I spend a lot of time thinking about my father. I find his face in the mirror with increasing frequency. I imagine talking with him over thoughts I’m having.
I’m paying bills, folding laundry, sweeping and mopping. What’s it all mean, I think. I’ll call Dad.
Hey, let me call you back. I’m playing a guy in Uruguay.
Yeah! Cool!
45 minutes. Nada. Dad has taken up internet chess. He plays with Homie, who describes his style as methodical and quiet. In part, no doubt, because Homie typically wins their games, Dad has jumped into relearning chess. He spends a fair bit of time playing virtually.
Kid comes home. Saws off a piece of bread, slobs some butter. ‘Sup.
I tell him about the old man blowing me off. I predictably slide into lamenting the demise of natural communication to the Techazzle Dazzle. The way playing a guy in Uruguay beats out talking on the phone.
You think too much, he says. Heads to his room. Fires up the game.
My relationship with my father has been unusual. We have been, at times, the best of friends — we’ve also struggled for the patience to stay in a room together. There are a couple famous wrecks behind us.
Until recently, I considered my relationship with my son to be a singular achievement of my life. The thing I’ve done best, perhaps, in my whole life. Lately, though, our relationship has gone a bit, what, predictable. A touch sour. I realize I’m ill-equipped for his next phase, and the impacts it will have on me. On me and Kacey. How I go forward without him.
One obvious challenge in these relationships is the rank similarity of the parties. We find so much of ourselves in our fathers and sons that we naturally recoil at the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Natural aversion, no?
There’s also the depth of the love we have for our kids. The game-changing hormonal component, that can turn us to soup in moments of simply watching them — or crack a gritted tooth in anger. The knowledge that we would die for them. These are more powerful than the huge majority of our other human interactions, so they bring an intensity to the relationships that is sometimes hard to handle.
Crow Island 