Cat's Cradle
So last week we were working late (no new news there), and somehow got on to the subject of fathers. Specifically relationships with our fathers. I thought this might be an interesting subject for a blog entry. I know I've discussed my absolute fear of facing fatherhood with very little example to go by, especially for my sons' early and formative years, but I don't remember ever discussing how my own relationship with my father . . . . . ummmm . . . progessed? Faded? Dissipated like a wisp of smoke or a fart in the wind? I guess that's about as close as I can get to it. So here we go.
Let me start by saying that I bear my father no ill will. I've always understood and accepted why he left our lives. I'm not sure my sister has fully come to grips with it (and my sister and I both still issues with authority figures, which sort of indicates that we might not be as at ease with it as we'd like to think we are), but I never remember being angry or accusatory with my father.
I should probably go back to the beginning. I believe my parents met in high school, graduated early, and married a couple years afterwards. Here's what they looked like back then:
Sorry Mom. I couldn't really crop you out of these without making the pictures look really weird. The good news is that your hair looked GREAT! And just to make things even, I promise to add an embarrassing pic of me up here someplace as well. :)
So, anyways, there they are. I came along about a year later, and my sister about 4 years after that. Here's an amusing shot that shows 2 things. 1) My father had apparently lost the ability to smile for pictures sometime in his childhood, and 2) my elder soon looks an awful lot like I did at the same age.
Eventually, my parents grew apart and had a fairly unpleasant couple of years before filing for divorce. As part of the settlement my father was given weekend visitation rights. I remember enjoying these immensely. We would go play video games, go to his friends house to play cards, watch movies, ignore bed times, all the things kids love to do mostly because they're not supposed to do them at home. I also remember this being a point of contention betwixt my parents (hey, I got to use the word betwixt again!). Between this and the subject of child support (another point of contention) the weekend visitations became less frequent, until they disappeared entirely. I think this entire process took less than a year, from the summer after my 2nd grade to the summer after my 3rd grade.
After this my sister and I would only rarely see my father during summer break when we would go visit our grandparents (my father's parents) in Pasadena. He would just sometimes show up for a day or two, and then he was gone again. I remember a family friend told me she ran into him once in town, and she asked him why he didn't spend more time with my sister and I. He replied, "Some things are just to painful." For some reason this made perfect sense to my 10 year old mind, although I have no idea why it should have. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he hardly ever smiled, so he always seemed to be in pain. Whatever it was I didn't begrudge him being absent, although I vividly recall being an absolute ass to anyone my mother tried to date during this time. I was HORRIBLE to them, no matter how nice they tried to be to me. In my defense I wasn't very a very well adjusted person at this time, and I really didn't care about anyone up to and including myself. I still wish I would run into some of those guys and have the chance to apologize for my actions though (if Richard or Tom ever read this, I'm sorry).
So my sister and I only saw my father for a couple of summers, and that was it. Nothing from the time I was 12 until I was in college. Purely by chance (or perhaps by providence, although I still haven't unraveled the purpose of it) my grandparents moved to a house literally 3 miles from my college. I got to visit them a few times, and spoke to them sporadically. Now I have be clear here. The Hawkins side of my family lives by the motto, "No news is good news". If there was nothing interesting going on, no-one on that side of the family would ever call anyone else. It wasn't due to any sort of bitterness or resentment, the family just didn't value communication. So when I say I kept in contact with my grandparents while I was in college, I mean that I visited or spoke with them on the phone approximately twice a semester. 4 times a year. I think they came to 1 of my football games and 1 of my track meets, and that was it. By comparison to the rest of the Hawkins clan, this meant we were "tight"! Got it? Good.
So after I turned 18, my father contacted them and they in turned contacted me. I spoke to him once on the phone and we were happy to catch up and hear each other were doing well. He apparently waited until I was 18 so that my mother couldn't track him down for back child-support (which my mother wasn't in the least bit interested in anyways), and he never gave me his address or phone number during that time probably for the same reason. He planned to come out to one of my track meets as well, but that never panned out. But I did speak with him twice, and that was it until I got married. Here's a shot of what I looked like around then. This is the closest pic of me at college that I can get my hands on.
The last time I saw or spoke to my father was at my wedding. Brandi and I sent him an invitation, and I suspect he would have declined if his new wife hadn't pushed him into trying to re-build the bridge with his former life. So he and his new wife came to the wedding and the reception, and seemed to enjoy themselves. I'm glad they did. It was a nice, public way of everyone letting everyone else know that there are no hard feelings (which was more than we could say for my wife's parents at the time). My father danced with my wife, and even my sister, here's what he looked like then.
Looks like he finally figured out how to smile. Just so be fair, here's how I looked like then too.
Hmmmm. I think I'm noticing a trend here. I think I'm going to ask for a membership to my local health club for Christmas this year.
That was the last time I heard from him. I had a chance to see him again when his mother died a couple years later, but I had too much going on at work at that point, so I wasn't able to make it to the funeral. We sent some birth announcements to his last known address (the one we sent the wedding invitation to) when Marcus was born, and some pictures. But they were all returned to us with a "no known recipient" note on them. It is entirely possible that he doesn't know that he's a grandfather a couple times over now. That makes me a little bit sad, but there's nothing we can do about it. I believe that our paths will cross again sometime in the future, and we'll be able to catch up again. And the cycle will start all over again.
And I'm all right with that.
Let me start by saying that I bear my father no ill will. I've always understood and accepted why he left our lives. I'm not sure my sister has fully come to grips with it (and my sister and I both still issues with authority figures, which sort of indicates that we might not be as at ease with it as we'd like to think we are), but I never remember being angry or accusatory with my father.
I should probably go back to the beginning. I believe my parents met in high school, graduated early, and married a couple years afterwards. Here's what they looked like back then:
Sorry Mom. I couldn't really crop you out of these without making the pictures look really weird. The good news is that your hair looked GREAT! And just to make things even, I promise to add an embarrassing pic of me up here someplace as well. :)
So, anyways, there they are. I came along about a year later, and my sister about 4 years after that. Here's an amusing shot that shows 2 things. 1) My father had apparently lost the ability to smile for pictures sometime in his childhood, and 2) my elder soon looks an awful lot like I did at the same age.
Eventually, my parents grew apart and had a fairly unpleasant couple of years before filing for divorce. As part of the settlement my father was given weekend visitation rights. I remember enjoying these immensely. We would go play video games, go to his friends house to play cards, watch movies, ignore bed times, all the things kids love to do mostly because they're not supposed to do them at home. I also remember this being a point of contention betwixt my parents (hey, I got to use the word betwixt again!). Between this and the subject of child support (another point of contention) the weekend visitations became less frequent, until they disappeared entirely. I think this entire process took less than a year, from the summer after my 2nd grade to the summer after my 3rd grade.
After this my sister and I would only rarely see my father during summer break when we would go visit our grandparents (my father's parents) in Pasadena. He would just sometimes show up for a day or two, and then he was gone again. I remember a family friend told me she ran into him once in town, and she asked him why he didn't spend more time with my sister and I. He replied, "Some things are just to painful." For some reason this made perfect sense to my 10 year old mind, although I have no idea why it should have. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he hardly ever smiled, so he always seemed to be in pain. Whatever it was I didn't begrudge him being absent, although I vividly recall being an absolute ass to anyone my mother tried to date during this time. I was HORRIBLE to them, no matter how nice they tried to be to me. In my defense I wasn't very a very well adjusted person at this time, and I really didn't care about anyone up to and including myself. I still wish I would run into some of those guys and have the chance to apologize for my actions though (if Richard or Tom ever read this, I'm sorry).
So my sister and I only saw my father for a couple of summers, and that was it. Nothing from the time I was 12 until I was in college. Purely by chance (or perhaps by providence, although I still haven't unraveled the purpose of it) my grandparents moved to a house literally 3 miles from my college. I got to visit them a few times, and spoke to them sporadically. Now I have be clear here. The Hawkins side of my family lives by the motto, "No news is good news". If there was nothing interesting going on, no-one on that side of the family would ever call anyone else. It wasn't due to any sort of bitterness or resentment, the family just didn't value communication. So when I say I kept in contact with my grandparents while I was in college, I mean that I visited or spoke with them on the phone approximately twice a semester. 4 times a year. I think they came to 1 of my football games and 1 of my track meets, and that was it. By comparison to the rest of the Hawkins clan, this meant we were "tight"! Got it? Good.
So after I turned 18, my father contacted them and they in turned contacted me. I spoke to him once on the phone and we were happy to catch up and hear each other were doing well. He apparently waited until I was 18 so that my mother couldn't track him down for back child-support (which my mother wasn't in the least bit interested in anyways), and he never gave me his address or phone number during that time probably for the same reason. He planned to come out to one of my track meets as well, but that never panned out. But I did speak with him twice, and that was it until I got married. Here's a shot of what I looked like around then. This is the closest pic of me at college that I can get my hands on.
The last time I saw or spoke to my father was at my wedding. Brandi and I sent him an invitation, and I suspect he would have declined if his new wife hadn't pushed him into trying to re-build the bridge with his former life. So he and his new wife came to the wedding and the reception, and seemed to enjoy themselves. I'm glad they did. It was a nice, public way of everyone letting everyone else know that there are no hard feelings (which was more than we could say for my wife's parents at the time). My father danced with my wife, and even my sister, here's what he looked like then.
Looks like he finally figured out how to smile. Just so be fair, here's how I looked like then too.
Hmmmm. I think I'm noticing a trend here. I think I'm going to ask for a membership to my local health club for Christmas this year.
That was the last time I heard from him. I had a chance to see him again when his mother died a couple years later, but I had too much going on at work at that point, so I wasn't able to make it to the funeral. We sent some birth announcements to his last known address (the one we sent the wedding invitation to) when Marcus was born, and some pictures. But they were all returned to us with a "no known recipient" note on them. It is entirely possible that he doesn't know that he's a grandfather a couple times over now. That makes me a little bit sad, but there's nothing we can do about it. I believe that our paths will cross again sometime in the future, and we'll be able to catch up again. And the cycle will start all over again.
And I'm all right with that.
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