Father’s Day Reminiscences, June 2011
As Father’s Day approaches, I am led to a recall of my own father and our son. My father has been gone 16 years and one month as I write this. As I wrote in another place, our relationship in the last few years of his life was not particularly good. He often became aggressively psychologically abusive. He would attack and put me down, often for the puniest perceived slights. Other times he seemed to deliberately misunderstand me and my motives. Yet, I still have very pleasant memories of him and these are beginning to replace the most recent, bitter and angry exchanges. He was a good father, providing well for his children and reaching our to his grand-children.
I do not know for certain what his relationship with his own father, my grandfather, was, but guess it was very similar to our own. I have pictures that my grandfather drew and sent to Dad when he was only 3 or 4 years old and could not read. These were sent when Granddad Anderson was on trips away from home – fishing in Colorado or on some military training exercise in Arizona or Washington. In them Granddad displayed a sense of pride for his son and was really quite pleased with Dad. However, they did remain quite distant from one another. Dad rarely if ever wrote to Granddad, part of his excuse was that he was left-handed and his handwriting was terrible. In the years between when we left Iowa and Granddad died in 1971, we only visited or were visited by them three or four times in a span of 31 years. Such infrequent visits do not lead to closeness or even to knowing the grandparents and grandchildren well. Of course travel was not always very easy in those days, but it was possible.
Later Dad and Granddad got along pretty well, but it was obvious that they were often strained and certainly very distant. This coolness and distance carried over into Dad’s and my relationship. It also probably contributed to the strain in those later years. We do learn from our parents and often repeat the patterns learned to our living later in life.
The passage of time has mellowed that strain and stress in my recollection of my father and I, though hints still remain. Now I must constantly be on the alert for the same stresses in how I relate to our son, Eric. As a parent we expect much and want so very much for things to go well for our children. Sometimes this expectation over-rides our willingess to acknowledge how well they are doing and most importantly to tell them we admire their life and what they have become.
Eric and I are not close, but we are friends, we do share experiences and going places together. Eric has invited me to go with him to see a baseball game on Father’s Day as an annual event, this year I will not share this game as I will be on a fishing trip. Perhaps it is these distractions that turn us away from maintaining a greater closeness.
Father and son relationships are precious things and require careful nurturing and delicate handling. Let me hope that I can do this and keep our son as a close and dear friend.
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