The Last Minute, Late Night Ramblings of a Loving Son

Let me preface this by saying: I love my dad. Anything I write here is merely meant as critique. Not criticism.

He’s always been there for my sisters and me. He’s been steady and dependable. He’s always had a great job and been able to provide his share for us.

He’s a good man and a good father. And I’ve learned a lot about a lot from him. I get my music taste from him. We have similar interests and nerdisms.

However, as I’ve become an adult in my own right, I’ve reflected back on some of the things my parents have done. Their parenting methods and personalities as I remember them from growing up.

And with this prompt, two specific things come to mind as it pertains to my father’s impact on my life.

For starters, my dad had a strange definition of balance.

My mother was always the hardass on my sisters and me. Whether it was schoolwork or piano lessons or sports, she was the one pushing and prodding. She was the one who expected good grades and doled out most punishments.

Now, I also love my mother, and I think she did the best she knew how, but this is about my dad.

My dad was soft on us. Very soft. So soft, in fact, that he often set himself up as the “good guy” and my mother as the “bad guy” without ever realizing it. I’ve spoken to him about this fairly extensively as an adult, and his reasoning was, “Well, she was always so hard on you guys, that I felt I needed to balance that out.”

The problem with that though, was it didn’t balance out my mom. Not really. It just made us gravitate to him and alienate her. This became especially evident with my younger sister’s frayed relationship with my mom. My mother pushed and pushed and pushed with my sister. Pushed her mostly to keep playing high school softball despite my sister’s reticence to continue. She’d lost the love for it, but sticking it out seemed more important to my mom. Or at least that’s how it came across.

But again, this is about my dad.

What ended up happening is that my sister viewed my dad as her favorite parent and ended up resenting my mom. According to his account of those events, he strongly disagreed with my mother’s approach. However, any opposition he had to her methods, he kept to himself. He could have pushed back or at least pushed back harder, but instead, he kept his own council, and avoided the confrontation.

To this day, my sister’s relationship with my mom is frayed. I don’t think it’s beyond repair, but the distance is in no small part because of my father’s inaction. The worst part is, I don’t know if he fully realizes that yet.

My father far too often keeps things to himself. I think it bottles up and releases in short bursts of misplaced frustration. To be clear, he’s never been violent. Not with me. Not with my sisters. And certainly not with my mother (She’s a third-degree black belt. If he hit her, he’d quickly regret it, I think.). However, he does often get frustrated with technology and yells at the TV something fierce when it doesn’t cooperate. Which is somewhat ironic, considering that he’s an electrical engineer with 30ish years’ experience, and knows more about how a lot of tech works than I do.

Thing is though, there’s one thing I think he bottles up more than anything else. It’s something he doesn’t ever talk about. Something he wouldn’t even tell me about until I was maybe fifteen, when he finally deemed me mature enough to know.

He went through something with his own father that tore him up inside. He felt like he’d betrayed his dad in a moment of need. When he told me the story, so much about him clicked into place.

I barely knew my grandfather. I’d only met him when I was very young. Too young to remember, but apparently, he’d struggled with a litany of mental health issues. I believe the diagnosis was something akin to paranoid schizophrenia. He became a danger to himself and others, and my dad…well, my dad had to testify in court to get him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility.

He shouldn’t blame himself. From everything I know of it, he did the right thing. He did the only thing he could in a rough situation. But I know he does. Or he did.

Just as importantly, he’s terrified that he’ll end up in the same situation as his father before him. He’s always had a tendency toward paranoia, (Just last year he insisted on sending me iodine pills for fear of nuclear war following the invasion of Ukraine) but he’s never shown any of the other symptoms, as far as I know.

I truly believe that he’ll be alright. All signs point to that outcome, but he has always been wary of his father’s fate. Wary…and cagey.

Since the first time he told me, I don’t know if we’ve ever spoken about it directly or openly.

Now, how has all of this impacted me? What have I learned?

Frankly, I’m not sure I’ll ever know just how much these particular things have impacted me or my relationship with my dad, but I do know that intend to learn from his missteps.

One day, when I eventually, hopefully, have children of my own, I know that I’ll want to be open and honest about what I’m feeling, what I’m going through. I know that I’ll strive every day to be a true balancing force for my partner.

But most importantly, I know that I will carry on all the positives from my dad. All the great things he taught me. The work ethic my parents instilled. The cool things we built. The great adventures we’ve had.

And above all else: the love.

Super cheesy ending, I know. But it's 5am and I've been up all night for work, can you blame me?

P.S.: Now I wanna go call my dad, but it's WAY too early... or too late...I'll call him later.