Today is my father’s birthday. If I count right, he’s 69 years old. I want to share a story about him that I wrote and presented with a friend to a spiritual circle on father’s day 1998.
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REFLECTION FOR CIRCLE 6-21-98 Father’s Day
LICIA:
I am going to introduce you to my father. He was born in the Outer Banks village of Hatteras; it pokes about as far out into the ocean as North Carolina can reach.
His tales of his childhood took on a mythological quality which held all within hearing range spellbound. There was no paved road into Hatteras then; a remote fishing village was the seemingly perfect place for a boy to grow up. I imagine a freckled faced boy with Carolina blue eyes and big front teeth (like mine), golden salty sunlight in his hair as he ran the beaches, roamed the marshes gathering eels and frogs, rode his obstinate pony to the farthest reaches of the island at will. The stories about getting lost in the sound at dark in a rowboat, the sharks closing in. Being scared to walk the bog at night for fear of the dreaded “swampus”, a creature of untold menace and terror. My father was a boy once.
He spoke of a simple life; the priority was survival against the hurricanes, the sea and the isolation. He spoke of his mother as the rigid keeper of the household. “Take those greasy shoes off! No sand in my house! Your feet are black as tar!” He did not speak of his father that I can remember.
He was the local boy who left the flock. He met my mother one fateful summer night at a village dance. She was on vacation with her family; they were “city folk”, or “ferners” as grandmom called people who did not have the distinction of being sea worthy. My parents dated long distance for two years, then eloped when he was 19 years of age, much to the horror of both families. He dropped out of UNC Chapel Hill. I was born 10 months later.
I don’t know exactly what caused him to be “emotionally under”; probably a myriad of things. My personal experience of him was that there was a soft, vulnerable side that he covered, or surrounded with a rigid moral construct and stoicism. I have vivid impressions of the set of his jaw when he angered, or his clenched fist held up in front of him to signify that I was not to say another word. I think a part of me thought he would kill me, although I cannot remember him ever spanking me. As a teenager warring with my mother, I took any opportunity to bond with him. This typically took place after he had consumed several beers. He would talk and I would sit and listen. I can remember sitting out on the front porch one evening hearing the gruesome details of his sex life with my mother, whom he called “frigid”. I did not know then that my yearning for father became subsumed in his need for a confidant and mistress.
I confronted my father 8 years ago about the sexual abuse. I was so afraid that he would respond by saying that I was crazy or that I’d made it all up. Instead, he did not respond at all. He has not spoken to me for these 8 years. I have been many places about this loss; I was so angry for a long time that I didn’t care that we had no relationship. Other times I have wanted to cave in completely and say that I didn’t mean it, that it’s alright. It is just in the last year or two that I have considered him as a person, a little boy who grew up into a man who happened to become my father. I have started to notice the good things that I got from him. I don’t know where this will lead. But this feels like a more human place to be.
ANITA:
A father is a man who shares in the care of children
A man who is in relationship with a child or children
A father is a man who notices what a child thinks or feels
A man who consoles a child when she is in pain-whether it is from a scraped knee or a hurt feeling
A father is a teacher who by his very presence in the classroom affirms and holds the place of men in the shape of our childrens’ education
A father is a man who instead of watching tv after work plays basketball with the kids at the Y
A father is a man who takes the time to watch tv or play a video game with a child as a man willing to meet a child in his place of fun
A father is a man who volunteers to be a big brother, a mentor, a tutor
A man whose eyes say, “Yes, you can” or “I will help you” and derives great pleasure from watching a child learn
A father is a man who is able to watch a girl or boy evolve into a delicious sexual being and is able to abide with all the tumultuous feelings that this powerful life cycle evokes within him…without repression and especially without transgression
A father is a man who can give the child room to flaunt that sexuality as they are wont to do- and no matter how confusing it gets-can hold the child’s best interest in his heart
A father is a man who considers his son’s gay partner his son-in-law, or his daughter’s lesbian partner his daughter-in-law
A father is a man who walks the earth in keeping with the seventh generation principle, thinking in terms of the well being of the children of the future.
Now anybody of any gender can do most of the things I have described here. But what distinguishes a father from all others is that he is a man…a real man. We are coming out of an era when the definition of a “real man” is measured by(depending on what circles you run in) his economic prowess, his money making ability, his physical strength, his athletic ability, his physical beauty, and the merchants and the money lenders would have this be so since their lively hood depends on it.
LICIA
CLOSE:
I was touched with a woman’s yearning for the mother she described on mother’s day. I think the mother she so desperately wants is a universal mother, one that we all may want, but probably didn’t have. My yearning for the universal father takes on many shapes, many of which have been touched on by Anita. I am still looking for the ideal father, I think. But in the meantime I have and am incorporating his attributes into myself. I father myself as much as I know how to do it. I look to other men and women with these masculine/father characteristics to learn from them and be touched by them.
How can we father ourselves, assuming that we didn’t have the universal father? How can we come to terms with the loss of those desired traits that one poor, hapless human being was “supposed to” provide? How can we forgive ourselves for being angry about that loss? How do we celebrate what we thankfully accept from our fathers?
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And here I am in 2012, 14 years later, asking the same questions but tempered with more answers. My husband has grown into the father that my boys need, and that is deeply gratifying. And yet, I still need fathering, and am still learning how to be fathered and how to father myself. The masculine in me is still “growing up”, bumping into things, backing away, evolving by doing, learning by my mistakes and successes. The masculine can be so very beautiful when it is genuinely yearning to be the best it can be.
My inner masculine is learning how to father me even as I learn to “father” my sons. I took the risk and played basketball with them a few days ago; I haven’t touched a basket ball pretty much since high school P.E., but I have a certain latitude since they don’t expect much from me in the athletic realm. Imagine my surprise (and theirs) when I shot more consistent baskets than they did, even 3 pointers.
I am rewriting history every time I step up and challenge the parenting I received, whether I’m parenting my children or myself. I’m rewriting the code I inherited from my ancestors, giving those beyond me a different chance. The evolution of our species is guaranteed, but evolving without healing means we pass down a broken blueprint, one that will be carried in the future generations. Is that really what we want?
I’m learning what a “real man” is, as well as a “real woman”. I’m learning that my definition of “real” includes taking responsibility for our future on this planet. I feel that means bringing to light the ways our unconsciousness kills us inside. It must start internally, and then spreads beyond us. As each of us are born, humanity has another new chance. What we decide to do with that chance is up to us.
Happy birthday, dad.
(c) Licia Berry 2012
