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lawnrrdMy wife left very early this morning for Costa Rica. She's spending a week at a yoga retreat there, leaving me to fend for myself. For dinner tonight, I'm making braised short ribs of beef with horseradish, and I have a week full of plans, so I don't expect to do badly.
For the first time in more years than I can remember, I spent a few hours alone with my father this afternoon. He came to New York this afternoon with my stepmother and her sister and niece. The women met another female relative for brunch and shopping or something, and my father and I went to Danal for brunch.
My parents split when I was about four years old. My mother raised my brother and me, but my father lived nearby and we spent Sunday afternoons and evenings with him. A few hours a week is not a lot of time, and my father and I were always both closed and somewhat solitary people, so he and I were never close. Things stayed that way after I reached adulthood, and there was always something perfunctory about our relationship.
Now, there are really only two things I'm sure I feel towards my father. One is a vague sort of affection. The other is pity, which strikes me as a terrible thing to feel towards one's parent.
I pity my father because he doesn't really have much at this point in his life. He always wanted to be an actor, but instead he went to work for his father, who owned some men's clothing stores in Philadelphia. The business eventually failed (which is a story in itself), but my father had child support payments to make, and men's clothing was what he knew, so in various roles at various stores, that's what he did. Working in retail means terrible hours at low pay, and he always hated his work. He did it until he had to retire two years ago due to his worsening vision problems.
Aside from that, there's his relationships with his children. I've already described my relationship with him. For his part, my younger brother is permanently angry at our father. In part, my brother is just full of anger that he hasn't dealt with; in part, he resents our father's absence while we were growing up; and in part, his has inherited our mother's deep anger at her family and at the universe in general. (That's a separate story, too.)
As I mentioned above, my father's vision has degenerated, too. So, for example, I had to read the handwritten brunch menu to him when we went out today. He can drive around his neighborhood in daylight, but aside from that, he is dependent on his wife to drive him around. He lives in the sort of suburb where you can't really walk. He also has very few friends, so other people don't come to him.
To recap, then, he is sixty-three years old. He has spent his life working in a career that he hated, and with no money or great professional success to show for it. He is not close to either of his children, and one of them no longer bothers to hide the deep anger that seems to be the main emotion he feels towards his father. He spends his days alone at home, surfing the Internet, reading, doing crossword puzzles, and watching television. And that's why I pity him.
(His salvation, in case you're wondering, is my stepmother, who is one of the kindest, most giving people I have ever known.)
I'm not sure what kind of relationship I want to have with him. I seem to have one, though, and it is changing as I change. Changing from what, and to what, I can't say.
But we had brunch alone today, and talked, really talked, for the first time in ages. We talked about my marriage and the reasons it is hard for me. We talked about my brother and his wife and his feelings. And we talked about my mother, which was especially interesting because I could never understand why these two people chose to marry each other in particular and have children. It reinforced a conclusion that I never saw at the time, but has become plain in hindsight, that my mother was a deeply angry and unhappy person.
Happiness does not run in my family.
After brunch, my father followed me as I ran some errands, and then we ran out of things to talk about. We went back to my apartment, where I tried to figure out what to do next. My stepmother wasn't going to pick him up until 4:30, so we had about two hours to kill.
I have always thought of my father as a film buff. In part it's because I know he wanted to be an actor, and in part, it's because in my memory, he was always talking about old movies. I had a few on TiVo that I had been meaning to watch, so I suggested that we do that. He said that would be fine, so we watched Rashomon, which I had never seen before. My father had never heard of it.
We watched it. My father was conspicuously bored but denied it. I didn't have the patience for the movie at first but got into it, and ultimately found it deeply disturbing for reasons I can't yet explain. After the movie ended, my father went home, and I went shopping for dinner.
For the first time in more years than I can remember, I spent a few hours alone with my father this afternoon. He came to New York this afternoon with my stepmother and her sister and niece. The women met another female relative for brunch and shopping or something, and my father and I went to Danal for brunch.
My parents split when I was about four years old. My mother raised my brother and me, but my father lived nearby and we spent Sunday afternoons and evenings with him. A few hours a week is not a lot of time, and my father and I were always both closed and somewhat solitary people, so he and I were never close. Things stayed that way after I reached adulthood, and there was always something perfunctory about our relationship.
Now, there are really only two things I'm sure I feel towards my father. One is a vague sort of affection. The other is pity, which strikes me as a terrible thing to feel towards one's parent.
I pity my father because he doesn't really have much at this point in his life. He always wanted to be an actor, but instead he went to work for his father, who owned some men's clothing stores in Philadelphia. The business eventually failed (which is a story in itself), but my father had child support payments to make, and men's clothing was what he knew, so in various roles at various stores, that's what he did. Working in retail means terrible hours at low pay, and he always hated his work. He did it until he had to retire two years ago due to his worsening vision problems.
Aside from that, there's his relationships with his children. I've already described my relationship with him. For his part, my younger brother is permanently angry at our father. In part, my brother is just full of anger that he hasn't dealt with; in part, he resents our father's absence while we were growing up; and in part, his has inherited our mother's deep anger at her family and at the universe in general. (That's a separate story, too.)
As I mentioned above, my father's vision has degenerated, too. So, for example, I had to read the handwritten brunch menu to him when we went out today. He can drive around his neighborhood in daylight, but aside from that, he is dependent on his wife to drive him around. He lives in the sort of suburb where you can't really walk. He also has very few friends, so other people don't come to him.
To recap, then, he is sixty-three years old. He has spent his life working in a career that he hated, and with no money or great professional success to show for it. He is not close to either of his children, and one of them no longer bothers to hide the deep anger that seems to be the main emotion he feels towards his father. He spends his days alone at home, surfing the Internet, reading, doing crossword puzzles, and watching television. And that's why I pity him.
(His salvation, in case you're wondering, is my stepmother, who is one of the kindest, most giving people I have ever known.)
I'm not sure what kind of relationship I want to have with him. I seem to have one, though, and it is changing as I change. Changing from what, and to what, I can't say.
But we had brunch alone today, and talked, really talked, for the first time in ages. We talked about my marriage and the reasons it is hard for me. We talked about my brother and his wife and his feelings. And we talked about my mother, which was especially interesting because I could never understand why these two people chose to marry each other in particular and have children. It reinforced a conclusion that I never saw at the time, but has become plain in hindsight, that my mother was a deeply angry and unhappy person.
Happiness does not run in my family.
After brunch, my father followed me as I ran some errands, and then we ran out of things to talk about. We went back to my apartment, where I tried to figure out what to do next. My stepmother wasn't going to pick him up until 4:30, so we had about two hours to kill.
I have always thought of my father as a film buff. In part it's because I know he wanted to be an actor, and in part, it's because in my memory, he was always talking about old movies. I had a few on TiVo that I had been meaning to watch, so I suggested that we do that. He said that would be fine, so we watched Rashomon, which I had never seen before. My father had never heard of it.
We watched it. My father was conspicuously bored but denied it. I didn't have the patience for the movie at first but got into it, and ultimately found it deeply disturbing for reasons I can't yet explain. After the movie ended, my father went home, and I went shopping for dinner.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 09:14 pm (UTC)oddly, i found myself in your neighbourhood without plans earlier tonight (about the time that you were posting this). would've called if i'd thought that you'd be around and unbusy. oh well. will see you soon.