Father’s Day: The Sequel
It’s odd that on this particular Father’s Day, after feeling the short-shrift the majority of my life, I’m strangely released from the sadness of my paternal upbringing (if you can even call it that). Maybe I’ve just hashed the living prose out of it so much that I’ve set free some of those demons that have tagged along behind me. Goodness knows, there’s plenty of accounts in this blog to document the history.
Yes, this Father’s Day felt different. Even realizing that as an adult you’ve got to make certain choices in your favor and learn what wasn’t given to you in the formative years, there have been hurdles I’ve never been able to quite climb over. And yet, while I’m never at a loss in describing the shortcomings of my father(s) (the good as well), I’ve apparently come to some sort of emotional understanding with the Day.
Maturity has never been one of my strengths and I suspect that the severe lag time in that development was probably the failure of a father figure to guide me when I was younger and banging around trying to figure out how to be an adult. But this year maybe there’s a shift in the scenario. There’s no living father figure in my life and I’m becoming more and more removed from that loss. I’m sizing up the situation and have every hope that I’ll reach full emotional and intellectual maturity before I hit 70, a definite upgrade from my previous estimate of never.
But there is a calm, a sort of ceasefire that’s allowing me to think and talk about it without feeling that desperate missing link that I’ve felt so many times before. Yes, there is a sadness that I will always carry with me, but it appears to be walking beside me rather than pulling me along by the nose. I don’t know why this is…time…fatigue…circumstance? It just is, apparently, what it is and now I’m the only one left standing.
So, happy Father’s Day to all the men out there that are able to think and act beyond their own limitations and contribute to another being in a way that enriches their life…you deserve to be celebrated. It doesn’t happen everyday, you know.
Thanks Martin. Being the freakishly ambivalent daughter of a very complicated man, I appreciated this a great deal. My daughter is one of the lucky ones on the receiving end of wise and wonderful love from a man that valued his role. Ellen