 84 years old and too old for me to send you this letter.   Additionally,  I have no desire to rattle you at the end of your life with ancient misgivings.   It is best to leave you to die with the delusions intact that allow you to get from one day to the next, as each of us does.  But forgiveness.  Forgiveness from those you leave behind is a blessing that - while all of us deserve it - it is not something we always get.   That forgiveness is something that I am still working on with you.    I will get there.  I am just not sure how long that will take.

Love, your son.