father's day
I wish I could say something nice about my father today. Bring up a cheery memory and bask in the warmth of it. Feel proud and noble, connected to an endless chain of fathers and sons stretching back to Adam. Something manifest. Something destined. Something good and true.
Really.
But I just sit here at the keyboard, and wonder what kind of sly sob story he's telling his new wife today, his new friends, his new church, anyone who will listen to and feel sorry for him. His sons have rejected him, especially his cruel, thoughtless, angry eldest son (the gay one? Really? Oh, that's such a shame), and on father's day, it's just so sad... Isn't that a sad thing, for a father to be alone on father's day? Isn't that the saddest thing in the whole fucking world? Can we do shots of his crocodile tears with some salt and a twist of lime?
If you feel sorry for him, he has you where he wants you. He'll slither up into your head along the silvery-slime trail of your pity, nesting in your brain pan, laying eggs in your compassion. And if you love him, well, that's a tether, bit and bridle that he'll yank you around with until you're broken, jawless, and then he'll just drag around your corpse, smearing the black rot of your love on his face like war paint. He's his own tribe, a tribe of one, and there's no room for others.
I made my decision. I won't be a trophy he can hang on the wall in the den, between the hunting rifles, above the zebra skin. I won't look good for him. I won't let him use me. I won't let him wear me like a glove, puppet strings making me bow and smile, mouthing his words and never wondering, never wondering what it's like... to be free.
I made my decision to be free.
No matter the scratchings at the door in the middle of the night, the mewling, the big eyes moist and full of pathos. I won't be a part of his passion play.
No matter the years of silence. He can bide his time. He can whisper things in my brother's ear, things that wend their way to mine, depth charges meant only for me. He can leave comments on the Internet like dung, like spoor, marking his territory with little piles of circular logic, hate masked as reason, lies masked as Divinity, shit and God mixed up together in the mud... would you like a mud pie? Oh, he can bide his sweet time.
I expose him to the light.
Forgive him again and again.
Let him fall to inconsequential dust in the back of my head, a daily mantra, an exorcising psalm, a mandala of protection, a prayer of absolution.
I can say something nice about my father today.
He didn't kill me, or my spirit, even though he tried every day for decades. He made me who I am, because I made the choice to never be like him. I made the choice to love. I made the choice to be exactly who God made me to be. I made the choice to never give up. I made the choice to take risks. I daily choose the path of mindfulness and not mindlessness.
He made me who I am today, and I couldn't have asked for a better anti-role model.