Sons of Our Fathers
September 27, 2008 I saw my father from afar today. He was in a grocery store, in one of my early morning dreams. I watched him, peering over the top of his glasses as he read the label on a can of soup at the end of the next aisle.
When you are a child your father is larger than life itself. He is inconquerable, immovable, unstoppable, the biggest, most important idea in your universe. He is a moral centre and compass, he is the source of all approval, the guarantor of meaning and value, the source of all love in your home of homes. As our childhood lives evolve we begin to realize - suddenly and shockingly, often - the limitations of our fathers. He can't fix a broken arrow, he can't guess what happened at school today, he's afraid of snakes. His humanity grows in our childhood hearts, and our humanity grows with him.
Later, our childhood almost - but not - quite passed, we will test the limits of his authority, of his character, of his love. We will search him out when we don't need him, and stubbornly refuse his help when we do. We will resist his advice but embrace his foibles as our own. We will begin to hear his voice - his other voice, the one hidden within his great fears and anguish, within his great love for us - and in learning to hear his voice will forge our own. We will strive to be unlike him, never consciously aware of how ridiculously impossible this truly is.
Our teenage years will pass, though, and work and life and loves and responsibilities all our own will arise. We will be cocky, we sons of our fathers, and arrogant and stubborn and proud, and we will, as many times as is necessary, get knocked flat on our backs because of it. We will know our fathers from less of a distance now, much less, having held the very love of our lives in our arms on our wedding day, having held a newborn baby, in all its tiny, messy wonder, and having realized that the overwhelming sudden terror of unworthiness gripping us in that moment is exactly what he felt embracing our mothers, embracing us. He will be real.
Some of us will have our fathers taken from our lives far too early. Some will watch, helplessly, lovingly, as his strength and vitality fade into the parchment paper and dry, brittle leaves of old age. We will think deeply, know deeply and be, at the very depth of our soul, who he is.
I saw my father in a dream this morning, and watched him from a distance. He did not see me, I was hidden from him. Yet in this place of my mind, where dreams are born, where I am so deeply engaged by a crossword puzzle and a newspaper chess problem and the smell of Old Spice aftershave and cigarette smoke on warm, rough skin, in this place where dreams and reality meld he peers over his glasses and, though he does not see me standing here, I see him, standing there, where he has been all along, inside of me, inside of who I have become.
I find this dream of my father, seen silent and iconic within a ghostly quiet grocery aisle, fading as I stare at my face in the bathroom mirror. With my hand cupped beneath a mound of wet shaving cream I realize, with both certainty and finality, that this is exactly as it should be.
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Reader Comments (8)
Old Spice and the feel of his five o'clock shadow on my cheek. That's what sticks with me from my dad dreams.
Yesterday, I spent the day with my mom. With nobody else around, we had a great visit with much laughter and good talks. At one point, we were in the backyard with the dog, swatting away wasps when we noticed this swarm of white specks in the sky. For about half an hour, we watched as we realized that they were most likely seagulls. Then a flock of geese flew over, north actually so we were kind of hoping that winter had been cancelled this year. We watched until our necks ached. It was good.
She's 86, a lively quick-witted 86, but 86 nonetheless. I can feel the cracks spreading through my heart.