Father’s Day

I’ve got nothing. 

I bring nothing to the table for Father’s Day. 

My mouth is closed.  My father has passed. He struggled being a person. He struggled with being a father. The biggest thing I think I lacked from him was feeling loved and wanted and his being present without being angry. Always angry  

I learned in these six months of abandonment by my spouse -my price for his affair and job struggles from it- that as a father my children felt a deep fear he’d die or disappear and thus abandon them. Each expressed this to me in their own way. I never knew they carried that. I knew I felt a huge worry he’d die because his aunt and father died a month apart in their fifties -right as our wedding approached. No wedding resulting. Shockingly. Searing into my consciousness that he was somehow vulnerable to this. Sudden death.

Jack was always unavailable. And I was always vulnerable to that. Clearly I passed that struggle to my children. He evaded calls, letters, contact, pages, texts, just any form of contact and he misrepresented where he was and how long he’d need to do anything. He was thusly a liar often.  I was always put in a position to “chase him” for the basic security and presence simple parenting and relationship requires. Much less asthma in a child, illness and my own health with sudden bleeding out and kidney stones and things requiring help. It’s a core issue. Of his. My responding to it is not the issue. It was always made the issue.  Nothing ever sticks to Jack. It took me all of this time-40 years-to simply say-no that’s on you.  That’s you. I was always on the hook. Always made to feel it was me and how I responded. Even his mother said it was me.  Now my children must take that on. Or be shaped by it. Or have internalized it in some form. You can’t rely on him is always the message. And you can’t. Which is not to say he wasn’t there at lots of moments. He was. But always removed. It’s to say you never had any moment where you just knew he’d be there and was solid. Like a rock. And you’d be supported. No I did not have that - in separation it’s the same. 

Jack yelled at me leaving that he was never going to be under my thumbs again and “my surveillance.” Spit saliva he was so vituperative saying that. I suppose that’s how he took my trying to get him to function as a father. Or spouse.  Or remember a dance pick up or be there at a dinner around Christmas when he wanted to be at his special someone’s house doing what he was hiding and lying about. No dinner for us just three frantic hours fearing he was dead somewhere.  Leading a totally independent reality. Free of any responsibility or role. Free of fathering or husbanding.  Distracting himself and being his ideal-by himself, winning the competition and being king. One with a hidden love interest.

You wonder how the person who has made it her job in life to reel him in-though married and clearly not available-how that will work out. It’ll be a real doozy.  There’s lots of things I know, lots I don’t, but I know my kid has watched him be inundated with texts and suddenly run out of the situation to comply with the latest demand from the new whatever you call it. That is nothing he’s ever lived.  For more than five seconds.  It’s quite a thing to integrate. All those 40 years he was completely capable then of emotional and physical presence. He chose “not to.”   I have to absorb that- I was just too skinny then too fat then too crazy or too bigoted to deserve it.  She will come up with the label. And so were my kids. We weren’t “the one” who understands him and thus solves this-we suck. 

So dads my suggestion is try presence. Try availability. Try being there for your kids. Remember things about them. Listen to their dreams. Don’t hide your secret life. Don’t make them so far down your priority list that waving at an Opening Day thing is higher. Try to call your kids at least weekly. Try to get them gifts that show discernment and attention. Try to teach them to run their finances. Try to model love. Pay them back what you borrow. Love their mother.  Teaching them it is ok to cheat on their mom-don’t ever do that.  Again that’s a forever no. When they ask you if what you’ve done would be ok if a man did that to them -have an answer. Look them in the eye and say-sure cheating is always ok because adultery is nothing.  If that’s your code. If you’re not “having a life plan” allows you to subvert any responsibility or moral code or keep your relationships unstable -announce that. Let everyone in on your secret to life. If you only live once and then you die means you get to have a physical relationship behind the families back - work to make that a new Commandment. Dad has different rules. His own. 

That’s all I’ve got today.  The two primary men in my life affecting me personally were cheaters. They failed to show up in loving ways. They both didn’t know the truth. I can’t believe either.  And they gave me the greatest pain and shame and hurt I’ll ever know. As Fathers and husbands. I can’t really celebrate the day. I can only try to survive it. 

I can not unsee it.