Fatherhood, etc.

I’m a father of two sons and one of two sons of a father. Between me and my father the story was not emotional closeness (that was the mother-son narrative) but a sometimes tortured tale of grudging respect. The old man didn’t give much and didn’t ask for much, but he knew how to take a punch. He put his pants on and went to work each morning, he didn’t take shit from anyone, and he tenderly nursed my mother as she died much too prematurely. Afterwards he made a whole new life with another woman. The man had a spark in him which would not be suppressed. He didn’t talk much about any of this. To talk about feelings was a woman’s prerogative. It wasn’t the way of working class guys of that era. I often wanted more from him, but I came to respect his silences. No doubt that stoic stuff has got into my own soul and worked its way into my relations with my sons. That’s the way it is in a family. This deep stuff in the blood gets handed on from generation to generation. My father reserved his tenderness for my mother and my sister, as I do mine for my own wife and daughter. Yet I hope, maybe delusionally, that my father gave to me his highest accolade – respect. It took me a while to confess to myself that he had earned mine, and being my father’s son, of course I never told him.

Reply