#106 - Ghosts of My Father

First off, Happy Father's Day to all of the dads out there.

This Father's Day found me somewhat reflective. First of all, I had to work much of the day. Teresa has been sick for a week, so I've also tried to juggle doing what I can around the house and seeing to her needs. Needless to say, our original plans for the day were definitely subjected to change.

For some reason, this year I also spent some time thinking about my own father who was, in a sense, the father I never knew.

I saw my father for the last time in the spring of 1962, the spring after I turned five. I left to go to kindergarten, and when I got home he was no longer there, at least not physically. But for years, he was always with me.

Perhaps I should say that the idea of my father was always with me since, being five at the time he left, my memories of our time together are not all that plentiful.

At the time, the explanation from my mother was that my father decided he could not handle having a family. So he left. The truth, it turns out, was apparently something much different.

Suffice to say that it appears criminal acts were involved, leading to a stretch in prison. Details, though, are a bit hard to come by fifty years after the fact. What is a fact is that for years I blamed myself for my father's departure because I had no other story to fall back on.

Beyond that, however, I think that I never really learned how to be a son. In some ways, I think I tried to grow up at age five, when I wasn't really ready to be grown up.

The flip side of that is that is that I never really learned how to apply the lessons and experiences that come from a father-son relationship when I became a father. As a child without a father to bond with, I withdrew and became somewhat distant as a means of protecting myself.

The result is that I sometimes have trouble getting close to my own son. Some of that is that I don't really know how to relate to him sometimes because of his autism. Most of it is my own difficulties in getting close to others.

Now to cut myself a little slack. I think I am a better father to my son than my father was to me. The main reason is that I am still around, so there is always a chance to get it right. We occasionally argue, we sometimes laugh, we each sometimes dig in our heels. But through it all, we are still together in a way my father and I never were - as father and son.

#77 - Missing Old Friends

I find myself feeling a bit melancholy tonight. Teresa is sleeping, and Christopher is watching television, and I am alone with my thoughts. Checking out Facebook tonight, I am drawn to thoughts of old friends.

In a sense, I suppose I use the term friend a bit loosely. When I knew most of the people who crowd my thoughts, I didn't really know how to be a friend. I didn't know how to invite them into my life or how to be a part of theirs.

So I guess what I am really drawn to is thoughts of lost opportunities. I find myself thinking of people I once worked with, people I wish I had known better at the time. I also find myself thinking of people who slipped out of my life.

Of course, things change, and change is not always bad. If things had not changed, if I had not kept moving from place - running from something or in search of something - I would never have met Teresa, and we wouldn't have Christopher. But even good change can be tinged with a bit of pain.

Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with a good many people I knew in my younger days. At the same time, it has shown me a glimpse of what might have been if I had been more approachable or better able to connect with those around me.

Connection is a big word with my therapist, both making connections and dealing with those connections that have been broken. Making connections is something I have struggled with my entire life. I'm sure she would suggest that connections broken early on have something to do with that.

I never got close or let others get close to me. In a way, it is a variation on the old Groucho Marx line, "I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member." In a way, I applied that to friendships.

In some sense, Facebook has allowed me to turn back time, but most of the friendships are filtered through distance in addition to time. In a way, I suppose that makes sense. When I was younger, my relationships were all filtered through emotional distance. Now the distance is physical. I'm not sure one feels any better than the other.

I hope in the coming days any of you reading this will let your friends know that you are thinking of them. I just did.