I started life in a lower middle class home, with what I thought was a pretty typical family. My mom was very loving (although let’s just say that she had an edge to her in private), and my dad fancied himself a rugged individualist, pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. I know now that he felt hindered by his family, and wished he could strike out on his own adventurously. But the day-to-day reality of bills to pay and mouths to feed wore heavily upon him.
My mom was very security-oriented, and when my dad talked about leaving his stable job to find better work elsewhere, she rebelled – her lips pursed and her brow knitted furiously. She wanted that pension, which my dad could only earn if he stayed in one job forever. So, unfortunately for my dad, he stayed in the same job his entire career, working year after year in a job that disgusted him, gazing longingly at the want ads, and wishing he could do something else. I didn’t have much sympathy for him at the time, but I certainly do now.
My mom eventually got that pension she wanted so badly, so she was “happy” – but the cost was dear: She had to live with an angry, bitter, resentful husk of man for nearly fifty years to get it.
Of course, the world has changed dramatically since then. Now, life-long jobs with pensions are almost unheard of, and “job shopping” (as he called it) is the norm. The variety he longed for is a basic fact of life now, and the security my mom longed for is long gone.
So that’s the primal “soup” I emerged from. I used to think I was more like my mom than my dad, and grateful for that. I didn’t want to be like the angry, bitter man who raised me. But now I understand things a little bit better, and have come to see that somehow life has arranged to bring the best qualities of each of these frustrated, broken people to life within me: I have the softness of heart and ability to love that my mom possessed, as well as the strength and humor that my dad embodied.
I recently saw an essay that my dad (who died back in 1989) wrote back in the late 1980s. In his retirement, it turns out he had been “blogging” (or at least the late 1980s equivalent of blogging) about his life, perhaps with a goal of publishing. His essays were about being a handyman by necessity, driven by the requirement of upkeep on a home for his family. As I read that essay, I was struck by how similar our “voices” are. He has the same sense of humor that I have!
Following is a quote from that “blog” entry. He was talking about the first time he constructed sawhorses, using two-by-fours and metal braces he bought at a hardware store:
“I tried nails first, but the horses were shaky, ergo the screws. I still have the brackets. I recently replaced the bargain two-by-fours. After twenty-odd years, they were growing splinters like hair. Mean hair, that is.”
I laughed when I read this, and it hit me: The sense of humor that is native to me, that has brought me safely through all sorts of crises over the years, was an inheritance from my dad! A man I barely knew, whom I resented fiercely, and who possessed no qualities I thought I wanted, was the source of one of my finest character traits! This was a major eye-opener.
As I thought about it, I realized something even more powerful: I am now living the life of HIS dreams! I am single and unattached (for better or worse), have no children, and am striking out on an adventure of self-realization and personal fulfillment that is Quixotic and courageous! I am blogging about it, and “published” (if only on the web), and I bring to it the same zest for life and love of the unknown that propelled my dad. The difference: I am getting to live this life, while he only got to dream about it.
Interestingly, a week before I read the essay my dad wrote, I received a postcard in the mail. It was addressed to someone else (at my address), a name I’ve never seen before. It was a picture of Hawaii and had the single word “Aloha!” on the face. The first word that jumped into my mind, unbidden, was “Paradise” – I even said it aloud. I turned the card over, and it said simply, “COURAGE!” and was signed “Dad.”
I don’t know who the addressee was, but I know who the message was intended for. The seething anger and resentment I had nursed for someone who demeaned me as long as I knew him melted into a warm affection for the source of some of my finest qualities.
My heart aches for the pain my dad endured, working a job he loathed for thirty-five years because he felt trapped by a family that treated him only with disdain (and vice versa). Perhaps in living his legacy I am giving shape to his dreams in a way that is extremely satisfying to him now.
Here’s to you, dad, wherever you are!
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