On Father’s Day weekend here in the USA, the media loves to trot out the truly exceptional father and/or the truly revolting one. We’ll either get a story about the hero-of-epic-proportions dad who gave up both his kidneys to his twins who each needed one, or the horrid-Hannie-Lecter-psycho dad who sells his twins for their kidneys. You and I both know that most dads fall somewhere in the center of that bell curve, and they average from pretty darn good dads to not bad dads to dads who’ve helped you make your therapist rich.
But the dad I wish to discuss today is the “Misunderstood Dad,” because he never gets any press, and that’s a shame, since my bet is that he’s the most common and the most profoundly heartbreaking dad of all. He’s the dad who loves you sincerely and fiercely, but having been raised in a society that values the stoic, silent male, he has no clue whatsoever on how to show you that. When it comes to showing affection, offering advice and support, he’s never been taught how to do it. In fact, he worries that it’s an intrusion on your life should he offer any of those things. You think he’s cold, uncaring and unfeeling, when in actuality, he’s shaking with insecurity because he loves you so much, but he just can’t say that, because he simply doesn’t know how.
My husband, father to four of his own sons and stepfather to my one biological son, is one of these dads, and there’s nothing sadder for me than to see how they all interact, knowing what he says to me about them, the wife he trusts enough to share some vulnerability with, and how that contrasts to how he acts when he’s actually talking to them. His sons would be shocked if they could hear him when they’re not around. Oh, how tempted I’ve often been to record our conversations about them so they could learn about his pride in them, his concern, his love and admiration for them, and how that juxtaposes with how he is when he’s with them, desperately talking about baseball and poker in excruciating detail ─ two hobbies they have in common ─ because he just doesn’t know What. Else. To. Say.
A few of my best examples are the time one of his twins had Tommy John surgery while on his college baseball team, and my husband couldn’t sleep for days, worried about how that surgery would affect his son’s life ─ would his boy go back to school, or would he drop out? And if he dropped out, what would he do? Would he be unhappy for the rest his life if he could never play baseball again? Was the doctor a good doctor, or was he, as he suspected, a damn fool? When I suggested that he call his son and talk to him to find out what he was thinking and feeling, or at least phone the doctor, I was met with a cold-eye stare. He couldn’t do that ─ he couldn’t interfere like that ─ make his son think he didn’t trust his decisions, interfere where it was not his place to interfere. It was out of the question. What was I saying to him?
And so, I kept my nose out and watched him do and say nothing, while he stayed up all night for three solid nights, playing Spider Solitaire and worrying himself sick. And if his son got the impression that his dad didn’t give a damn about his surgery or his life, well, who could blame him?
I have dozens more of these scenes in my head, but the most profound is the one that’s seared into my memory, of when one of his sons died. A car accident. Barely nineteen years old. My husband received that nightmare news with endurance and fortitude, as he receives all bad news. Because, you know, male. And Clint Eastwood and the Anglo-Saxon stiff upper lip upbringing, and “war heroes,” and all that chauvinistic crap we dump on our men. But then, a particular, heart-crushing detail came out about the accident, (which I will spare you) delivered to him over the phone by his ex-wife, the boy’s mother. I saw his eyes go wide as he listened to her, and he then said with a slight edge of panic in his voice, “I can’t hear this right now. I’ll call you back.” And immediately after he hung up, he threw everything he could throw around the living room, including himself, pounded his fists on the floor and cried out for his son, over and again.
Then he stopped, sat up and looked at me. “Well,” he said, calmly, “I guess I didn’t handle that well, did I?”
And after, it was as though it never happened and he never felt it.
My own son, ironically, is the only one of the remaining four who truly understands him for the father that he is. But that’s because my son lived with my husband, his stepfather, from the time he was thirteen until he was eighteen, ages when he was at his worst. And while I judged my child and fought with him during those tough teen years, and his biological father did the same, his stepfather did neither. A man who wasn’t around for the cute childhood years, who didn’t even have those images as succor from the tyrant boy who seemed dedicated to giving us nothing but his condemnation and anger, never wavered in his respect, love, and devotion to him.
“Back off,” “Leave him alone ─ he’ll grow out of it,” “This is not about you,” were the words I heard from my husband over and over again about my kid, about my own flesh and blood. Only once did he chastise — only once: “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”
My son’s own father, on the other hand, is in that bell curve I mentioned, leaning toward the, “I now need therapy” scale. He wanted an accountant for a son, or some such, someone who wears Armani suits and has mainstream politics, and I gave him an artist who leans wildly to the left. No matter how much love and devotion my son exhibits towards his biological father, that love just never seems to be good enough, because it’s not coming from the kind of son he expected. And that is tragic for both of them.
But even sadder is the fact that my husband is loved and understood by his stepson in a way he can never be loved and understood by his own sons, who were ages nine through twelve, respectively, when their parents divorced and the courts decreed he could only see them every other weekend. How can they possibly know him?
How can they possibly know that when they see us squabble and they’re thinking that he’s such a pain in the ass, (which he sure as hell can be) that he was the one who let me know that it was fine with him ─ more than fine, in fact ─ that I stand up for myself and always demand his respect, that I let him know when he was being a pain in the ass? That he would never leave me for standing up for myself, or disapprove of me for being me, in the same way that my son’s father disapproves of him? How can they know that he’s fine ─ more than fine, in fact ─ with who they are, and how they run their lives, and how they raise their children, or what they choose to do? How can they ever know that his silence signifies his love and approval and support, rather than his disinterest?
They will never know, because one thing they learned from their father is how not to talk, how not to say what’s on their minds. And like him, they’ll probably pass that on to their own sons, who will in turn, misunderstand them. Only then might they get it. Only then might they know what their father really felt. But maybe not.
And as for my own son ─ should he have any children, will he raise his son as he was raised, or will he have learned something helpful from seeing the two fathers in his life struggle with their feelings, not showing them enough, or showing them in an ungodly damaging way?
Time will tell, I guess.
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Patricia V. Davis is the author of “Cooking for Ghosts,” a novel set to be released in October of 2016. www.TheSecretSpice.com
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