I know it’s not Father’s Day anymore; and I know it is definitely not
Mother’s Day, but bear with me here. First,
I intended to post this on the day some people celebrate Father’s Day, but
alas, like many of us who never forget the second Sunday in May but can’t
remember the third Sunday in June, I got super busy and never got around to
it. Sorry, dads. But you are used to the second class
treatment, right! Then I got even
busier, then sick, and before you know it, it is a week later. But you really didn’t ask all of that; plus since
I celebrate Father’s Day every day, I’d say I’m right on target!!!
My reason for mentioning Mother’s Day is because I want to touch a
little bit on my mother, so please, please bear with me again because if you
have been reading my blog, you know how I feel about her.
When she died suddenly and tragically over
three decades ago, we also lost our father.
And yup, I WILL go out on a limb here and speak for my other five
siblings, and say we definitely lost him too.
Sure he was still around, physically……well, sometimes. And yes he still berated us……often times. But emotionally, he was totally absent.
I don’t recall if it happened immediately. And I know growing up in the 1970’s, fathers
weren’t as hands-on as many of our men are today; but in a very short time, we
kind of experienced what it must feel like to be orphans. For years, we lived in that dysfunctional
entity, and for most of my teenage years, if it wasn’t for my siblings, I would
have felt totally all alone in this world.
I will now speak for myself only when I say this: there were times when I fantasized about what
life would have been like if my parents had just switched. It’s not that I wished him any harm. I just needed to dream about some kind of
happiness, albeit unattainable. Because
right or wrong, I just knew in my heart if my Mommy was alive……..heck anything
would have been better.
Most teenagers say they hate their parents, but I never said
that. Well, not that I recall. I just didn’t feel any love for him because I
didn’t feel like he loved or cared about us anymore. I really didn’t feel hatred either, which was
worse, because at least it would have been good if I felt something towards
him. At that point in my life, I just
felt like the longer he stayed out of the house, the better for me. And unfortunately, that was the extent of the
emotions I felt for my own father. I got
used to having a father but not really having a father, and that was fine by me.
Whenever anyone asked about my parents, I would say I’m a half
orphan. Depending on how close I felt
towards the person, I would joke that I was an orphan. For some reason, the shock on their faces
always made me laugh. (Hey, I never said
losing my parents tragically never affected my mind!) But the way I saw it, I
would eventually grow up, move out, be my own woman and he wouldn’t be able to
tell me shit. I would just stay out of
his hair for the next decade or so and everyone knows how fast time flies;
before you know it I would be working and wouldn’t have to deal with him again.
Or, that’s what I told myself……..
Because one day, cannot remember what provoked it, my father had a
meltdown and burst into tears. When my
sister and I saw, we instinctively held him and cried with him. And at that moment, it dawned on me. This man does care about the relationship or
lack of relationship he had with his children.
This man does care for his children.
This man does love his children.
This man was just lost. This
man was just scared. This man was just in
agony.
See, when we lost our mother, we still had each other; but our poor
father had no one. He was left to take
care of his wife’s six children alone, and to make matters worse, five of them
were girls. What was he going to
do? He had no clue! But instead of being vulnerable and saying
something like, “Kids, I am lost without your mother. I am going to need a lot of help from you guys
to get through this. I’m going to need
you as much as you are going to need me.”
He decided to be Mr. Macho Man. I
don’t know who he thought he was impressing, because it wasn’t us.
He had lost the love of his life.
He had lost his better half. He
had lost his soul mate. But us being
kids, that was lost to us. As kids, we
just wanted to know that we still had one parent. We were not thinking about a lover’s loss; we
were thinking about a child’s loss. As
the parent, we expected him to know what the heck he was doing and what the
heck was going to happen; but it is impossible for people to do things that
they are incapable of doing because they never learned how to. They can only do what they know.
People often say actions speak louder than words. There is a lot of truth to that; but words
speak real loudly too. I cannot recall
one kind word that man spoke when the fear of raising six kids alone overtook
him. He tried to rule with an iron fist
instead of a warm heart. We were well
raised not to do anything to embarrass our parents and even in her death, no
one was going to do disappoint our mother.
Unfortunately my father must not have known that. Because he did not communicate. He did not ask. Fear might have kept us from doing anything
to upset him, but it also kept us from having a relationship with him, when we
needed him most and vice versa.
Ultimately we were able to put that past behind us and enjoy reasonably
good relationships with him as adults, but for fathers out there who are afraid
to be vulnerable with your children, don’t.
Believe me, they will respect and love you more. I’m not saying to do it every time, but seeing
my father cry and seeing him be a bully, after so many years, the former still warms
my heart more than the latter garnered fear.
Seeing him cry proved to me that he was man enough to connect with his
feelings and not fight them.
People will do things only when they are ready or when their backs
are against the wall, therefore I won’t bother appealing to any man out there
who is parenting in a distant, oppressive, domineering way. After all, you may or may not know who you
are. However, watch the fathers that
parent in a loving, communicative, gentle manner; watch what kind of adults
their children grow up to be because perspectively speaking, those are the children
who are usually on their way to being successful and happy.
