metanoia's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My father I did not have what I would call a good relationship with my father, or rather, a close relationship, which is what I would have liked. I worked with a man whose wife had breakfast with her father every Wednesday morning. They would meet at a restaurant and just share time and ideas and breakfast each week. I was so envious of that type of relationship. I wished I had been able to have that with my own father, but I did not. As a child I took on a lot of the responsibility for relationships. I felt if I were a better daughter, he would be a better father, but this was not the case. My mother said he was an alcoholic. This word was bandied about and shouted and yelled during the endless arguments, fights and downright brawls they had. Looking back, I do not see my father as being happy with his life. He was shy almost to the point of being a hermit when he was not drinking. After a few drinks he became gregarious and generous � the life of the party. After a few more drinks he became cruel and angry and belligerent. My brother tells of a time when he went down to the bar to have a drink with my dad. When he got there, dad was in the gregarious/generous stage. Dad gave him $20 just because he was his son and he loved him. But, brother stayed too long and soon dad moved on to the angry/belligerent stage, at which point he demanded the $20 back from his no-good son! Funny, sad, but true, story. My father did teach me lots of things, mostly practical type of things like how to use a sawhorse and hammer a nail and more easily remove the lint from the dryer. Many times I remember going on reconnaissance runs with my mother on Friday nights to try to find my father at one of his favorite �beer joints� before he spent all of his paycheck. What drama! What pain! My father had an easy chair in the garage and sit for hours, smoking his cigar and staring into space. He wanted to left alone at these times. Sometimes he would drink beer there as well. But he did most of his drinking in bars. My mother said he did not drink when she met him. It was prohibition and I guess they just did not bother. He began smoking cigars to cover the taste of the beer, when he began drinking. And that is the genesis of his vices. Speaking of vices, he also screwed around with other women, but that is another story. I seem to look back a lot in this diary. I must need to look at things again. Looking at events from a different perspective softens old pains and I find I can see things in a much softer light. A child�s logic is limited in scope, but serves to explain situations to the child. But children do not know the big picture; they see parents only as parents, and not as humans just like they are. We all drag these wounded children that we once were along with us as we live life and grow older. I think it is important, sometimes, to revisit things and provide the larger perspective that comes from living life and growing older and maturing. Still, I would have loved to have the sort of relationship with my father that my co-workers wife had; meeting for lunch each week to share thoughts and the companionship of the other. Part of me knows, too, that he would have liked the same thing. We just did not know how to get there, between the two of us. He died in September, 1979 at the age of 69. I was a mere 27, not nearly old enough to have been able to do what it would have taken to build a bridge to a relationship. I have just resigned myself that it is something I will never have. 9:22 a.m. - 2003-11-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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