I wish I was more like my father

My dad was exceptionally smart: he avoided my teenage years. He was a kid at heart, which made him a much-desired father until I reached the age of about ten and his crazy antics started to embarrass me. We had many good times and imaginary adventures. I only saw the good side of my dad. That can be an advantage of not living with one of your parents.

After I had my first daughter, our relationship changed. Here was a man that I had not seen more than once a month, but who was now at my house almost every day. He adored his first and only grandbaby, and I got to see a side of him I never knew. He was a natural grandparent, fun and silly, despite his silver hair.

A good father will provide their children with strength and security. An excellent father will couple this with tenderness and playfulness. Their children know they have nothing to worry about, they enjoy themselves, they have fun. They experience the true meaning of childhood.

My father may have failed in other areas of his life but being a dad wasn't one of them. He possessed qualities that I will always envy. He had the ability to make others shine. To make them feel as if they were truly special. He was strong, but his strength never overshadowed his tenderness. Despite heartache his playful spirit never evaporated. Laughter was always his antidote. These are gifts not all possess, myself included, which is why I can tell you with all my heart that I wish I was more like my father.

Sainthood

It’s easy to turn those who have died into saints. You overlook obvious flaws and overemphasize the goodness. An ordinary, average person can become extraordinary the day they die.

Now that my dad is gone we only seem to remember his amazing attributes. This is a source of contention for my mom because we have not shown her the same forgiveness. We have turned my dad into a saint: St. William Arnold. He would get a good laugh out of the whole situation. His final revenge.

My dad was able to pull this same maneuver when we were teenagers. He left town for an extended period of time after my parent’s divorce. Even though I felt angry and abandoned at the time, I soon forgave him. Then and now, only remembering the good, bright and sunny moments can ease the pain. It somehow makes the separation bearable. I gain much comfort recalling the positive qualities my dad displayed. But he was not a saint. He had flaws, he made mistakes, he was human.

Around the time my dad died, I learned some valuable information about my great-grandfather, who had passed away when I was a child. All my life I had been told about his amazing, saintly attributes. But no one ever talked about his flaws. I was shocked to learn of his failings. To know he was human.

The irony is that when you die, you are forgiven of the mistakes that follow you when you’re alive. This is a natural human tendency: to memorialize those who are gone, to set them on a pedestal. The sad part is that we can’t seem to do this when the person is living. For most of us death may be the only time we achieve sainthood.

Mirror reflection

This is a hard one for parents to accept, myself included: Your child or children are a perfect reflection of YOU. I like to think of my youngest daughter as a reflection of her older siblings, and to some extent this is true. When a three-year-old knows vocabulary most adults don’t use and greets you with, “What’s up?” you know she’s learning it from somewhere. But this behavior is not what I am talking about.

The part I’m talking about is something deeper—not actions, but feelings. What is the mood of your household? Being extremely smart and sensitive, kids seem to pick up on body language that most adults block out. They are little radios, transmitting the feelings of your family for the public to see and hear. You’re in a bad mood, they’re grouchy. You’re uptight in the store; they manage to break something. You fight with your mate; they fight with their siblings.

I fully understand that each child has a genetic make-up that makes them who they are, and that some are wound tighter than others. But I have noticed that my attitude has the biggest impact on the mood of our family. My oldest daughter is our high-strung child, but how much of that was caused by our neurotic behavior as first-time parents? We were stressed, so she would cry … she would cry, and we would get more stressed. Stress was the common feeling in our family.

Children are wiser than we give them credit for: they mimic our emotions. When mine are being exceptionally out of control and driving me insane, I wonder if it is them, or me. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s me. My feelings are contributing to their actions. If I take a break, regroup or get out of the house, my outlook changes, and so does theirs. They become enjoyable children again. So I don’t need to wake up and look in the mirror to figure out my mood. All I need is to look at my children—they are my mirror reflection.

Alcohol ruins your potential

My mom pleaded, my dad swore. Swore that he would stop. Swore that he had stopped. But he did not stop. Alcohol never resides alone. It shares a home with deceit, justification, resentment and anguish. I have seen alcohol destroy many a life, mine included. My dad was an alcoholic. In a perfect world, he would have stopped drinking when my mom asked him to. This is not a prefect world.

I have always wondered what our lives would have been like if my dad had not drunk. He was an amazing father, a hard worker, talented, funny and charming. But that was in spite of alcohol. How much more would he have accomplished without it? My dad did stop drinking, too late to save his marriage, but not too late to undo the hurt he caused his children. He was able to redeem himself, to set things right, to live up to his potential.

I have no words of wisdom for those who rely on alcohol to cope with life. Even when my dad was sober, we all knew he had a shadow following him. Somehow he found the strength to beat this enemy. It was his battle, and none of us waged it for him. I see the same struggle with other family members. I love them dearly, but I can’t fix them. When you’re a functioning alcoholic, you exist, you work, you marry, you have children, you’re alive, but you’re never truly living. How many people have wasted all the gifts they never knew they had on a cold, hard bottle? How much potential is buried in that one drink? I hope that, like my dad, others give themselves a chance to live without alcohol, to make it right, to find the strength to reach their potential.

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Get Out of Jail Free card

My dad’s philosophy was that every child should have a Get Out of Jail Free card. That meant that he would bail each of his children out of jail for free, one time. He was not encouraging jail time, but seemed to understand that if we made the huge mistake of getting arrested, we would need his help. The good part is that he was able to use this for each of his children.

My brother was the first to use his card. Because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong friends, doing the wrong thing, he managed to end up in the county penitentiary. In his defense, he still claims that the drug paraphernalia the police found in his pocket was not actually his. So in the middle of the night my brother used his one and only phone call, to let my dad know that he would be cashing in his Get Out of Jail Free card.

My sister was the second. Being a nurse and never having a run-in with the law, my dad realized she might never need to cash in her card, so when the time came for her to buy her first home he gave her the down payment. He called it her Get Out of Jail Free card.

I was the third and last one to use my card. I cashed mine in for an all-expenses-paid, absolutely unforgettable trip to Disneyland with my dad. He was generous beyond compare, and even though we had to suffer through “It’s a Small World (After All),” it was much better than a night in the slammer.

So what lessons did I learn from my dad’s funny generosity? That most parents would never even consider the idea that their angels could end up in jail, but my dad did. When and if it did happen, we knew that we had someone to call. It also taught me, once again, that my dad loved us all, unconditionally. He knew we would make mistakes, and he was realistic in his expectations. We were not chastised for our bad decisions, but were given a second chance. And we were also rewarded for our good decisions.

As a parent, I hope that if I get a phone call at 3 a.m. from the local sheriff, I will calmly tell my child they can cash in their one Get Out of Jail Free card, and if I never get that phone call I will find an amazing way to let them cash it in anyway.

Cherish the time you have

The last time I saw my dad, he hugged me and said, “Don’t bother coming back out, I know it’s hard on you.” We’d just had an amazing week of visiting him, and I had an overwhelming feeling that I might not see him again. As we drove off, I had more regrets than I normally did. I began to wonder if I had made the right decision in leaving California.

As I contemplated the choices I had made, I came to the realization that I cherished my dad more by not being around him all the time. When we were together, usually once every year, I valued every second of it. I recorded the memories and the feelings so that I could replay them later, when he was no longer there. I didn’t have to deal with the day-in-day-out stresses of life. He usually had something spectacular planned. He would tell us, “It’s all about you,” and we knew for that one week it was.

My dad was never a serious person, so I am grateful that during our long phone conversations I learned things about him and his childhood that he probably would not have told me in person. I’m thankful that he had the ability to cherish those around him: his wife, who had dozens of notes of adoration; his children, whom he regularly told how much he valued them; and all his family and friends that he took the time to treasure.

I probably would have never moved if I knew my dad would die. I would have stayed close and enjoyed every moment I had with him. Unfortunately, we never know that about anyone. How many people would we treat differently if we knew they would be gone tomorrow? What would we say to them today? Time is the most valuable commodity we have. Your house, your car, your credit cards—they won’t miss you when you’re gone. But those whom you took the time to cherish will.

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My children will be just as dysfunctional

So far, I have never met someone who has made a conscious decision to procreate, and invest twenty years of their life, just for the fun of damaging their children beyond repair. Yet that is usually what happens. Even families that seem to be the cream of the crop, the most normal of all, will still have dysfunctional children. No matter how good we are as parents, there will always be issues, years of counseling, baggage and resentment.

As parents, you can’t win. You work … they hate you because you didn’t spend enough time with them. You don’t work … your kids hate being poor. Not enough of this, too much of that. So you may be asking, are children really worth it? Of course they are, because even dysfunctional children can still be a blessing to their parents, and truthfully, when that strong maternal instinct kicks in, there is usually not much you could say that would convince someone that having a cute, adorable, bundle of joy is not worth it.

So what’s the point in trying? You try because deep down you hope that someday your children will realize that you tried to do what was best for them, and they will look at the big picture, and maybe at their grandparents and even great-grandparents, and notice that each of them tried, with all they knew at the time, given their background, to make the best decisions. Perhaps their perspective was wrong, or their thinking was based on inaccurate information, but they still loved you and exerted a great amount of effort to raise you.

One of my mom’s favorite expressions is, “Being a mom is a thankless job.” She usually tells us this soon after we’ve informed her that she has single handedly ruined us forever. She then follows it by the mother’s curse: “I hope that someday your children are just like you.” So the cycle continues indefinitely. Someday I will realize that, no matter how hard I tried not to, I still managed to raise dysfunctional children.

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You need them

Why was my first phone call after my dad died to my mom? Because I needed her. I needed her strength in order to break the news to my sister. No matter how old we are, we still need our parents. We know that even if our mates or significant others don’t believe in us, our mom and dad will. They have the ability to support us the way no other human can.

My dad would tell me that he only heard from my brother in rough times. If things were going smoothly in my brother’s life, my dad wasn’t needed, and my brother could depend on himself. Sometimes, though, we reach the point emotionally when we don’t have the strength to take care of ourselves. Maybe it’s a tragic event, a bad week or some unexpected news. We manage to hold it together emotionally for our children, our mate, our friends. Then our mom or dad walks into the room and we break down like a little baby.

No matter how badly your parents treat you, no matter how old you are, you need them. I am a married woman with an amazing husband and three children of my own, but I will tell you that without a doubt the hardest part of losing my dad was that I still needed him. When I was a teenager, it may have been for superficial things: to borrow his car, to help me fix mine, gas, food, money—all those things you need as an adolescent.

But as I grew older, I needed his support, his understanding, his strength. All those times when your parent is the only one who will do. So the next time you feel like an independent and capable grown-up, take the time to appreciate your parents when you don’t need them, because the day may come when you do.

When did you need your parent's the most? Please feel free to comment.

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Loss is inevitable

There are two types of loss, and I have experienced them both. The first type involves losing touch with a person for one reason or another. This is the loss suffered from broken relationships, severed ties, damaged alliances. The other person is still living, just without you.

I felt this loss when my parents divorced. It was the first time my dad was gone. The man I knew, who gave me life, was no longer a part of mine. He had moved to Arizona searching for comfort from his own mother, sister and brother. The impact of the divorce left a crater in his heart. Who better to fill it than his children? That is what his sister hoped, when she brought us for a visit. But that is not what happened. After driving for ten hours, we saw my dad for ten minutes. At the time, I did not comprehend the depth of this loss. It wasn’t until I had my own children that I understood why my dad chose not to see us. His life was dark; it centered on alcohol, depression and hopelessness. Thankfully, this loss was temporary. After a few years, my dad found his spirit and started putting his life back together, which included seeing his children again.

The second type of loss is even more devastating, because it’s permanent. It’s the unimaginable loss of a family member. It might be a mate you have spent your life with, the person who brought you into this world or a child that was a part of you. It really doesn’t matter who it is; we all feel the same: utterly devastated. Everything in our world is thrown into to the air and, unfortunately, it never seems to land in the same spot.

The agony of loss has no limits—it’s endless. But it can still teach us a valuable lesson. This is what it has taught me: there are no guarantees in life, you may never heal, life is never what you expect, things are not always fair. Even though these realizations may seem morbid, they have changed how I view my life. They have taught me that, no matter how much it hurts, loss is inevitable.


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