**This post was originally written for the dying year and published in May, 2014
This blog is not a soap opera, it’s serious business. I’ll be dead in seven months. Unless I die toward the end of my 52nd year, then nineteen months. But I’ll be dead, anyway, someday.
When I die so does everything inside me, and that sucks, because there’s so much in there it hurts.
Most of what I carry is a beautiful collision of wonder and amazement, and most, if not all of it, is there because I got to be a Father. My sons need to know that. The entrance of each one into the world coincided with my decision to genuinely try to become a part of it.
We all carry a burden of gratitude. One that asks us to stand in front of what we love and deliver the ovation it deserves before we draw our last breath. We need to confess to whatever it was that allowed us to wake each day, that we might not have, if it wasn't there. We need to instill value in what we depended upon for ours.
This ovation is for my sons.
If we're lucky, each of us will locate something in the world that blindsides the certainty we develop about our limitations, with an awakening that we have none. We'll get a peek behind the curtain, and see the Wizard. One brief glimpse will guarantee the caution we need to temper any future doubt, or agreement, we make with the middle.
Since I don't have a constellation in my adult life that I trust for navigation, I revert to the one that guided me at their age. My heart is stalled in its youth, so I go there when I need counsel. And since it's not clear who I was important to, or if I was ever truly loved, I keep my counsel to myself.
My recent dismissal by my remaining family members sent a reminder that nothing's changed about how they see me. In fact, the two dead members of my family have been replaced by two new living ones. Both have their own history's to feed, and even though neither was part of our internal chaos and distress, they've slipped in with ease. That's not easy to do. I think my ex and my aunt were assisted by dysfunction of their own,from the families they came from. Both proved it wasn't a problem to use, and disregard me.
If I have the power to change anything it's in the way that my sons are loved, and it won't be in the manner that I was. I won't do it perfectly, but it will be done graciously, That's not a lot but it's enough. If I can't be certain of where I stood with others, I'll be adamant about them knowing where they stand with me.
Becoming a father was synonymous with becoming human for me, and being human is bewilderingly beautiful. I didn't know that until I started a family. The family I created has healed some of the wounds I received from the family that created me. I have to admit I didn't see that one coming.
I didn't know what to expect when I became a father, and now that I am one I know not to expect anything. My sons don't owe me squat. The choice that subjected them to a human lifetime was mine, not theirs, so the only thing they're obligated to is the discovery of how to live it. I'm not owed thanks for what wasn't asked for.
Me, on the other hand, I owe all that I am to them. I asked for the world before they arrived. I asked for more than a child. I was asking for a savior, or a sacrifice, without knowing which I might get. I knew all along, however, whichever I got would depend on me. I was asking to be healed by becoming a father even though I was unsure I could be one.
So God called my bluff and delivered three sons, no daughters. He gave my wife a six-figure income and took away my potential to earn one by making me an Actor. He went all or nothing when he made me the primary parent. And, in case I thought he was just fucking around, he reached down and took my mother. If I wanted to heal it was gonna be earned, and it would be earned, in part, by forgiving my father.
If I ever hoped to understand the deficiencies in my parents I'd need to admit my own. There is nothing more certain of bringing them to the surface and exposing them like the relentless demands of a child. If you want to take things down to ground zero you turn one child into three, make them all boys with athleticism, imagination, and kindness, and cram all three under the age of six. The torrent behind them is atomic. I was dismantled in no time.
I no longer knew who I was in the world, and my righteousness was just ugly insecurity. Every answer I'd been sure of was embarrassingly wrong. The place I thought I'd occupy in the world vanished like a mirage. And the person I was so sure I'd be laughed in my face and waved good-bye. I was stripped bare with no alternative but to attempt a bloom. What else can follow the bursting of a bud?
There is nothing my sons ever need to do to earn my love. There is nothing they need to accomplish to convince me of their worth. My love was a lifelong contract before that, and I knew it going in. What I didn't know was my gratitude would be eternal.
I also know I'm not allowed to dictate who they become, or encourage it this way, or that. Don't really want to, either. What I had to discover was what my role in their lives would be, so I became an attentive witness to each. I observed. A lot. I wanted to be able to remind them who they are (based on what they'd shown me) if the world stepped in to derail them.
I'll have to observe a long time to be able to do that, so I'llbe an obligated audience to all three. Quantity of time, not quality. If we could actually control the quality of our time we wouldn't need so much time, would we?
Every single one of us is an experimental miracle of love and hate, good and evil, pain and joy, right and wrong. Everyone of us is engaged in the internal warfare between each. And each of us deserves an ally. My sons will never have to doubt that I am theirs.
My oldest has a singular and natural ability to see depth with understanding. My youngest is a complex blend of profound decency and courage in the face of pain that culminates in an expansive empathy. The one between them has a sixth sense, a seventh, and an eighth that I imagine almost makes his heart too big to carry. None of them is confined by anything, and all three will set their own limits around who they finally are in the world. No matter what they decide, this world will be a better place because of it.
It was observing them during the twelve years I stayed home that gently prodded my re-awakening. I was so determined to provide for them what my father didn't know how to provide for me, I missed what was being taught.
Until now.
None of us knows what another needs, so the best we can do is provide what we have. What I have is Love, and I only have it because I know how it feels to have it withheld. I know how it feels to want it. I have it because I know it broke my parents hearts as they were learning to give it. You know, I may have gotten something wonderful from them, after all.
Mom.
Dad.
I'd like you to meet my sons.
Now, stand up with me, and roar......
