Dad

One of the first mem­o­ries I have of my Dad is crawl­ing under­neath the “tent” he made with his leg. I was small enough and he was big enough that being under a bent leg was con­sid­ered a tent. This was most like­ly at our house on Franklin Street. My dad was a big man. 6′3″ and over 200 pounds when I was grow­ing up. It was easy to sit on his shoul­ders to put a bas­ket­ball through the hoop, and from him I learned that the hoop is big enough to fit two balls through side-by-side. Oth­er things I learned from my father include how to jig for crap­pie and bait a night­crawler. For the most part I feel like I was a great dis­ap­point­ment to him. We had dif­fer­ent inter­ests, and while I did­n’t real­ize it as a child, I don’t think we con­nect­ed as peo­ple very well. He encour­aged me to play base­ball and bas­ket­ball, but I spent my time in left field chas­ing but­ter­flies and any brief court time I had, trip­ping over my own feet. That’s not to say we did­n’t enjoy some of the same things, fish­ing and clas­sic cars are both things I have a great inter­est in to this day. I even helped him and one of his bud­dies restore a 1970 GTO. Since my dad was a mechan­ic, he under­stood all about engine guts and I main­ly ran the sand­blaster and was gopher.

When my mom filed for divorce I saw a side of my father that I’d either nev­er seen before, or had been obliv­i­ous to. One vis­it with him result­ed in a long dri­ve around the coun­try, for hours, as he yelled about all kinds of dif­fer­ent things, and anoth­er inci­dent so scared me that I jumped out of the same GTO we’d restored because I was afraid of being beat­en once we got to his place. After that inci­dent, most of my con­tact with him ceased. It has been some­thing around ten years now since I’ve spo­ken with him. I think I still want his approval, although I don’t seek it. The love and trust that I had for him as a child is so tan­gled and com­pli­cat­ed by hind­sight and the new sides that I saw that it is eas­i­er to main­tain my cur­rent space than attempt to estab­lish civ­il and diplo­mat­ic rela­tions.

I don’t spend much time think­ing about him, but when I do, I main­ly won­der about the lessons I missed dur­ing my teenage years, and how I might be a dif­fer­ent man [bad or good?] today as a result of them.

3 thoughts on “Dad”

  1. Peo­ple that coher­ent­ly and emo­tion­al­ly reflect on their per­son­al expe­ri­ences rock. That means you. Seri­ous­ly.

  2. Your father loves you and talks about you all the time. He is upset every sin­gle hol­i­day because you are not there. You owe it to your upcom­ing baby to let that child have a grand­fa­ther who is won­der­ful. He con­stant­ly shares sto­ries he remem­bers about you with my two boys, who are his grand­chil­dren. Your an adult now and should know that things are not just black and white, when you are mar­ried to some­one you dont love, its hard to act hap­py around them. Its also easy to make mis­takes as a par­ent. You will learn that soon enough. Your time has come. I hope your child nev­er dis­owns you the way you have done your father. I dont pre­tent to have walked in your shoes, but I have known Don for the past 13 years, as an adult myself, not as a child, and he is a good per­son and he loves you and wants to be a part of your life. He is proud of every­thing you have ever done, so dont ever ques­tion that. We always hear about how great Adam is doing, when he hears some­thing from some­one else any­way. I hope you will give your dad anoth­er chance Adam and judge him by the per­son he is now, not the per­son you remem­ber as a child when your par­ents were divorc­ing. That would be a bad time for any­one. You cant make a life­long deci­sion based on the times your par­ents had it rough togeth­er. My boys are 7 and 10 and they love your dad. I hope your child gets to meet him and see what a great grand­pa he can be also. For your sake and your dads.

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