This is a difficult column. It is addresses to all fathers, or those who wish to read it. Yesterday I did not celebrate my parenthood; I mourned how far short I fell. And loved the outreach I had from each of my three children.
I have not failed to love them. Or to tell them how much I do. This is already a change from my own childhood. Sadly, it was clear that my mother did not love me at all. And I am one of those many American children, especially those born male, whose fathers never said out loud, “I love you, son (or insert your name here).”
I sensed he did. I know he was proud of me; that he said often enough. I knew I loved him at the depth a child will feel, even when the child does not know he or she feels it. I was always ready when he said, “who wants to go for a walk.” I believe my love of walking came from there. I was immensely proud of his prominence in our hometown, outsiders appeared to love him.
And yet, he was cold and unemotional at home. It was years before I learned why. Looking back, one had only to meet his parents to know they were emotional cold fish, as they say. Lots of rationality, zero warmth. As a child would, I thought I loved my paternal grandparents. They lived in Oakland, CA, in a somewhat sterile, dark apartment on the shores of Lake Merritt (once my middle name).
I loved to go there with my father to visit. Not so much because I loved to see Grandpa Adams (never Walter) or Grandma Adams (never Violet), but because I got to travel with my Dad. They had a big trundle bed that slid in under the dark wood bookcase. I loved to sleep next to my father in that bed, under a deep purple silk comforter. It was a wonderful, comfortable, warm place and I was next to Dad. A very happy memory.
But no words of love. When he died at 93 in a hospital bed, I bent and kissed his cooling head and told him, as I had before, “I love you, Dad.” Maybe he heard it, wherever he was.
But I did not learn emotions from him. When I was ten, he said to me, as we walked past our grapefruit tree to the house, “my proudest achievement in my life was that I learned to control my anger.” At the time, I thought it the great lesson he meant it to be.
Many years later, I learned from letters, notes, and journals, the price he paid for repressing who he was emotionally. He either didn’t have, didn’t see, or couldn’t give voice to any feelings at all. Not joy, not sorrow, not anger, not sadness. His feelings were funneled into a controlled rationality he saw as his highest achievement. A rationality I learned at his feet.
Combine that with my mother’s dedication to avoiding any feeling that was not “happy,” an instruction she regularly gave, my emotional vocabulary was zilch. I knew I wasn’t happy; but I had no words to describe what I was avoiding feeling. Absent words, my feelings took their toll indirectly. Looking back, I was full of rage but had no words for that. The model was no feelings; I had no way to find them, let alone talk about them, and let way alone, communicate them to anyone else.
It is no wonder my first marriage collapsed after five years. My fatherhood with my daughter, beloved to me as she was and remains, was the weekend variety. I fought for joint custody in court; lost that; wept for days when the judge’s order came. I fought the feeling that I could, should, just exit her life; it was too painful to stay there. I understood why so many men left and failed to pay child support, something many women, rightly, fought hard to change. I stayed close, paid the support, and sought as much time with her as I could get.
When I started therapy at the age of 30, I began to learn how stupid my emotional intelligence was. I had no vocabulary for feelings. Oh, I knew the words existed, but they were not part of my heart and soul; they were just words. The first few months of therapy were an explosion: anger felt like anger, love felt like love, sorrow felt like sorrow; the feelings actually began to exist in my body and in my heart. It took years to even begin to construct an emotional world, feel safe with the feelings, even a little bit safe telling them to anyone else.
I vowed to live in that emotional world with my daughter. Yes, my learned rationality often seized the moment and the emotions were hard to find. But I saw her, loved her, doted on her, “spoiled her.” (what on earth does that mean? That I treated her emotions with respect; that I did not “discipline” her, spank her, levy judgment on her, criticize her? What a useless term it is, but I have been accused of it). I thought her one of the greatest gifts I had been given. The pain and sorrow I felt not being a full time parent was deep.
I vowed if I had any other children, they would receive fulsome love from me, the emotionally open parenting I did not receive.
I failed, or, rather, I feel like I failed. For all the pouring out of love I gave and regularly told my two sons, for they were my sons then, both of them are angry at me, deeply, and rightly, so. I repeated another pattern, one I inherited from my father. I was hugely devoted, as well, to my career.
I have many memories of tender, loving, joyful interaction with them. Building a rock/sand castle at the beach together, and watching the tide overwhelm it. Sitting in the ER holding his hand as my son received stiches for a wound incurred sliding into a base at the playground. Rushing from a debate I was having on Capitol Hill to tend to my older son after a child care person burned his hands in a hot water tap at 180 degrees. Spending a month at the edge of the tub twice a day debriding those hands to prevent scar tissue from forming, then holding them as his mother wound gauze around them. Leaving a budget negotiation on Capitol Hill, having slept overnight on a couch in my suit, to be at my younger son’s soccer game; only to return to the negotiation.
Many acts of love. But I don’t kid myself. I spent ten years creating and managing a think tank. And then in a White House job, as they went from ages of 5-10 and 4-9, I was not there. I was on the porch on the phone with my deputy (who was in the office) on a Sunday afternoon, my one day off, problem solving. I would race home late at night to be able, at least, to read them to bed. I would bring them to my office on a Saturday, buy them turkey club sandwiches from the White House mess, eat at my conference table. None of it made up for the hours missed, the details of daily life I was not there for.
Nothing excuses the distraction of my work life, even when I was home. The lessons I might have conveyed, the discipline, focus, direction and teaching I might have provide. The engagement with their lives - the shopping, the schooling, the playgrounds - I hoped to have, in contrast to what I had from my father.
This is my Karma, the consequence of my actions. I live with that Karma now, in my elderhood. I was, in many ways, walking my father’s path, and his father’s fathers. I did not share parenting the way I hoped I would. While I constantly told them my love for them, it did not show up in my actions.
I left much of the parenting to their mother, as generations of American fathers have done, despite my intention when I agreed, eagerly, to have a second chance to parent. I am not proud of this. I work on the necessary repair today, hoping it sticks or at least changes the emotional distance my own actions created.
It is necessary work. Work all fathers need to be doing. It means looking at my own behavior and the Karma it created. I am on the path to repair, counseling with one of them. If I had had a chance to do that with my father, what a difference that might have made in my life.
I want the damage to stop with me.
Powerful piece, my friend. I've found that forgiving my father—recognizing that he did the best he could with the tools he had and accepting him, warts and all—has helped me accept and forgive myself.
A beautiful piece full of love, lessons and heart ache. Life is hard. Relationships are hard: there are moments are trying and then those change too moments of learning. It is the openness to the lessons that are the most importance. And that is what this piece is about. Whether your children experienced the flaws of your parenting back then is less important than them experiencing the wonder of your awareness now. You are not your father or mother just as your children are not you. One of my arguments ( there will be a connection) against conservatives fear of teaching white shame is that the dark parts of our history, if taught as lessons to be learned for change, that children can tolerate the darkness. I think it is the same with parenting. My parents, like yours, never got there and I clearly have scars from their lack. I have also risen beyond their lack. The gift that you give every day now to your children is your awareness. You are showing them, in how you are actively living your life, that change is possible. Healing is possible. Acceptance is possible. And that is one hell of a gift.