Father's Day

It's Father's Day. I will call my Dad, whose birthday is also coming up, and wish him the best. We will talk for a few minutes, no more than five tops. I don't think I've ever had a phone conversation longer than five minutes with my father.

He lives two blocks away, but I probably see him less than ten times a year. That said, he is a presence I feel both in proximity and in me. Even if he were 2000 blocks away, I'd feel that presence.

I have never really had much of a relationship with my father. I spent most of my youth scared of him. He seemed, to me, to be a real angry man who could go off at any time. I grew up in flinch mode. Later in life he became a different person. He was relaxed and breezy. Well, maybe not relaxed and breezy, but he did mellow a little bit. Heart attacks will do that for you.

But the impressions made early are the ones who stick. It is now on me to make the changes or address what it is I want out of this relationship. It's too easy for me to say bitterly I don't want anything and the window is closed. I do want something. I want to let go the darkness inside of me.

And that's something I have to do. There are no magic words that can come from him. There's no Hollywood ending on this one. I am the one who has to change now. And I am the one who has to accept.

My father did many bad things. He also did many great things. He wasn't perfect. Hell, most of the time he wasn't really adequate. But does that stuff really matter now? There is a saying in the circles I travel in now, "take what you want and leave the rest." I need to apply that here. My father did the best he could with what he had and in actuality, with all I've heard about other fathers over the years, perhaps I was lucky to have the one I did.

Happy Father's Day.