I once said that I didn't know my father. The thought returns every-so often and wrecks me. It wrecks me because I grew up with my dad and the context in which the question was asked related to not having known who your father at all; more like never having seen him than not knowing him as a person.
When I think about it, I was right. Maybe not to have said that I didn't know who he was but the fact is I never understood him, at least not since I was a very young boy. My entire adolescence was spent hating him for being everything I never wanted to be. But life is full of ironies and it afforded me the good fortune to peer into his life for a bit and walk in his shoes.
What I garnered from a couple months of intense work, the kind he used to do, is that I seriously doubt I could have done it nearly as long as he did. I lost about 10 lbs in the sweltering heat, surveying at different elevations, all the while calculating angles, horizontal and slope distances and driving myself and the rest of my crew to and from the locations.
All the while I watched my father, a hollow shell of the man he used to be, seem to slowly continue to lose his place in this world. The place he has occupied for the past twenty-odd years, that he had dedicated his life to securing, is slowly slipping away from him despite his desperate, sometimes angry and insensitive, attempts to hold on to it. As a victim of diabetes-related visual deterioration, his dimming world appears to frighten him more than he'll ever let on.
I found my father there though in all of that and I've learned to love the man, my pubescent dislike for him removed, even for the things that I still hate about him. I have found the "him" in me and in as much as some of my actions and attitudes upset me and I see a need to change them, the reasons for them are obvious.
I am my father's son! I've never been more proud to say that.
Monday, May 3, 2010
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3 comments:
I am yet to write mine..but..be sure it will include, "For many moons this thought I had to fight, but alas I realized that we only differ in stature & height..It's scares the waste outta me to see a model after my own heart, or I after his, I can't decide, and that's the scariest part"
Without the fancy...all I can say is I'm my father's child. Unlike u Mr. Dupuis, I can say that's the part I hate most. To him I can attribute my seeminlgy good looks but everything else, the parts that matter most, I wish for once could be of a different person. He's the template of what I do not want to become....but ironically, I already am. That's where the struggle lies.
This one has touched me Orville... Be Proud of the fact:)
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