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name: will baker blogrollin' other sites: |
the puzzle
I had a message from my cousin Elizabeth last night. She�s my (biological) father�s sister�s daughter. She said that my grandmother is ill. I called her back, but got no answer. So here it is. I will have to face all the guilt and ambiguity that surrounds my relationship with my father and his family. Some background: My mom and biological father were divorced when I was 2 or 3 (I don�t know off the top of my head). I don�t remember them being married. I grew up with my mom�s second husband, to whom she was married for 12 years. He was rich, but basically a jerk, and we had what could only be described as an unhappy home life. I was shipped off to my father during the summer and on some holidays. He�s a fun guy, but we were never what you could call close. I never really had a �father-son relationship� with him. As I got older, our contacts grew more and more infrequent. My mom remarried when I was 16; Gary is a kind, generous, upstanding and responsible man�and he�s the closest thing I�ve ever had to a father. Even though he had no necessary responsibility to me as I reached adulthood, he has always been there, even through all my messy alcoholic misadventures. I love and respect him, and he�s the closest thing I�ve had to a �real dad�. My father, by contrast, hasn�t even sent me a birthday card in like 2 years. Before that, the cards were in his wife�s handwriting. Every time I talk to my grandparents in Iowa, they assure me that my father would love to hear from me. And yet�he never calls, never writes. I�m not sure that he�s really love to hear from me at all. Since I reached adulthood, we�ve had almost no relationship at all. For my part, that�s regretful, but acceptable. He never showed much enthusiasm for being a good father, even when I was a kid, so what am I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my life struggling to maintain this relationship with a stated homophobe who abandoned us when I was a toddler because it�s someone�s idea of what one should do? Or write it off as a loss and move on? A while back, I got a nasty email from my cousin telling me that my father�s house had burned down. No one was hurt. So what am I supposed to do? Drop everything and fly to Joplin to�? I don�t know. I never responded, and I�m pretty sure that that was wrong, but I have no idea what the right thing was. The whole topic is painful to me, and so I avoid it in thought and action. But I love my grandparents. They�ve always been kind and loving to me, and I feel like an ass for not having more contact with them. They�re both in their 80�s now, so time is growing short. But after you�ve stayed away for so long, what do you do? Just show up and say �hi�? I�ve been avoiding this, too. Because I don�t know how to explain why I�ve stayed away. Part of that time was during my drinking days, when I didn�t give a damn about any relationship except for my relationships with cocaine and vodka. But recovery is supposed to entail a better, more responsible mode of life. I know that I should have worked to rebuild these ties, and I have no excuse for several years of inaction. And now, here it is: the moment that I knew would come. They�re getting old, and starting to have health problems. It�s time to reconnect, before it�s too late. And I�m terrified of doing so. It means facing my past, facing all the things I�d rather forget about. It means admitting that when all is said and done, I cannot fashion my own life whole cloth. One must build with the materials one is given, and leaving anything aside makes for a poorer structure. These relationships are the given material of my life. I know that my relatives in Iowa must think badly of me for staying away for so long; that�s something I�m just going to have to face. I know, Dear Reader, that this must all seem better suited to a therapy session than a blog entry. Sorry. It�s on my mind. Heavy on my mind. Our families are the best and worst part of us. They are the puzzle we are solving all our lives�and in the end, we think we�ve failed, only to discover that what we�ve solved is the riddle of ourselves.
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