I think the single most important thing a parent can do for their children is to let them know they are loved, accepted, adored. This seems to come so naturally to many parents. Sure they make mistakes, but you can watch their faces light up when they see their children or merely talk about their children. Their children give them joy, and their children know this. They grow up feeling that warmth. They grow up feeling wanted, lovable, worthy.
Then there are others who seem to be caught off guard by parenthood. They hold their kids out at arms’ length, and they seem befuddled by their predicament. This is understandable. Many parents don’t receive any training, and it never occurs to some to actually give much thought about what they’re doing, so if it doesn’t come naturally, then have to learn on the job. The trouble with that approach is kids need to feel like they’re wanted from the start. And there are no do overs. You either get it right the first time, or it’s up to the kid to overcome your lack of parenting skills at crucial stages of his or her development.
I’m afraid that my father fell into the second camp. He was not a natural parent. I don’t remember him being a joyful father. He seemed burdened. And he wasn’t at all ashamed to state that he felt put upon. He was concerned with providing material things for his family--food, clothing, a home--but he didn’t give much thought to our emotional needs. When I became a teenager, he became apologetic about not earning more and providing us with more stuff.
Even though I would have appreciated greater affluence--a nicer home, more vacations, more spending money, more dinners in restaurants, a car, not having to borrow money to go to college--it always annoyed me that my father only felt regret for not showering me with more goodies, and that’s because I never really held it against him for not making more money. I knew he was doing the best he could, and we always had the basics--food, clothing, shelter. There were gifts every Christmas, and a vacation every summer, even if it was just a camping trip.
What I needed from my father, and what he failed to give me was a sense that he wanted me around, that my presence in his life made him happy. Instead I generally got the impression that I was an unpleasant mystery to him. And there were times when he shamed me, and mocked me, and expressed his disappointment in me. When I was a toddler, I sometimes wanted to dress in my sister’s and mother’s clothes. I also wanted to play with “girl” toys. This embarrassed my father, and he would say with distain that I should have been born a girl. And I remember wishing I had been born a girl so that my father wouldn’t give me those looks or suggest to me that he thought I was defective.
By the time I started school, I was shy and withdrawn. My mother loved me, but she was mentally ill and unstable, my father teased and belittled me, and my sister followed my father’s example probably in an attempt to gain his approval. So on the one hand, I didn’t trust people not to lash out at me, and on the other, I was sure I didn’t have anything worthwhile to contribute.
There were some highly dramatic moments in my childhood, the kind of stuff that would make for great cinema. But I think it was the stuff that happened in between those dramatic moments, the steady drumbeat of quiet disapproval that really destroyed me--all those times I was virtually ignored, all those sighs, the eye rolls, the head shaking, the derisive giggles… I was left feeling guilty for merely being alive, and I certainly didn’t have any confidence in myself.
Obviously the way I was treated as a child has had a profound impact on my life, but it also impacted my father’s life in his declining years. After my mother died, he needed more emotional support, but he didn’t get it. I continued to do the chores around the house, but I couldn’t offer him a great deal of kindness or warmth. It just wasn’t in me. I don’t mean to say that I withheld my affection out of resentment. It wasn’t that at all. I saw that he was hurting, and I wanted to do more for him. But with him, I didn’t know how. Whenever I was around him, I was always aware of this deep well of sadness and pain that existed in me because of the things he had done to me when I was young and vulnerable. And because of that, something very basic and primal in me recoiled from him. This person had not nurtured me when I needed to be nurtured, but instead had belittled and berated me for not being the kind of boy he could relate to. It wasn’t the thinking part of my brain that recoiled. It was like my body remembered the abuse, and pulled me back form him in the same way you would instinctively pull back from fire or a cliff. I couldn’t get too close.
I cried more after my father died than I did after my mother died. I think that’s because despite my mother’s handicap, she was able to convince me that she loved me. I sometimes saw her eyes sparkle when she looked at me. It hurt to say goodbye to her. It saddened me knowing I would never see that sparkle again. But I had the memory of it. My father, on the other hand, never looked at me in the same way, and when he died, he took his adoration with him without ever bestowing it on me. I felt cheated by his death. If he couldn’t love and adore me when I was a little boy, he should have had the grace to let me know that this was his failing and not mine. Maybe that would have been enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment