In the Wake of Eternal Summer Evenings

My father is going to die. Not anytime soon as far as I know, but eventually. We haven't spoken since shortly after I was married almost four years ago, and before that, maybe another four years. We have a complicated relationship, to say the least, he and I.

I have two young sons, one of which is creeping slowly into adolescence as I type this. I am constantly worried about how they view me, and what their adulthood impression of me as a father will eventually be. Will I be remembered as a disciplinarian? An easy going guy? A dreamer? Or a shit? The more I try to label it and steer myself toward it, the more confused I get. I realize that that there is no single trait that carries on with your name, at least to those who grew up with you around. It is a collection of traits. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my father wasn't solely a "shit". He was a man lost inside himself, desperately aching for freedom. Freedom from the confines of the nine to five. Freedom from the rule of his own father. Freedom from age. My father, as cruel and revolting as he may have been, was just a lonely child in a dark forest.

I know little of his childhood. He was born in Morocco, on an Army base. He was the third of ten children, the first male. He was smart as fuck, but was more interested in girls and quick cash than studies and the future. He and his father fought fiercely, and often, leading up to him being kicked out of the house at age fourteen. He lived in abandoned vehicles, at his grandmothers, worked odd jobs, and rented rooms. He worked construction, and spent his money on new clothes, girls, pot, and whatever else was around to keep a smile on his face, and worries anywhere else. He was the same young man you pass in the summer outside of a bar, or pounding bass in their new car. A young man, loving life.

Around 18, he met my mother, and at 19, they got married. They had their fun together for a few years, and when he was 26, I was born. This is where my father becomes abnormal. Well, abnormal in the face of what someone should be.

The way I see it, at this point, married with a kid, my father realized he was no longer free. The man who refused to fade with age. He who would be young, virile, and tough as fuck for ever, was moving slowly toward death. He was never a calm man, and to ever say he was "happy" would be an exaggeration, often wildly so. He got cold feet, and to make an extremely long story much too short, he fucked up. A lot. Eventually, as I turned twelve, he took off for good.

And it was a blessing.

Over the next decade, I saw him every few years, and even stayed with him for a few months when I was twenty to try to mend the relationship. It was a disaster. We didn't speak for a few more years, and I even went so far as to tell him, and mean it, that my life was better when he wasn't in it.

When I was twenty-three, I felt guilty, and got lunch with him one day. I introduced him to my wife. We shot the shit. His hair was grey. His face was a mess of lines and bags. He was getting older. He talked about friends dying. He talked about aching bones. Wasted years. I was still upset with him, for everything (mostly that I haven't divulged here). We left, and I haven't spoken to him since. I wouldn't even know how to get a hold of him if I wanted to.

I can't imagine being him in this scenario. To be so estranged from my own sons that they feel toward me as I do him? I understand his position. Wanting to be free. Escape. Eternal summer evenings. Booze, women, smiles, I get it. But to go through with it? Or, more accurately, to think you could actually succeed in it, and to try? The sacrifice that takes? The wake of dead relationships you leave behind?

And now, here I am. Twenty-seven years old. Two sons. And wondering when my father is going to die. Am I so angry at him that I can forsake him completely? Have I tried enough? Do I keep trying? Do I keep subjecting myself to his shit? How much longer before I don't have the opportunity to make the choice?

My father is 55 this summer, and he has been less than careful with his health. It won't be long. My father is going to die. What do I do? What would I want my own sons to do? Is that even a relevant comparison? I should probably figure this shit out soon, because eventually, my father is going to die.



-A.

Modern Fatherhood

Let me tell you about some shit.

Like far too many in my generation, I grew up a product of a “broken home”, or a “dysfunctional family”, or as I (and not my various guidance counselors) like to say, fucked. Dad was a junkie who kicked the shit out of my mom a lot. Mom was an artist (and a good one) who gave up her dreams to raise her kids, and take his shit. I remember going on more than one drug run. In fact, when we had a car, it was usually Sunday. All Sunday. My sister and I would have to play with the dumbest fucking kids of whatever dealer my dad hadn’t fucked over yet. The part that disturbs me the most? The kids seldom wore shoes. Regardless of which dealer they belonged to. That part is just weird and a little gross to me. Anyway, Dad would leave us for weeks and months at a time every year for some trollup, or to binge somewhere in the backwoods with the same shit kicking wastes he had known since his two years in high school. Dad was a real piece of shit. One time, I remember, abandoning the three not-him members of our family in the middle of frozen nowhere, Maine, with no money, no car, nothing. I remember crying and missing him terribly all the time back then. I also remember my mother stepping up to the plate, and taking care of shit. My mother kicked ass. She was just terrified of him. I can’t blame her. I was too, when I wasn’t vying for his attention, or approval.

I see the clichés. I know this is the story of every do-nothing waste you know. That’s my point. What the fuck was going on in the 80’s and 90’s that did that to men? Was it their reaction to over-bearing fathers of the earlier generations? Were they just 70’s free spirits that refused to grow old (and who now, if not dead, are finding they do grow old, and painfully)?

Today, of the people I know, I can say that I know quite a few single parents, a surprising amount of them fathers, and there would be more if not for “moms” that think since He broke up with Her then He doesn’t deserve to raise his child, so She can collect support, social services, and be able to bitch to her friends about Him, the deadbeat. Wow, I struck a nerve of my own, there. Point being, a lot of guys I know are trying their hardest to be Dads.

Yes, we were all treated like shit throughout our childhoods. Yes, we are all scarred from what we have been forced to see and experience. Yes, we are permanently fucked in a lot of ways, but there is a silver lining. That generation of shitty fathers have spawned a generation of Dads. Dads that hold their children above all else. We are not the over bearing fathers of old. We are not the neglectful, the abusive, or selfish. We are the loving, respectful, and supportive dads. Not all of them, no, but a HUGE number of us.

I had kids young, and it was not easy. In fact, I had my first only two and a half years after my father disappeared. I was fifteen. I was a fucked up young punk, filled with anger, and looking for destruction. But as soon as the baby bump showed, my life was changed. It took me a while to beat adolescence and become the father I wanted to be, but I eventually did. Not exactly what my sons mothers wanted. I fought them both tooth and nail for fucking years for things that the court automatically gives to the mother, and takes from the father. Let me just say that the State of New York does not make it easy to be a single dad. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to be. Fun fact; they don’t. New York state family courts actually make about 60 cents for every dollar they charge in child support, last I checked. Balanced, my ass.

Now, quickly, I have covered a little bit of ground here. Shitty 80’s fathers, 00’s dads stepping up, Baby Mommas, and family court. I have one last thing to say before I go;



Dads,

Hang in there. You don’t have to marry her. But love your kids. They deserve it.