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A couple of years ago, I made my dad a birthday page on my site. It was a stupid NervousText Java applet I'd hacked a bit, and it wished him a happy birthday and all, in its nervous way. I sent him the URL, and he thanked me. It was only later that I found out he was still running Windows 3.1, and didn't have a Java-savvy browser. I keep trying, in my fumbling way, to reach back through the years, to understand the reasons why he left, and why we are the way we are today. How much of him is in me, and how much of me does he carry around? "That's just right", my mom said when she read an early draft of this story, "the radio was a way out of Greenville." Well, maybe this is a way out of where we are. steve {editor@jaundicedeye.com}
It's difficult enough to maintain a relationship with parents when you reach the age where you stop looking at them as anything more than people and they look at you with an expression of loss and accusation that speaks and says, "But... I thought you'd always need me" followed quickly with a "How dare you stop!" Add to that the inherant tension of old wounds and fearful blame. One wonders and perhaps fears discovering... if you go through the process and overcome the odds, and struggle to find common ground, agree to meet there under certain terms and conditions, and stand facing each other open and receptive, one wonders whether you'll find yourself falling in their arms... or walking away for good. Would it not be almost better not to know? It's easy to say no. But in the context of familial relations, where the slightest hint of an upturned eyebrow can scar, the gamble is much harder to deal. It puts the sacrifice of a few awkward holidays in perspective. Alexis Massie {alex@afterdinner.com}
we have safe subjects, he and I. we talk of the weather, our respective workloads, the family's history, news from home. sometimes he still tries to sit me down and explain about the stamps.
my father's stamp collection is like your father's radios, stephen. i had my notebooks and my books, my mother had her plants, her job, her dreams, my father had his stamps. the only difference is that my father never really left. i only wished, sometimes, that he would.
i wonder sometimes what it must be like to know that, as a parent... to know that your only child would want you gone, not from a temporary tantrum or some teenage phase, but from years of careful, fair assessment culminating in the undeniable conclusion that the child would be better off.
i shouldn't speak ill. i do love him so. he's in my blood, in my eyes, in my hair. he's everywhere i've ever been and will ever hope to be, and when all is said and done, it is his opinion, his praise, his smiling nod that matters most to me.
maybe then we'll connect. maybe.
then again, we're both so good at sticking to the safe subjects.
my father has, several times, stated that he and i do not relate to one another as well as my youngest brother does with him.
i wonder from where this assumption has arisen. since my parents have stopped trying to load me with guilt trips (or maybe since i've stopped living at home) there have not been any particular conflicts of note between us, and we (my father an i) often have lengthy conversations, such as the one we had this past week, when i was home, and my father was driving me back home after i dropped my car off to be prepared. we talked about his family, none of which i have ever known (he is older than my mother), and his frequent trips into new york city. for surgery. removal of the skin cancers which have begun to appear on his face.
as a child, he was prescribed x-rays for his acne. he tells me the doctor who is treating him said that there are not many patients with his type of disease. most of them have died.
when i was in high school, we would argue, and i would tell my parents that they did not know me. i do not know my father.
there is a sense of urgency, here, now.
roland {roland.mcintosh@oberlin.edu}
i suppose it comes very differently with different people. with my father, i communicate from a distance.
we have learned, through experience, to avoid certain subjects.
over time we have begun to slowly speak on these subjects. c l o s e r .
My experience is nowhere near as dramatic. Maybe I'm lucky--I've basically always connected with my father (and mother, for that matter). I find that as I get older, I only better connect with my dad. As I learn what it means to be an adult, I understand him better. And as I'm no longer just his child, but his peer, I find our conversations have attained a wonderful level of parity. I'm not talking to My Dad. I'm shooting the shit with a friend. And how do we connect? Mostly through ICQ now. It's great! Peter Merholz {peterme@studioarchetype.com}
I tell my girlfriend Jenn that "I don't love my father, I respect him." I connect with my father at the intellectual level, more or less, because his interests lie with the mechanical and the electrical; the real. The most technical I ever got was learning HTML. Nonetheless, our intolerance toward stupidity and bureaucracy, our admiration for innovators and trail blazers, and our individual solipisims link us together. It's not surprising to me; I've had 21 years to internalize his preaching on the subjects. But to say I connect with him in the sense that I know what he's thinking would be a lie. My father has always drawn away from everyone, starting with my mother 10 years ago, and now he preaches about the beauty of his absolute emotional solitude. I think my five year long-distance relationship with Jenn can attest to my disbelief in that notion. He doesn't really connect with anyone. I believe most people aren't worth connecting to, but you must connect with somebody. Greg Lindsay {greg@babelfish.net}
My dad left, too, when I was fifteen. We'd been super close when I was little, and he used to get me science kits and we'd make magnets and build kites and start fires with chemicals. But his relationship with my mother was a nightmare, and finally one night he had enough. After a series of troublesome experieneces in my own relationships, I started therapy. My shrink suggested that I bring my father in for a session. We'd kept in touch, although it was distant at best. I balked, but a few days later I picked up the phone and called him. He (VERY reluctantly) agreed to join me for a two hour session. But by the end of it, I had so many questions answered and felt this bizarre renewel of the feelings I'd had when I was a kid building stuff together in his workshop. He's a different person now than the embittered man who walked out on us. He called me the other day to ask if I'd come over and help him set up his new computer. Great thread.
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