Soul of a Father

Father was not necessarily a bad pater begetter, but he was emotionally complex, and poetically ambiguous.

Multi-talented was he - musician, calligrapher, carpenter, herbalist and a connoisseur of the art of disappearing.

They say he was an energetic and animated guitar player in his youth, out with his pals in the band, when not learning carpentry, perhaps with his begetter before him...I know not, I never met the guy, he passed on to Glory before I came along.

I do not know what changed all of that...maybe when he discovered the art of begetting children...all six of them...plus two which he inherited as part of the original arrangement of wedded bliss. A potpourri of the beginning of a gathering storm of sibling rivalry, jealousy, resentment...swimming in a sea of different degrees of brainpower vying to be the king and queen of the fragile glass menagerie...a strange and diverse collection of human specimen.

In my entire eighteen years with them (with scary bouts of returning and leaving in-between until the year of finding myself) I never saw him play the guitar...the greatest regret of my life.

Did his offspring kill the flame of youth ad wonder within his soul. Did he have to surrender his reason for living, abandon his joy, exchange his dreams for the preservation of the tiny ungrateful souls who never actually knew, or saw his sacrifice for what it was...Responsibility!

Now that I am grown...I begin to wonder if that was why he took to the drink. By day he was off foraging for work...weekends he wiled away at the bar/pub. He spent little time with us...but we always had a roof over our heads, and never went hungry.

He was not a cruel begetter, nor deliberately absent in flesh - mostly. But the road he took to fatherhood was shadowed, winding through grief and ghosts. He arrived with open arms...birthing little burdens too heavy to lay down...

Did he feel he had sold his soul, exchanged freedom and a carefree existence for a life nevermore to be unchained. He stood at the threshold of fatherhood, not as guide but as a gatekeeper...bearing keys forged in silence and sorrow. He did not fail to love, but the shape of his love was carved from darker stone.

He was not a bad father, only a wounded one...fatherhood is old scars and half-remembered lessons, teaching of caution, love...and maybe a gentle loss of himself.

Looking back, I wish I had understood the man behind the mask of parent. What had caused those cowering weekends when the monster of drink changed a gentle creature into a dragon spitting fire. When I wished him dead...though I was one of his favorite children.

He did not fail to be a father, but he arrived there through pain, and pain shaped the way he held us.

I hope that he can hear me when I pray, telling him that I now know...what he sacrificed to keep us safe.

And that I finally understand.