Bea V. Larsen . . . .Commentaries |
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Bea V. Larsen is a Senior Mediator at the Center for Resolution of Disputes in |
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Memories of Fathers I have Known This entry was posted on 6/19/2008 10:40 PM and is filed under Personally Speaking. When 11 years old, I cut my own hair, snipping off long locks to create bangs, and was actually rather pleased with the outcome. My mother did not hide her dismay. Tears. But when my father came home and was brought to my side to view the damage, my spirits soared, for even faced with his wife’s disapproval, he said: I like it very much. She’s very pretty. An important moment for me, if remembered more than sixty years later. (And eventually the bangs grew out, for mother was right, not a good look for me.) I write this on Father’s Day, still filled with gratitude. But as I search for other childhood memories of him, I realize that except for his place at Sunday dinners, I have few. For as I was growing up, he was more of an absence than a presence. As a child of the Depression, I was too young to understand when we lost our home to foreclosure. Both parents spent long hours at work to keep bread on the table. Then as life began to ease, came the horrors of the holocaust, World War II, my older brother’s entry into the army, and the detonation of atomic bombs. When together, these were the events that commanded our family’s attention during my teen years. As the war ended, I left home for college, to return only as a visitor. The perhaps idealized memory I hold is of a quiet kind man, always with a newspaper in hand, who smiled whenever he saw me. I grew up believing he loved and approved of me, unconditionally. A gift fully appreciated only much later in life as I witness the struggle of two close friends who live with constant reminders of their father’s relentless disapproval. The other father I have known well is the man I married. Len strove to be a father like my own, and mostly he was, until he wasn’t. In the early 1970s, as the Viet Nam war raged and the conversation at our dinner table and the campus at which he taught roiled with dissent, the sexual revolution was in full sway for our teenagers. As parents seeking to adjust to the times, we were in turmoil, trying to understand but still hold to standards we thought were sound. When Len came home one day and found one of our sons upstairs with a girl friend, he told him it must never happen again, or he must leave. It was our house, so our rules. I silently acquiesced to his edict, agreeing with his reasons, if less sure about the threat, but alert to the anger with which his quick decision was made, knowing some but not all of the sources. Hurt, but equally determined and unwilling to abide by our rules, our son moved with his girlfriend to a tiny apartment (guess who paid the rent?) until he left for college. Although the relationship of father and son eventually healed, and I was able to rationalize and accept my silent compliance, Len was never able to forgive himself for his child’s exile from our home. And our son still carries the scar. The child grown to adult maturity learns to place parents in the context of their times and their personal history, but the very nature of malleable memory allows us to both glorify and demonize. In any case, memories, accurate or not, effect who we become. Would I as a teenager in the 1940s have defied my father? Likely not. The 1970s were characterized by the defiance of youth. And for parents today, is it anything goes, just stay safe? |
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