Father's Day Reflections

At least I was a better dad than my father.

Easy to say. My father, dead forty years now of complications of his disease, was an alcoholic who destroyed his own life and did a fair amount of damage to a few others on the way. I don't know if I loved him, just as right now I don't know if my sons love me. I know very clearly and well that he was one of the victims in his own family, a well-to-do upper middle class toxic stew of over-controlling mother, somewhat absent and possibly alcoholic father, which followed the ancient practice of primogeniture--the oldest son got all the goodies. My father was the youngest son and the twin of the princess of the family, the youngest of two girls.

Just for the record they are all dead. I can talk about them now.

Older brother pretty much seized everything including the virginity of his younger sister, but not the princess's--never the princess's. Three of the four grew up to be alcoholics, and I'm not entirely sure of the fourth. It was after all the era of the two martini evening drink. My uncle got his karma payback in the rudest of ways. His only son, a cousin only one year younger than me, used his father's shotgun to end his life at 26 in the living room of their newly built house. Twenty some years ago his daughter, his older child by a dozen years, told me about fighting her father off when she was fifteen. The raped sister became a promiscuous adult. The princess snagged one of her seven sisters college professors.

So you can guess Father's Day is interesting for me.

My own relationship with my sons is benign by comparison. I'm fairly close to the second one, and okay with the oldest who has become pretty conservative in his politics since he married. We've actually had a pretty nice recent visit and I received what is I think the very first father's day gift either of my sons has given me as adults. I usually don't even get a card, and seldom a call; but sometimes now there is a facebook post. I'll take what I can get. It's not like our family ritualized any brithdays or holidays when I was growing up, or with them when they were growing up. Getting divorced from their mother when they were 11 and 14 didn't help.

But thinking of my father... I have a picture of him as a man of about 28 or so at the helm of a sailboat, sheet running through his left hand, his right on the tiller, his eyes cast upward as if looking at the set of the sails. It may have been taken before I was born, certainly not long after. It's a way I like to remember him. A therapist I worked with once made an interesting suggestion after we had spent some time rooting through all of this family stuff, or at least what of it I knew at the time. She said "So who do you think taught you about love? It surely wasn't your mother." [We'll save Mother for another day. Let's just say she was on the tightly wired side.]

The question smacked me like a hammer between the eyes. It was true. One of the gifts from my father, amid all of the drunken and crazy chaos that he made of our lives, was his sensitive loving spirit.

I guess that's worth remembering him for.

[Note: I seem to be having trouble replying to comments so until I get that sorted out, please know that I appreciate your comments and will reply when I can figure out how to do it.]