Two roads converge

A boy is not born with a map. His life's destination is not fixed. In the early years, a growing youth has little say in their own navigation. But as life unfolds, his journey takes a path. A course that can diverge from the roads others take. And with each step, the map becomes solid. It isn't a tool to guide your future path; it is a chart of your past course.

I'm 36 now. A new father. And a greenhorn member of the club my father joined when I was born. I am close to him. I like the feeling. However, it wasn't always this way. Call it an unexpected destination in life's journey. That's the nature of existence. You start where you start. In my case, New York. And then you progress, sometimes by design, mostly by chance. And wherever you go, there you are.

I should start with my earliest memories.

When I was young, my father was a quiet man. An American. An only child. He didn't say much to me when he was home. And he was rarely home. Neither was I. At least since I can remember. We lived in England. And there, fathers from well-pedigreed families, or the rare colonial family with money, sent their sons away to long-established boarding schools.

I wasn't happy about it. But I knew no alternative. And even if I did, it would have been knowledge with little use. Eight-year-olds are not granted much agency in their life decisions. Your parents know what's best for you, regardless of your feelings on the matter. You might spot roads that look worth travelling. But like a dog on a walk, your parents' leash determines your direction.

In England, the British upper class believes that raising offspring is not a parental responsibility. At least for those who can afford to see their children without hearing them. This delegation of child-rearing responsibilities, so alien in most cultures, was reinforced by the unsaid but well-enforced, private school dictum, "in loco parentis."

In the US, parents of school-aged children are impressed into PTAs. In England, parents are expected to keep their distance.

Once a year, a house master might chat with the progenitors of his charges, but the conversation was general. On occasion, the parents of pupils who risked expulsion due to poor behavior or worse examination results might be included in discussions about the future of the miscreant. But as long as the boy stayed on the straight and narrow, the sole parental responsibility was to write checks.

So my father was merely a spectator to my progress. At best, an occasional cheerleader. Others were my guides.

To me, that was how everyone lived - theirs not to reason why. Not that reason had much to do with it. Independent thinking was something Americans did. It was rarely encouraged in English children.

My father did have one interest in my education: exams. My scores ranged from As to Bs to a C in French. I was pleased with my grades. My father saw anything less than perfection as failure.

It was a rare moment of friction that stands out for its infrequency. I thought I would win his approval. Instead, I had to bear his disappointment. For months, our estrangement gnawed at my sense of justice. And I continued my journey with peevish self-righteousness.

Otherwise, my life was comfortable. I lived in a big house in London. All the fathers wore suits to work. The mothers stayed home. The only exception was Mrs Percival-Smithe. She was a surgeon, which seemed unlikely until you realized she was American. My mother is also an American, but she subscribed to the philosophy that "when in Rome … " And in her Britannic Rome, the father made all critical life decisions.

So my mother consented to my father's decision to send her eight-year-old son to a boarding school. It was she who drove me the 60 miles to and from my Oxford prep school. At thirteen, I was off to what the British misleadingly call a 'public school.' It wasn't open to the general public

At this stop on my journey, I was closer to home. However, it made little difference. I didn't live with my parents for eight months of the year, barring half-terms and some long weekends on furlough.

Letters kept the lines of communication open. Mine were fact-dense, unemotional reports from the various way stations I passed through as the years rolled on. Hers were breezy updates on her social whirl. I rarely received anything from my father. And even when school was out, my father stayed far from the road I travelled.

On holidays, I saw more of my mother than I did of my father. In the winter, she took me skiing. My old man did not come. He said it was because skiing made his glasses fog up. Fair enough. I trusted my father to have a good reason for all he did, even if I didn't understand the logic.

This estrangement from my old man continued after school. I went to university in London, but I did not live at home. The offer was there. But my father, to teach me the value of money, had made paying rent a condition of living under his roof and eating his crust. I demurred. If I were going to pay rent anyway, I might as well live free of his household's rules.

On graduation, I added physical distance to the emotional gap. I packed two suitcases and left for New York. For three years, until they also moved to New York, I didn't see my parents. Sadly, proximity did not lead to emotional closeness. I spent Christmas Day with them and chauffeured them to visit my father's father. After he died, I saw them less often.

I would occasionally talk with my mother on the phone. But my father was largely absent. I didn't think about it much. I was young and unattached. I worked. I went to bars. I had good friends and romantic relationships. Life was rich. I was an adult. And if my father and I shared no commune, then so be it.

Then I met my wife. I soon knew that there was something different about this relationship. I wanted it to last. To my astonishment, my heart told me to marry her. And my head did not object. To my joy, she was interested in the proposition. We talked about having kids. This was new ground for me. Before, I had been attached to my bachelorhood. And I hadn't seen the point of children. But she retired those positions.

Eight months after our first date, I waited in a church anteroom, steps from the altar. The ceremony was scheduled for noon. I paced. How long would I have to wait? Or had she changed her mind - literally at the eleventh hour? I asked my best man what time he thought she would arrive. She was already there. As were my parents.

We wanted children right away. But nature moves at her own pace. It took four years, but I finally watched my daughter's birth. If you have been there, you know. If you haven't, it is a joy so pure I can't describe it.

I called my father and told him I had good and bad news. The good news was that he had just become a grandfather. The bad news was that my daughter looked just like him. It was an easy joke, as I also look a lot like my father. And you could see the genetic line continue.

The similarity used to bother me. Even in the years I rarely saw him, I looked at him in the mirror every day. I wanted to be my own man, but I had a twin, even if that twin was 36 years older. The same age difference as between me and my oldest.

New fatherhood gave me an unexpected appreciation of my own father. For so long, he had travelled a parallel but distant road to mine. But now he was close in mind, even when he wasn't physically there.

Looking at my child, I reflected on my infancy. I could imagine my father holding me for the first time. I could feel the love and tenderness I knew he had, even if he rarely showed it. Most of all, I wanted to apologize to him for being the monstrous ingrate I had been.

He had worked hard to provide. We lived well. I had received the best education money could buy. He had never hit me. Never been cruel. And he was always honest about the man he was.

He had tried to teach me the value of money. He had cajoled me into thinking I could achieve more than I thought. And he had saved my academic career.

At sixteen, I had reached a fork in the road. I was set to take the wrong path. I called to inform my father that I was leaving school at the end of that term. He told me not to do anything rash. He was coming to see me.

This was an unexpected development. He now maintained a place in Paris for tax reasons. Nonetheless, he came. The next day, he showed up at my school. And took me to lunch. He did not berate or lambaste me. He didn't question my sanity. Instead, he looked me in the eye and asked what my plans were.

I glibly replied that I would get a job. He asked where I planned to live. I made a casual response about a flat. Or something. I was on shaky ground. Living anywhere but under my parents' roof or at my boarding school was an abstract proposition. He asked how I intended to pay for this lodging and all the other expenses I would incur.

I replied that I thought he might help out. He firmly closed the door on that possibility.

While contemplating this development. I realized I had not given the matter the robust attention it deserved. There were downsides I had not considered. I considered them now. And showing the mental flexibility of youth, I agreed that leaving school precipitously was rash. For the rest of the meal, now that the principal topic had been considered and removed from the agenda, we talked about this and that. It was the first adult conversation I had had with my dad.

We now have adult conversations at least once a week. I speak more to him now than I used to talk to my teenage girlfriends when I was away at school. Our chats are easy, rich, and fun. I have learned much about him. I had him pegged as a conservative with a well-developed sense of how things should be. But he turned out to be a live-and-let-live social libertarian who thought people should be free to be who they were born to be.

We agree that the government should play a role in the citizens' welfare. We debate how much. Our calls end with mutual congratulations on solving the world's problems, along with the rueful admission that no one is listening to us.

Sometimes, I regret not being closer to my father when I was younger. However, I am grateful that I have come to know and love him, even though it took time and fatherhood to get there. If my life is a metaphorical journey to Damascus, then becoming a parent was my epiphany. And the reward of the journey is a bond to my father not likely to be rent asunder.