What I've come to realize is how difficult that must have been for him. Samuel Osherson has suggested it's possible to be feel more comfortable alienated from the father of one's childhood than making real peace with the father of one's adulthood. The reason being, making peace on this level involves becoming intimately acquainted and that doesn't happen without effort. We have to empathize with our fathers and recognize what we share with them is our humanity.
I suppose being inclined to reflect on what my own life is about, I find myself reflecting about my father's, and particularly his later years. In a lot of ways I think he grew into the father he wished he'd been when I was a child. I thought he did a good job, but he felt he could have been better, more sensitive, less preoccupied, more available, more the person he'd become as an older man. The things I didn't know.
I suppose we all grow into parenthood, though truthfully, I sometimes think reversing the timeline wouldn't be a bad idea so that parenting is something we do when we're old enough to be really good at it. I say that because it takes our own growing up to help someone else accomplish the same task. Then again, we're all in process and there's something to be said for that, too. In the meantime, I'll just drop my thoughts in the Cosmic Suggestion Box and we'll see what comes of them.
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I suppose being inclined to reflect on what my own life is about, I find myself reflecting about my father's, and particularly his later years. In a lot of ways I think he grew into the father he wished he'd been when I was a child. I thought he did a good job, but he felt he could have been better, more sensitive, less preoccupied, more available, more the person he'd become as an older man. The things I didn't know.
I suppose we all grow into parenthood, though truthfully, I sometimes think reversing the timeline wouldn't be a bad idea so that parenting is something we do when we're old enough to be really good at it. I say that because it takes our own growing up to help someone else accomplish the same task. Then again, we're all in process and there's something to be said for that, too. In the meantime, I'll just drop my thoughts in the Cosmic Suggestion Box and we'll see what comes of them.
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Don't know about being a father. I have found it hard to realise that there are men who actually enjoy it. My own father left us when I was eight. I went to find him again at eighteen and he was more like a friend then.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather died early also. My first husband was hardly there for our children. I was both parents to them. On these Blogs I have discovered many wonderful father's through the eyes of their daughters. It's incomprehensible to me. So....I believe good fathers are Godly men who have learned the art by experience over time with practice. You are very blessed with your memories of such a wonderful dad.
He wasn't perfect but he'd have been the first to admit it. What makes fatherhood complicated is the presence of fathers. No one enters into the role knowing much more than what they learned under the tutelage of their own father/grandfather/uncles, etc. Getting to know "the old man" in an adult manner is an important task of maturity and not one that everyone undertakes, to their and their father's loss. And not everyone can do this because dad is either anything but a father or, as in my case, he's gone. But I was very fortunate to have quality time with him over the years so the loss is less acute, in that sense.
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