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As babies turn into young children they begin to make sense of the world around them. For children growing in the usual heterosexual household they begin to understand that their mother is the primary care giver, she is afterall breastfeeding them and the most common attendant to their needs. A fathers relationship with his young child is usually somewhat more distant.
In our culture, as the child grows, the father is too often relegated to the role of dispenser of discipline, he becomes a distant, aloof, god-like figure to be feared when wrong doing has occured.
So what happens when a boy becomes a man? At least at an intellectual level he clearly no longer sees his father as a god-like figure but the distance remains. Here is a quote from Manhood by Steve Biddulph. For many of you it will resonate.
A man anwsers the phone, it is his son on the other end.
"Hi Dad, it's me."
"Oh, uh huh! Hi Son! I'll go get your mother"
"No, don't get Mum. It's you I want to talk to."
A pause
"Why? Do you need money?"
"No, I don't need money"
And the younger man starts on his, somewhat rehearsed, but still vulnerable, speech...
"I've just been remembering a lot about you, Dad, and the things you did for me. Working all those years to put me through college, supporting us. My life is going well now and it's because of what you did to get me started. I thought about it and realised I'd never said "Thanks"
Silence from the father... the son continues
"I want want to tell you ... Thanks ..... And that I love you"
"You been drinking?????"
It is poignant because it closely reflects the state of relations between so many adult men and their fathers. The father may be incapable of expressing any outward acknowledgement of the deep impact that such an interaction has had on him. He may at the time dismiss it as "foolishness" but in his heart he now knows what, at the times when he is most vulnerable and scared, he hoped but did not know before. So many men go to their grave falsely believing that they were inadequate as fathers simply because their adult son has not disabused them of their feelings of inadequacy.
The problem that you will have as a man seeking atonement with your father is that they have been subjected to the same disfunctional masculine upbringing that you have. In fact that is where you probably learnt a lot of it from. Some of you will be fortunate in that your approach to your father will be something that he has been wanting for many years and the flood gates will be open. For most of you, your experience will be like mine, you will be greated with an awkward silence or embarrasment but rest assured your relationship with your father will have changed. Whether he knows or admits it, or not, he will now be a more complete man than he was before, that is a gift that only you, as his son, can give him.
For your sake, you will have taken a major step along the path to becoming a more emotionally complete man.
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or read the most recent entries here.Interesting post. As fate would have it, my Father celebrates his 81st birthday this coming weekend, and I intended starting a long postponed project of a series of interviews with him to record in audio form his recollections of different phases of his life. There's much I don't know and he is ill, so now is the right time, or it may be never.
Posted by: Niall at January 13, 2004 06:53 PMThis is so important. But sometimes, our cultural mores work against us. One of my friends - an Aboriginal man taken from his family when he was three and raised by a loving white Christian family - has recently been trying to find out about his biological parents. They are both dead and came from different but very traditional Aboriginal communities whose custom is not to speak of the dead and to refer to them only briefly by a third person epithet. He was recently telling me how difficult it was, having been raised in an emotionally open family, to find that his 'real' family was so closed, and that for this reason, his 'real' father will always remain a mystery to him. But it also made him more grateful, he said, for his white parents, both of whom are now dead as well.
Posted by: saint at January 13, 2004 08:17 PMAbout connecting with your father and telling him that he is/was a very good father or at least made a decent effort -- it's very important to me as well.
I'm in my late 20's, and over the last 2-5 years have made a big effort to make peace within myself and with my father. Though a hard man growing up, he provided for our material needs and did the best he could to spend time with us children, even as his engineering job required most of his effort and time.
Truly I have witnessed the effect of my baring of my soul on my father -- the effect on such a stoic man was profoundly moving. The only thing comparable was at his own father's funeral, with whom he was disowned when he chose to marry my mother. Because of the risk I took in being true to myself and to my father -- we have become closer as a family.
You must have strength and take risks in life, and emotional risks are often the most difficult.
Thank you for this resource, and your pearls of wisdom.
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