A Father’s Day Tribute
My Father passed on my 55th birthday. If his body had survived he would have been 100 years old this year going on 101. He’s a better father and friend since he passed than when he was alive.
He was highly intelligent with an incredible vocabulary (which rubbed off on me). He taught me logic and debating while using these tools to brainwash me into his way of thinking and believing — the conservative mindset. At the same time, he modeled being a free thinker. Well I could be free as long as I thought within his parameters of acceptable thinking and behaviors. Nevertheless he was proud of my intellectual prowess while he occupied his body and I felt this and am grateful.
He was very self-centered with narcissistic tendencies. He belittled my mother’s non-rational intuition as if he was admonishing a child. When I was a kid I wanted to defend my mom but didn’t know how. My dad was very fearful all his life and over-compensated by having to be “right” and angry at all costs even if that meant bullying others and “shouting them into submission.”
After he passed the shell of his fragile damaged ego fell away and he became the sweet innocent that I had seen in photographs of his childhood. We share love and occasional communication. He has told me he is proud of me especially after I published my first novel — a fantasy — The Green Man of Destiny.
This is for you Dad as you really are — not some patriarchal definition of a man afraid and always defending himself but a Dad with a boundless curiosity about everything and a dorky sense of humor.
This is for my Dad with a boundless heart and intellect exploring consciousness as a sweet curious boy in the world beyond the corporeal body.
I love you, Dad.
