I've been thinking about what it was like being raised by parents with mental illness and autism spectrum issues. I've dwelt on what it meant for me, how I've struggled with feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, my own mental illness, and my challenges in being a partner. I've looked at how the beast that is my mental illness has battled my mother's beast, and perhaps obliquely I have shed light on my father as well.
I've chosen not to spend much time on my relationship with my father because for all intents and purposes I don't have one. Although I do not believe it is due to my gender, sex, orientation, etc., I'm sure that there is a level to which that does affect our relationship. The deeper issues however are rooted in my father's own mental health issues, his anxiety, his marital relationship, and his own wounded self that was never parented with the love it needed and deserved.
He, like my mother, knew from an early age that his birth was unplanned, and he was marginalized within his own family. He started school early, went through puberty very early, and was extraordinarily bright and largely unmotivated to succeed. He graduated 5th in his class, ironically my mother was valedictorian of the same class, though he could have easily outranked or outscored her if he had wanted to. He was interested in science, and adult things, and bringing alcohol to the school dances and spiking the punch. He was brighter than his years, yet more immature than kids several grades below him. He struggled to fit in on a daily basis.
He was also the first person in his family to ever go to college and even went on to get a Master's Degree. He followed the path that he was supposed to. But during my childhood he would spend summers doing what he loved. My father was a chemistry teacher, and eventually college professor, and he was good at it, highly liked and respected at the junior high school level. But every summer he would find work in a restaurant, or he would cook and bake at home, or make things with wood, or brew beer. He was and is extremely creative, yet he chose a path of rigidity, and schedules, and inflexibility.
And like every Aspie, he both loves and hates the confines, the rules, and the discipline. He is a man of structure and he is man with a free spirit that is trapped by his self imposed restrictions.
I understand.
And so, I've been thinking about how this has translated into my own parenting. How have I brought my father into my role as a father?
I'd like to tell you that I have been able to only bring that highly creative and randomly nurturing part of my dad into my own parenting style. And in many ways I have. But of course, I have brought the rigidity, the structure, the passive-aggressiveness, the anxiety, and the fear of failure too. It's true, I have parented my sons as both a nurturer and a dictator.
And I believe that in some ways this is how all fathers are with their kids. We are funny, and goofy, and get admonished by our wives for being "worse than the kids." We are grown men trying to be comfortable in a world of toys, and baby food, and diapers, and bedtimes, and not being the man in a suit and tie that the world expects us to be. And sometimes it is just really fun to go running through the yard with the hose, or making fart jokes, or watching cartoons, or whatever.
And then the world pushes back. Our "serious expressions in the middle of the night" to quote Peter Pan, force us to remember the way our fathers dealt with our silliness when we were little boys. We remember being too loud, interrupting the game, getting into things we weren't supposed to, and the consequences that followed. We pull ourselves back into our paternal personae and teach our kids that men are more stoic, and sometimes frightening, and largely unpredictable. One minute, laughing and playing around, the next threatening to remove valued possessions for no apparent reason.
Now, for me this unpredictability is what I have amplified in my life, in part due to my own mental illness, and in part due to the parenting I had as a child. I learned very early on that my father's emotional state was in a constant state of flux, though centered largely around anger and disappointment. I learned to be a man that was grouchy, and anxious, and wary with occasional forays into lavish gift giving, extraordinary care for baking, and a devotion to someone if they were in any way hurt or ill. And sure enough, that is how I have been as a father much of the time.
I have tried to be a different dad, and for obvious reasons I am, but my parenting personality is deeply entrenched in my formative understandings of what it means to be a dad from a particular era. My father seemed to channel much of the 1940's and 1950's of his youth, but also had a higher degree of liberal 1970's when it came to certain matters. But here's where it gets interesting. My father's father, my grandfather, didn't have a father in his young life. The stories are complicated and deserve more time and space, but my grandfather never knew his biological father, knew several stepfathers, and was on his own by his early teens. He had many strong relationships with male peers, but not a father-son one with a relative.
So, 4 1/2 years after my Aunt was born, this unexpected little boy arrived, and my grandfather had no idea what to do. And if you remember from earlier in the story, my dad was not the easiest little fellow in the world to begin with. He was ultimately not like his father, though he tried, but was more comfortable with his mother and probably felt more accepted by her. He stayed indoors with his mom, cooking, cleaning, etc., while my aunt, a true "daddy's girl" traded chores with him so that she could spend more time with her father outside, like doing yard work, gardening, and purposefully messing up the lawn mower so he would have to come over and fix it.
It was a complicated, and yet very simple arrangement for the 1940's and I suspect that it was one of the many ways that my father's and consequently my own trajectory was set in motion.
My father and I are indeed very similar people, not only intellectually and emotionally, but physically as well. And therein lays the true crux of the matter for me. When I look in the mirror, I see my father. We could be carbon copies of each other, and it's not exactly what I expected when I began my transition into adulthood. And even if it is entirely subconscious, I live into the look and become that man that I knew as a child. I become a man who lives within himself, unsure of how to be a father, of how to be a husband, or of how to fulfill the "right" male roles in society. And the irony is not lost on me in this matter either.
How is it that I, who began life one way, and changed so completely, would have the exact same issues with how to be a father as my own father did? In some ways the answers seem obvious, that physically I became a man much later in life than most men do. But I've always known myself to be male, so even though the body didn't always match, my mind was decidedly "all boy" from as far back as I can remember. I may have lived outwardly as a female, but inwardly I have always been male.
And then there is my father, outwardly male, profoundly so by the age of 9, doing "women's work" from as early as he could remember and wanting a close relationship with his father that was somehow just always out of reach. Even when my grandfather was in his 80's you could feel the tension between him and my father, how the empty space between them would always be larger than the connections they had. They were two very similar yet different men, structured, yet creative, anxious, but often grandiose. And their legacies of fathering have been passed to me and play out on a daily basis.
But what if I wanted to change? Could I? Would I? Have I actually changed and don't recognize it?
There are larger answers that I can and will seek, but there is a shorter, more profound answer that I would prefer to give for now.
Today, my older son who is 9, cried at the ski slope because his friends were "dumping" him to ride the T-bar and he only had a Pony Lift pass. I initially responded with a lecture, an attitude of my own, promises that he would get the pass next week, and that he should be grateful and supportive of his Mom, because she was on skis for the first time so that they could do something together. And this really only served to make matters worse.
So, I stopped looking in the mirror, and I looked at my own heart, and what I would have wanted when I was his age, experiencing my own father's inabilities and anxieties. And I went and got him the upgraded T-Bar pass. And he rode up, and skied down victoriously multiple times. And I realized that the measure of a father was not in his ability to make his children's lives safer, or logical, or fair. I realized that the measure of a father is his true and unconditional love for his children regardless of who they are, where they are, what they are doing, or why they have chosen their paths.
My job as a father is complicated, especially when there will be those in our society who will claim that I can never truly be a father because I am not truly a man, and yes, there are people like that out there. And I fear for how my sons may be treated because of this. But not much. Because I know that my job as their father is to love them, just love them, no matter what. And they are surrounded by a loving family, a community that is accepting, and a faith community that is affirming. They are held and lifted up in love every day and this is giving them the strength and resiliency to become incredible men.
And so the answer to my previous questions, is yes, I have changed without realizing it. Why? Because tonight before I went to the show, my older son, my beautiful boy, came and hugged me, and kissed me, and wished me good luck.
Thank you for joining me on the journey.
Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.
-Ari
No comments:
Post a Comment