Father's Day

Since I became a father almost four years ago I have had a new perspective on the issues that faced my parents while I was growing up.  Sometimes it casts a favorable light on the actions I recall from my youth and at other times I ask myself how I can ensure that I will not repeat what I see as mistakes.  I have also had to reevaluate my conception of family.  Years ago, before I was a father myself, my dad pulled me aside in one of those moments of stern wisdom (at least he thought so) and told me that family is what matters most-that friends will abandon you or move on, but family remains family.  I agreed at the time having been close enough in age to the times when I had terrible friends who were more interested in me as a toy or means to some end, but I have since been more selective of those with whom I associate and also started a family of my own.

What stands out about this now is that even at the time of this lecture he was not particularly open or close with his family.  I recall visits with his family as an adolescent as being marked by tension, church, and little else, save for the smell of an elderly person here or there.  Nothing horrible like molestation at the hands of an uncle or anything like that, but there never seemed to be anything there beyond what I was told I was supposed to feel for these people.  I could tell that they cared about me, much like I know that my dad cares about me, but the whole concept of a loving warmth seems lost on that side of the family.  At this point in my life, I don't really care one way or another save for the difficulty I have speaking to anyone from that side of the family about anything beyond the weather.  The irritating thing is the hypocrisy of the statement about the importance of family now feeling like a call to pick sides in differences of opinion between the mother of my children and the purveyor of family wisdom.  My family is now my children and their mother, with my sister and parents coming in as slightly less important than those members with whom I share my home.

I don't feel like I should have to apologize for this, or listen to my father belittle me because he is pissed off about a mistake he made while early in his "early" retirement that has resulted in the IRS asking for a fair amount of money.  The reason goes back to the idea of me having friends who wanted me as a toy or a punching bag, well that counts for you too dad.  And furthermore, it sucks that you may have to sell one of the three cars you own, but I happen to be unemployed and making ends meet with two forms of government assistance that make me the bane of a sizable portion of the body politic in this country, and my 1997 car is the newest car I have ever owned, and I'm really not fucking up as much as you say I am since the only difference between where I am at this stage in my life with two young children and where you were is that I waiting until I graduated from college to have kids so I am older at this point and in the middle of a shitty economy created largely by the kinds of banking transactions and insititutions that you bought into and caused your tax bill.