Father’s Day

Jun 11

One summer when I was eight, I was staying at my grandparents’ house, and they had a tiny carnival in the town square. My favorite game at any carnival was the cakewalk. It was the Saturday before Father’s Day, and one of the creative volunteers had made a cake with a giant blue and red tie.

I eyed it with envy. I wanted to win the cake with every part of my little being . I wasn’t entirely sure why I wanted it so badly, because I didn’t have a father. I mean, obviously I had a biological “Father,” but all that existed were a handful of pictures of him visiting me, when I turned one. I was sitting in his lap holding his guitar on a yellow bean bag on the floor.

I had a father but I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. But that blue skied June day I wanted a father to win for and I figured my Uncle Alan was as good as any. My grandfather had already died and my Uncle Tom who often took care of me at my grandma’s house wasn’t a dad despite being the most generous caretaker of our family.

That afternoon I spent every dime I had buying tickets and playing against the spinner hoping it would land on my number.

It was the glory I anticipated of surprising my uncle with a whole cake. A gift that acknowledged his great commitment to my favorite cousins. At the end of the day, I had used all the cash I’d been given but left the carnival dejected and cakeless.

My mom had been open and honest about my dad. She’d loved him and he didn’t love her back and nothing was going to change that, not even me. She’d loved him something fierce for his cosmopolitan worldliness. She’d come from been a product of this little, tiny farming village and he came from the big, sophisticated city of Montreal. He rode horses, played golf and the guitar. He had smart clothes and stylish shoes that he used to walk away from her and me to pursue his graduate degree, in psychology, back in Canada.

I finally met him when I was in my twenties. I had spent the first half of my life fantasizing what it would feel like to honor and admire the man responsible for my life.

I’ve spent the second half of my life reconciling with the fact that he would never be a man who cared about me.

This the briefest way of saying that Father’s Day has never really registered as a holiday for me.

One of the reasons we give gifts is to bond and solidify our connections through celebration, surprise, and appreciation. But when it came to my dad, the gifts were oddly disconnected. Red roses for the wrong birthdate, wrong month, and year. Once instead of a promised ring he retrieved a Mezuzah from the Shoah foundation with symbol of his own name. There were promised trips cancelled and a complete refusal to buy me a wedding gift since as his note stated he simply couldn’t think of something worthy so best not to send anything. Most people have connection with their father’s and these faux pas would be overlooked thinking “it’s the effort that counts.” But without a foundation they just fell into a pit of disappointment.

When I had children, I worked endlessly with my kids to show their dad how much they love and cherish him. We’d bake him l angel food cakes decorated with berries. We made art. We took him to brunch, lunch and dinner. We bought him everything from T-shirts to a Star Wars Toaster, but my heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t into material gifts so I’m not sure we ever really “got” him.

I’m re-listening to Jimmy O. Yang’s memoir How to American on Audible and it has me thinking about paternal relationships. His book a funny take on his path from ping pong star to stand-up comedy, and even a DJ at a stripper club before making it famous on the HBO show Silicon Valley.

Yang had lived in Hong Kong as a child with his parents and brother. His childhood was steeped in traditional Chinese expectations to respect and honor his parents’ wishes, to be successful by being obedient. His father thought that American belief that doing what you love would bring homelessness not success. becoming homeless. As a teen, Jimmy moved to Los Angeles. He was torn between the overwhelming freedom and individualism and his parent’s values that he should put family above all else, including himself.

I felt a sweet tenderness when Yang talks about how his father cooks dinner every night but advises Jimmy not to do that. “That is for women,” he explains, “but I must do it because I am a better cook.”

I could feel envy creeping in imagining Jimmy making rice every other night for the family dinner, awaiting his father’s criticism. Oh, to have that kind of attention even a critique, sounded like heaven to me. I romanticized the structure and routine safe and content that put family needs above the individual. Even though I’d never experienced the Eastern version of obligation and obedience or lack of choice, I still wonder what it would feel like to be protected and cared about that deeply by your father.

I’d been raised on the opposite end of the Western spectrum, by a single mother, because my father was so driven to achieve his personal goals that he left after getting my mother pregnant, never to return, or pay a cent – following only his dreams of success, leaving a family in his wake.

I’m no Beyonce, I didn’t make Lemonade. It’s taken me the better half of fifty years to make sense of my father’s decision to leave my mom and me. I’ve had to work with feelings of insecurity and the pain of knowing I’ve unwittingly passed some of these anxieties and abandonment worries onto my children.

When it comes to giving, I’ve learned it cannot be separated from receiving. Our ideas and beliefs are often entangled with what we want and what we are willing to receive. What do you or your father believe is o.k. give and or receive? With my dad I wanted the moon, but he didn’t have dust to spare. I admit, I’m slow on the uptake in understanding then articulating what is available vs. what they are willing to give.

I can buy the heck out of a present, but authentic connection takes more than gifts. It takes care, empathy, and acceptance.

As Father’s Day comes, most of us think about connecting with our fathers and father figures. It’s a day that challenges us to understand what they believe – were they raised with strict rules about how to provide, what to provide and how parenting would be measured by their job, their income, their status in society? Or were they free to pursue their passion, free to leave the confines of their family of origin? Did they make it big in the eyes of their own father? Or do they find themselves lacking?

Each of our fathers lives somewhere on that continuum from selfless, obligated, duty-filled family man to narcissistic, self-conceited, careless sperm donor.

I believe all men want to be the hero of their story. As children we are informed by the choices they make and the decisions that impact our lives for better and for worse. And if we choose to be parents, we are faced with deciding what we want to share, pass on and change where we are able.

I have friends who adore and admire their fathers and want nothing more than to be just like them in their dedication to family and life purpose. I have friends who are dream dads. I also have a friend whose ex-husband went missing four years ago and hasn’t spoken to his children since. I have friends whose ex-husbands require restraining orders. I have a friend who is sitting in hospice awaiting his father’s death. This may attest to the fact that I have a wide variety of friends, but more likely that each of us have unique relationships with family and fathers. They are often not scripted by Hallmark, nor do they fit easily on a calendar.

I needed a nudge from a girlfriend to write about this topic since it wasn’t even on my mind. When I was wrestling with what I might say, I had a dream about my grandfather. I only have two memories of him.

The first one is visiting him out in the field and him trying to get me to climb up to him in the giant International Harvester combine. I couldn’t do it. I was too small, and it was too high.

The second one was when he took me to the Adrian Mall for a piece of Russell Stover chocolate. He let me pick out my own piece from the gorgeous glass case and we sat in front of the little fountain that anchored the shopping mall and savored our rich treats.

I awoke crying, “Papa, I miss you. Why did you have to leave so early?” I needed your help, so much, to deal with my parents’ choices. As I lay weeping with a grief, I hadn’t known before, I cried myself back to sleep. When I awoke, I felt a strange feeling of peace. I looked at my grandmother’s wedding ring that I wear (see video on the giftsthatchangeus.com website that explains how it is one of my most prized gifts.) I twisted it around my finger and realized that I also love it because it was chosen by my grandfather, for my grandmother.

I was wearing a piece of the paternal love I thought I had spent my life missing.

As you contemplate the fathers in your life, I hope you can honor the father you have, the father you wanted, and the fathering you need, and to give that to yourself or another. I have long since forgiven my father, who cannot forgive himself, and therefore blames me for the problems in his life. I don’t have to punish him or myself. The gift of appreciating someone in full total, with their back stories, their lies, their well-meaning intentions, along with their highest self is a gift we give them and ourselves. I wish you the ability to celebrate with words of gratitude, gestures of appreciation and gifts that connect.

Here are some ideas for the father in your life would enjoy a material gift.

Toto Toilet
I’ve never met a man who didn’t love to sit on the crapper and these are the best money can buy