It's been said that hindsight is 20-20. I suppose that could be true. Things lately have started coming into view in a much different way than they have in the past. I see things differently. I experience things differently. I'm finding the answers I've searched for for so long. The fascinating thing is that most of the answers are nothing that I could have ever imagined.
No one had an ideal childhood. If you meet someone who says that they did, they're either a) lying, b) in denial, or c) still living at home with their parents. Now, of course, some folks had a better experience than others and some folks are more sensitive than others, but truth is that all parents screw up now and then. We all goof up, we all damage our kids a little here and there, no matter how hard we try not to. It's just inevitable because we are human.
We are human. And so are our parents.
My father wasn't the best father in the world. He has admitted that he screwed up. A lot. He was hurtful and revengeful and judgemental and controlling. He was verbally and mentally abusive and wasn't shy with the use of his hands in anger, either. I grew up hating him. We all did. The amazing thing about hate, though, is that it is the exact same emotion as love. You cannot hate someone you don't also love. I was scared of him. I was hurt by him. I was lost without the father that all my friends seemed to have - you know, the one who would dance with you, who would support you and give you advice and mentor you. I feel, to some extent, I really missed out.
If you had asked me 10 years ago what my father was like, I would have told you that he was cruel. Now I see that he was most likely lonely. He spent the majority of his time in the tv room, isolated from the rest of the family. He put himself there every night after dinner (which was spent either chastising us for not doing well enough at school or staring at the TV and ignoring us completely.) He wasn't checking in with us. We thought he was running away from us, that he was choosing to oust us from his life. But the truth is that we ousted ourselves.
My father never once kept us from hanging out with him. Yes, he went to the basement to watch TV, but most likely because he wasn't interested in watching L.A. Law. He never closed the door, though. He never said, "Don't come down here." We are just as responsible for that sense of isolation as he is - we could have joined him, but we didn't - well, not as much as I now see he would have liked.
Every once and a while I would venture down there (or up there, depending on what house we're talking about) and sit with him and watch sports. We used to watch boxing together and eat popcorn out of a big black bowl. I would sit on his back while he did push ups and walk on his back when it was sore. He taught me the rules of baseball and he taught me to love the game. He taught me how to bait a hook and how to fish and he let me watch every time he cleaned the fish for dinner. He taught me the value of gardening, that without trees there is no air. He taught me how to do proofs in high school math and he taught me the Theory of Quantum Physics. My dad took us to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus. He took me to Cardinal games. He took me to football games. He took me to Six Flags and to Worlds of Fun. He took me swimming in creeks and ponds. He gave me the roots of what I hold dear today. Without him, I would be a different person.
My father did the best he could with the tools he had.
He did the best he could.
He loved us.
He continues to love us.
I see now that I have judged my father for such a long time. I have judged him through the eyes of a child. Now I hope to love him with the heart of an adult. I wouldn't be who I am or where I am without him. I owe him. I owe him so much. And I love him.
And I still love baseball and boxing - especially when eating popcorn out of a certain black bowl.
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