Father’s Day: As Long As We’re On The Subject of Fatherhood

Here is a photo of my brothers and me with my father. This was taken thirty-four years ago, give or take. My father must have been around twenty-six years old. My older brother looks to me to be about five years old, I was perhaps three, my younger brother perhaps one. I assume my mother was the photographer. She must have been about twenty-three.



This is a little bit about my father and a little bit about me and a quote from a movie written by Sherman Alexie:

The last time I saw my father was about two years ago, at my younger brother’s funeral. He didn’t recognize me. He looked at me and his eyes showed no trace of recognition and he reached out and he shook my hand as though I were a stranger to him. Afterwards, I felt triumphant.

By my own choice--my choice, not his--I haven't had any contact with my father since I was eighteen years old. It was a conscious decision, made because I finally knew that as long as I allowed him access to me and my life, he would continue to try to manipulate me. I was sick of him. I was sick of his guilt trips. I was sick of his excuses and his apologies that were nothing more than excuses. I was sick of endless disappointment. I was sick of watching his addictions run roughshod over all our lives.

For years, whenever anyone asked me about my father, I used to say that if someone set fire to him, I wouldn’t cross the street to spit on him. That used to be my answer to any question about my father. Now, I just say that I don’t speak to him anymore and haven’t since I was eighteen and people generally don’t pursue the matter.

I may have once been angry at him, but, believe it or not, over the last decade or so that anger has been tempered by gratitude. It’s true that he was an inescapable monster who ruled over my childhood, but it’s equally true that now I am exceedingly grateful to and for him. I am grateful for years of having lived with an alcoholic and sex-addict and (often) drug-addict. I am grateful for years of living with his secrets and his lies. I am grateful for having spent my childhood too embarrassed to bring friends home because they might have to meet my drunk daddy. I am grateful for years of abuse, for a childhood spent in confusion, for being a child too often at the mercy of an unpredictable demon. I am grateful because after years of this, I have a special dispensation from God to never, ever again have to deal with any addict’s bullshit. And that means any addict, current or former, in recovery or not. So I don’t. I don’t even have to deal with that kind of behavior even when it’s exhibited by people who have no particular or easily discernible addiction, when it’s just gratuitous meanness, say, or someone who is just a bit too self-centered. God Himself told me that I can just walk away from those people: I don’t have to try to understand them or to help them or to engage them in any way. God Himself told me that it was perfectly okay with Him if I leave them holding their own baggage, the same baggage they often try to hand me. It’s part of the “Let the dead bury their own dead” clause apparently.

By extension, I have never again to rehash the horrific details of my experiences at my father’s hands. He was an inventive and seemingly inexhaustible source of pain and turmoil, but it turns out that, if I don’t want to, I never have to reopen old wounds. For the most part, I’ve cleaned out those old wounds--yes, it was painful--but there is no festering beneath the surface.

But that is not to say that I don’t often contend with his legacy. Just like him, I wrestle with my own demons and sometimes they win. Just like him, I have my own addictions and sometimes they threaten to and do manifest themselves in ways I can’t control. Just like him, I still suffer from bouts of depression so deep and so oppressive that sometimes hope is just another four-letter word. I learned from him how to use anger to control situations and people and though I’ve tried to break myself of this, sometimes the temptation to indulge in it is almost irresistible. But unlike him, I have no excuses to offer. Unlike him, I do my best to claim responsibility for my actions. Unlike him, the only promise I make is a commitment to the imperfect processes of change, of evolution.

Here is that quote from Sherman Alexie:

How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left? --Thomas Builds-the-Fire, from Smoke Signals, written by Sherman Alexie

I first heard that quote years ago while sitting in a movie theater in the dark.