Dad (By The Alley Cat)

Growing up with dad was not easy. He had a short temper, and didn’t tolerate anyone disrupting the course of his day with their problems. Other than race and species I had nothing in common with him, not even blood. I’m adopted.

Dad didn’t like my pastimes or my fascination with TV and science fiction. I don’t think he liked anything about the world I lived in. Dad was a sports person. His den has a display of the many trophies he won from bowling, football, and tennis. He values education and has two master degrees. I was antithetical to all he had done. I couldn’t care less about sports. I was skinny. I persistently achieved low grades.

I could say that his short temper, hard headedness, and intolerance, was the sole progenitor of my poor picture of men, but there were so many like him in those days. Almost all of my teachers were of similar temperament. Still, in his own house, he was worse than they were, and I avoided dad as much as I could. During the holidays the women gathered in the kitchen to talk about all kinds of interesting things, what they felt, what they saw, people, places. I would peer into the den and see dad sitting in his throne, a lazy boy chair, watching a football game that looked just like all the other football games. I stayed in the kitchen.

I got out of his house the first chance I got. Over the years, I wondered what it meant to be ‘a man’? By then I could only see it through a bitter prescription; proving something, even to those who aren’t interested, forcing the ego and will upon the world around them, being a rock and an island. After a while I didn’t care. These days, my focus is trying to be a right person, and that is a human challenge. I found that many of us, regardless of gender, are driven to prove something to ourselves, to others, to a ghost from the past. Man or woman, we can be the intimate terrorist in our lives and the lives of those around us. After years of failing, kind of like dad did, I had to learn my flaws and clean myself up. Because I’m a man, I think and do it in a male way, but also in a way that is my own. And it’s funny how dad seems to have mellowed. He’s old now, and his dietary habits have caught up with him. Hobbled by his diabetes, he’s come to rely on mom. Old age and illness can weaken one’s tyranny. One day I heard dad say “Without her, I’d be dead in the water.” I knew he had learned a thing or two.

After years and years and years, I can say that I’m nowhere near as angered by the oppression he maintained. I don’t meditate on it anymore. I don’t want to get even. I’m slowly trying to learn about him to understand why he was so angry. The understanding helps me to get over the past.