I’m a person who is prone to self-reflection.  Possibly too much self-reflection. 

Today I’m thinking about how my father impacted my life. 

He didn’t appreciate art. It just didn’t catch his eye. We never went to museums on trips. He never mentioned it – but, while he spoke on the phone he would draw stars with circles around them over and over. I think he was in his forty’s when he became a deputy sheriff for St. Lawrence County, New York. Maybe all those stars meant something to him. 

He didn’t read books although there were stacks of magazines by the bathroom toilet. Sure there were Reader’s Digests but there were also catalogues for woodworking tools, fishing gear and the big Sears and Roebuck catalogue. I think in part, he had difficulty reading due to his one-room schoolhouse education. He would disdain the act of reading – actually tell us to stop reading and get annoyed that my mother liked to read. 

He mocked poetry. In the process of doing so, would quote things like “Here I sit, broken hearted went to shit and merely farted.” Ugh! I still hate that.

He only liked honky-tonk music; classical was only referred to as long-haired music.

Movies should include Roy Rogers, John Wayne or Dirty Harry (Dirty Harry – not necessarily Clint Eastwood). It was a huge event for him to go to the movies when I was a kid.  The two that I can recall him attending were “Smoky and the Bandit” and “Any Which Way But Loose” both of which he said were ok.

He didn’t dance and would go out of his way to make fun of artistic dance and say people were “showing their butt”.

He was, in his own way self-reflective in that he told and re-told his life’s stories in which he was always the hero, the victor; he was always right.

He definitely had a brand.

One redeeming quality that I admired in my father was his love of animals.  In his youth he had a pet skunk along with various other animals and frequently reflected on raising them.

When he was a young man he had a pet deer and also rescued a baby bear. Most of his pet stories ended in tragedy and I won’t belabor that point here; this is just meant to give a counterbalance to my reckoning of him. He wasn’t a two dimensional villain. 

After writing all this down… it makes me marvel at the person I am now and the person I aspire to be.  His behaviors and likes/dislikes molded me in so many different ways.

Although I appreciate dance and frankly marvel at how people have control of their bodies, I can’t dance. I can’t. Well, maybe when I’m drunk, but sober I am too much in my head and feel self-conscious. It’s bad in there.

I gravitated to art, music, movies and literature – all the ways I could quietly immerse myself into a different life. 

If you’ve read this far – know that I’ve made a certain sort of peace with my upbringing. This is just me reflecting on where I came from as a means to take stock of how fucking far I have come.  I’m proud of who I am and who I aspire to be. 

It took me a while to recognize how deeply my father was flawed.  I know now that most of his commentary on the world around him was a means to bolster he ego. Toward the end of his life, I found that I was profoundly sad for the little boy he had once been and the stunted sort of life he had lived when really he had so much potential.  It makes me want to do better.  

Dear Me,

     You’re doing just fine.  You’ve got this. I believe in you!