On Father’s Day I revisit thoughts and emotions about my dad, still trying to figure “us” out.
My Father
I miss my dad.
Not that whole
dewy-eyed,
sentimental,
made-For-TV
kind of miss him.
Not Disney
or sitcoms
or the
hero of the story
whose kids
all adore him
(though none
of them have any speaking parts
so who can tell for sure?)
I don’t
miss his constant wisdom
(if there ever was any)
or witty
lessons
(if he ever offered any)
and I don’t miss
our long walks/
talks/fishing trips
(because we never had any)
or throwing a ball
or his wise sayings about life
ectetcetc
blahblahblah
none of which, also, ever happened.
I don’t miss the feeling
of being afraid of him
or later,
I don’t miss
feeling glad or bad
about disappointing him,
which were major emotions for me
with him
and are permanent
memories
of our
‘Relationship,’
such as it was.
I don’t miss his corrections,
sometimes
sarcastic and
caustic,
sometimes just
flat-out cruel.
Nor do I miss the very few times
he angrily laid hands on me
his face twisted into
something,
between
exasperation
and hateful rage —
So,
I miss him?
Really?
How? Why?
What I miss
is what I imagine
he and I might have been
together
if our roles,
father and son
hadn’t been so
stupidly
assigned
and accepted —
I miss
how we might have been
friends
if we’d been
just a couple guys,
who met under
different circumstances,
like two strangers
in a bar
flirting with a couple
pretty women,
good looking blond sisters,
and this stranger and I
realizing,
we needed to work together
to pull off
anything good
before ‘Last call’.
In other words,
I miss my dad,
not for whom he was
but for who we might have been —
I miss the guy
he couldn’t be with me
and I miss
the guy I could never be with him.
The best I can manage now
is to confess that
if all the rules about
loving family
weren’t real
(and I think they aren’t)
I’d still miss my old man,
for reasons I don’t begin
to understand —
or need to.
Pic of my dad’s WW2 aircraft (a Hellcat) landing on his WW2 Carrier (The Ticonderoga)