Man. Blogger was down and I was unable to blog for about 24 hours. Not sure what that was about.
My biological father is dying. I didn't find this out from him directly, but from one of my half-sisters, who thought I'd known about it. But she was closer to him than I ever was -- he was a rotten dad. So much of who I am comes from reacting against who he is, finding the way to Good by understanding the Bad, where parenting is concerned. Not everybody's cut out to be a parent, I guess, which is about the most charitable thing I can say. It's weird for me, because his ghost has been with me since my folks divorced in 1975, and I've found my way without really ever understanding what of him was in me (besides height and smarts). I don't know, because he was singularly guarded about everything that he was, and you could never be sure you were getting a straight answer from him or not. The emotions I remember most with him are those of reproach, guilt, fear, anger -- I remember pain and hurt. I remember him locking me out of the house and taunting me from the other side of the screened door and saying that I couldn't get inside to see my mom. This was me at four or five years of age. I can still see it and hear it, me crying and furious and him mocking from the kitchen. One of many happy memories. I asked my mom about that and other things, what it was all about, and she theorized that maybe he was jealous, because he realized she liked me more than him, and he took it out on me. Not sure.
I remember always packing a handful of quarters (for a telephone) and a pocket knife (for self-defense) and being sure the door was unlocked on the car, and mentally rehearsing what I'd do if he tried to kidnap me -- I was always afraid he'd try to kidnap me and take me from my mom and stepdad. I remember him being willing and able to ruin absolutely everything he touched, taking the fun and joy right out of anything. If a good dad makes their kids feel wanted and loved, he was most definitely a bad, bad dad. Plenty of stories about that I've kept inside. I learned my lesson and am very good at being a daddy; my boys cherish me, and it's because I'm always there for them, I never hurt them, I always listen to them, I treat them with love and kindness and respect and I let them know how special they are to me. I read to them, and almost never raise my voice (sidenote: B1 commented over the weekend that he liked that I don't "overyell," like mommy does). My boys know their daddy loves them, and they take solace and comfort in that. I'm there for them until my dying day. My own father never, ever was. I don't even think he really wanted to be a father. I last saw him when I was 26, when he cycled up to Chicago without so much as a heads-up that he was approaching; before then, I saw him when I was 18. So, we haven't been close. It's been 14 years since I last physically saw him. In many ways, the ghost of who he is has been with me my whole life, more so than the flesh-and-blood man, and that's actually a good thing.
If you want some sense of him, take Johnny Cash (esp. the voice; he loved Johnny Cash -- I can't heard Johnny Cash without thinking of that, him listening to that), Tony Randall (esp. the fussy, pretentious, I'm Smarter Than You manner), and Peter Sellers (esp. the inaccessible weirdness) and blend them. He looks like a fusion of them, and acts like them all, in truth. I can't even watch this clip of Tony Randall without seeing him. Looks like him, and just acts like him...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-u8lcqwXjs
Without letting on that I knew he was dying, I sent him some recent pix of the boys (and myself). A small kindness. I wrote to him about the boys, their prospects, who they are. He wrote back a comment about how B1 looked like he had a date with an orthodontist in his future. It hurt. I'm trying to be kind, and he's slamming his own grandson? This in his last days? Give me a fucking break. And yet, it's so him. He's an emotional trainwreck -- he couldn't even show proper love to his own child, which should be the most natural human emotion a person can express, right?
Anyway, his days are literally numbered (what that number is, I don't precisely know). I'm not going to see him. There is no closure that can be gained with him -- what's he going to say? That he feels sorry he was so rotten to me when he was my dad? If he even sees that, can even get that? I don't know. He was hateful and hurtful. I know that I historically have better relationships with women than men, and I know it's because of him -- I would often be afraid of people's dads when I was a kid, and it's because, early on, I learned to be very wary around dads, because of him, of what he did. I remember hurt after hurt after hurt. I was trying to divine a good memory, and the closest I could come up with was around 1975, and me making a Lego house, working hard to make it wonderful, a model of our unhappy home (and it was very unhappy -- I remember my parents loudly arguing then, and being afraid of that). I heard him coming home, and I ran to show him what I'd made, my Lego house, and I tripped and fell and dropped the Lego house, and, of course, it broke to bits, and I was crushed that it had broken before he'd seen it. And he yelled about me making a mess in the kitchen, and I just cleaned it up. I remember riding on the back of one of his motorcycles (he always had motorcycles) and enjoying that, until I realized that I'd rested my foot on the tailpipe of the cycle, and it had melted the rubber of my shoe on the tailpipe, and he was furious about that, took me censoriously to task for that. That's about as close to a "good" memory as I have with him. He could take the fun and joy out of absolutely everything.
I grew up resolving to be better than he was, and I think I have, at least as far as being a parent is concerned. I try to find the fun and the joy in the world around me. I've succeeded in that, at least, but that's not because of him. People who know me and see me with my boys always marvel at how good a parent I am, but it's a very conscious reaction to what I experienced, doing the opposite of what he did, and banishing that ghost as best as I can.
Vae Victis.
