8. Homo Idiotus

It doesn't matter how old your children are, you worry about them.  You want them to be happy.  You hope they don't make the same mistakes you made.  You pray for small, incremental doses of emotional pain as opposed to a windfall.  You do your best to convince yourself you avoided the parental pitfalls that will affect your children the way your own parents shit affected you. “My Dad was way more fucked up than me. And he had a bunch of issues.  I only have a few.”  Granted, they're really big issues, but still.

You worry and take precautions with little faith that any of it matters.  Life has plans for your kids the same way it did for you.  Whether you make their lives a bit more simple or exponentially more difficult it’s because you were supposed to.  Just ask my dad, Joe Mack.  That dude was my own personal human impediment to anything I longed for.  My friends may have found him funny when he’d crash our high school parties but to me he was just a dark pucker.  He was just an asshole.  

My dad never said a single positive thing to me or about me.  Not one.  Not an "I'm proud of you" or a "You did a nice job on that."  Not a "Don't worry, you'll get them next time" or a reassuring “I know it hurts but you are gonna be okay.”  Never.  Not once. Ever.

He never spent time alone with me either, just he and I, Father and Son.  We never went to dinner or breakfast.  We never saw a movie or a play or even a television show together, just the two of us, alone.  He didn't drive with me to college when I left nor did he visit when I was there.  He never took me aside to see how I was doing.  He never wrote a letter and he never initiated a phone call.  My dad was a failure as a role model for what it means to be a man. But that’s what the Universe prescribed for me.

To be fair, it’s hard to be a decent dad if your own dad  had no idea how to be one.  I'm guessing my dad's dad wasn't much of one. I'm guessing he let my dad down. I know I let my sons down sometimes.  I know I was a far cry from perfect.  But I tried.  I made the effort to get better and to learn from my mistakes.  My own dad didn’t.  All he seemed to be was annoyed by my existence and the needs I asked him to fill.  Whatever I've been to my sons I have to trust it was somehow needed.  I have to trust they might someday see this.  I have to trust they will understand. I hope someday they see whatever I was to them the same way I see what my asshole angry Irish alcoholic father was to me. 

My dad taught me how to descend into darkness and re-emerge with shards of light.  He taught me it didn’t matter how many times I got knocked down because I’d always get back up.  He taught me how to be gentle and patient by having a short fuse that abruptly turned to violence.  He taught me how important it is to be there through his disinterest and neglect.  He taught me I could decide for myself what it meant to be a man and that I was free to do my best to embody that vision.  He taught me the importance of building things up by constantly beating me down.

My sons will go through whatever they're designed to endure just like I did.  They'll do what they need to do to make sense of themselves and take their place in the world.  It's one of Life’s conditions, growth, and  growth is inherently hard.  It's painful.  It's imperative. Growth makes life worth the effort.  Even if we are just a bunch of glorified idiots.

Homo Idiotus.  Bipedal.  Upright.  Omnivore. Human Being. Man. My dad did the best he could and I understand that. I wish I'd gotten to know him.