Father’s Day has always been a tricky time for me.
My Mom and Dad are divorced, and my father isn’t exactly what you would call a model dad.
When I was a kid, he was more like a big brother than a father—and not in any sort of good way. He was immature, temperamental, and in no way paternal.
He had a parade of girlfriends. Women would come in and out of my life, and just as I was getting used to them, they’d disappear with little or no explanation as to where they went or why.
One woman I particularly liked. She even got my mother’s seal of approval. They were together for five years, and I adored her. Then one day, she was just gone. When I asked where she went, I was told that I wouldn’t be seeing her anymore because she messed up. My mother even got involved with that little bit of child trauma, but my father refused to budge saying that it was his prerogative not to tell me what happened to her.
I later found out that my dad found out she flirted with one of their neighbors, and promptly tossed her out of the apartment they shared together. Granted, he cheated on every woman he was ever with, but being a traditional Italian man, he felt that monogamy was a one-way street that men weren’t required to drive down.
We also have the typical bad dad stories that most children of divorce have:
The weekends I was supposed to spend with him when he never showed to pick me up.
The attempts to buy my love with presents.
Telling me stories to try to make my mom look like an awful parent.
Threatening to sue for full custody—a real laugh, considering there were whole months where he didn’t even have a mailing address.
Of course, this all happened years and years ago, and now he has another child—a girl, my little half-sister. I’m relieved to say he’s a much better parent to her than he was to me. Our relationship is still shaky at best, but at least I can make a Father’s Day phone call to him without feeling like the whole thing is one big fraudulent exercise.
And I’ve learned that it is possible to learn things from a father even when he’s not a good one.
For one thing, I’m a firm believer that most men are better off being fathers later in life. My dad has patience and selflessness now that he never had when he was younger, and I attribute a lot of that to, well, him being younger. When I turned twenty-two—the age he was when I was born—I suddenly had an epiphany.
I was still a kid, and he must have been too.
It was amazing how much I was able to forgive after that.
By having a less than stellar father, I realized that idolizing anyone is dangerous, but idolizing parents is downright lethal. Part of my father’s problem was that he had an even worse dad than I did, and he was determined to admire him in spite of that just because he wanted to love his dad the same way the other kids he knew loved theirs.
The sooner you figure out your parents are humans with human flaws, the easier it’s going to be to love them. I spent most of my early years screaming at my mother because I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t bend steel with her hands, work a full-time job, and bake brownies for my class bake sale.
And she got some of the flack that should have gone to my father.
I’ve done a lot of apologizing to her since then.
Luckily, having a bad dad taught me the value of an apology. My father never apologized for anything. Not for missing those weekends with me. Not for forgetting my birthday. Not for telling me when I was eight that I should just be like other kids or else I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life.
I learned from him that when you’re an inherently irresponsible person, it’s impossible for you to apologize for things. I could tell he felt weak whenever he was wrong, so his response was to cross his arms and never admit it. I found myself becoming the same way, and so now I push the apologies out of my mouth even if I’m not entirely sure I was wrong. I learned from my dad that it takes more strength and character to apologize than it does to puff up your chest and break out your iron will.
I learned that you can’t expect people to play by your rules. If there’s one thing I’ve inherited from my father, it’s his love of control. Whatever he did, he had to be the boss at, and that extended well beyond the workplace. There were his rules for himself, which were few and lenient, and then there were the rules for everybody else in his life—including me. Again, I think it was that old European mentality—
The man of the family does what he wants, and everybody else nods and smiles.
Unfortunately for my dad, his family was fractured when my mom left him, and I don’t think he ever really got over not having a clan of people to give orders to.
Now, I look at him and tell myself that I have to remember that everybody has their own belief systems and rules that they live by, and rarely will they ever match up with mine. When someone does something I find reproachable, I think of how my dad would respond—either by cutting them out of his life or flipping out at them—and I remember that he doesn’t have many friends, and the ones he does have are like worker arts with just as much personality.
So when Father’s Day rolls around, I’ll make that phone call. It won’t be a dinner or an outing, and there certainly won’t be any Hallmark moments, but it will be a phone call.
The last thing I learned from my dad is that everyone is a teacher, and that some people teach you by showing you what they don’t know. It’s more than just learning from other’s mistakes. It’s realizing what could be there in place of the mistakes.
Love.
Acceptance.
Reliability.
My dad was never able to give me any of these things, but he did show me how valuable it is to be able to give them to others. So I do. I even give them to him.
And maybe one day, if I can give them to my son, he’ll feel comfortable giving me more than a phone call.
My Mom and Dad are divorced, and my father isn’t exactly what you would call a model dad.
When I was a kid, he was more like a big brother than a father—and not in any sort of good way. He was immature, temperamental, and in no way paternal.
He had a parade of girlfriends. Women would come in and out of my life, and just as I was getting used to them, they’d disappear with little or no explanation as to where they went or why.
One woman I particularly liked. She even got my mother’s seal of approval. They were together for five years, and I adored her. Then one day, she was just gone. When I asked where she went, I was told that I wouldn’t be seeing her anymore because she messed up. My mother even got involved with that little bit of child trauma, but my father refused to budge saying that it was his prerogative not to tell me what happened to her.
I later found out that my dad found out she flirted with one of their neighbors, and promptly tossed her out of the apartment they shared together. Granted, he cheated on every woman he was ever with, but being a traditional Italian man, he felt that monogamy was a one-way street that men weren’t required to drive down.
We also have the typical bad dad stories that most children of divorce have:
The weekends I was supposed to spend with him when he never showed to pick me up.
The attempts to buy my love with presents.
Telling me stories to try to make my mom look like an awful parent.
Threatening to sue for full custody—a real laugh, considering there were whole months where he didn’t even have a mailing address.
Of course, this all happened years and years ago, and now he has another child—a girl, my little half-sister. I’m relieved to say he’s a much better parent to her than he was to me. Our relationship is still shaky at best, but at least I can make a Father’s Day phone call to him without feeling like the whole thing is one big fraudulent exercise.
And I’ve learned that it is possible to learn things from a father even when he’s not a good one.
For one thing, I’m a firm believer that most men are better off being fathers later in life. My dad has patience and selflessness now that he never had when he was younger, and I attribute a lot of that to, well, him being younger. When I turned twenty-two—the age he was when I was born—I suddenly had an epiphany.
I was still a kid, and he must have been too.
It was amazing how much I was able to forgive after that.
By having a less than stellar father, I realized that idolizing anyone is dangerous, but idolizing parents is downright lethal. Part of my father’s problem was that he had an even worse dad than I did, and he was determined to admire him in spite of that just because he wanted to love his dad the same way the other kids he knew loved theirs.
The sooner you figure out your parents are humans with human flaws, the easier it’s going to be to love them. I spent most of my early years screaming at my mother because I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t bend steel with her hands, work a full-time job, and bake brownies for my class bake sale.
And she got some of the flack that should have gone to my father.
I’ve done a lot of apologizing to her since then.
Luckily, having a bad dad taught me the value of an apology. My father never apologized for anything. Not for missing those weekends with me. Not for forgetting my birthday. Not for telling me when I was eight that I should just be like other kids or else I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life.
I learned from him that when you’re an inherently irresponsible person, it’s impossible for you to apologize for things. I could tell he felt weak whenever he was wrong, so his response was to cross his arms and never admit it. I found myself becoming the same way, and so now I push the apologies out of my mouth even if I’m not entirely sure I was wrong. I learned from my dad that it takes more strength and character to apologize than it does to puff up your chest and break out your iron will.
I learned that you can’t expect people to play by your rules. If there’s one thing I’ve inherited from my father, it’s his love of control. Whatever he did, he had to be the boss at, and that extended well beyond the workplace. There were his rules for himself, which were few and lenient, and then there were the rules for everybody else in his life—including me. Again, I think it was that old European mentality—
The man of the family does what he wants, and everybody else nods and smiles.
Unfortunately for my dad, his family was fractured when my mom left him, and I don’t think he ever really got over not having a clan of people to give orders to.
Now, I look at him and tell myself that I have to remember that everybody has their own belief systems and rules that they live by, and rarely will they ever match up with mine. When someone does something I find reproachable, I think of how my dad would respond—either by cutting them out of his life or flipping out at them—and I remember that he doesn’t have many friends, and the ones he does have are like worker arts with just as much personality.
So when Father’s Day rolls around, I’ll make that phone call. It won’t be a dinner or an outing, and there certainly won’t be any Hallmark moments, but it will be a phone call.
The last thing I learned from my dad is that everyone is a teacher, and that some people teach you by showing you what they don’t know. It’s more than just learning from other’s mistakes. It’s realizing what could be there in place of the mistakes.
Love.
Acceptance.
Reliability.
My dad was never able to give me any of these things, but he did show me how valuable it is to be able to give them to others. So I do. I even give them to him.
And maybe one day, if I can give them to my son, he’ll feel comfortable giving me more than a phone call.
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