As I walked into the kitchen that final time, bag of collective worldly belongings in tow, I was confronted with something for which I was not prepared. Hours earlier, sitting on my bed wondering how this would all play out, I hadn't considered this. I had steeled myself for anger, resentment...indifference? But when I walked into that room and saw tears in my father's eyes, I faltered for a beat. This man had been somewhere else in all capacities, save physically, for the last decade—why show emotion now, when I'm leaving? He wasn't the worst dad in the world, and I don't harbor some deep-seeded resentment for him anywhere in my body. He simply wasn't present. Oh yes, I'd look up from the floor where I'd be watching whatever served as childhood TV propaganda at the time and see him in his recliner, likely with a Marlboro and a Pepsi within arms' reach. But he was not present in the sense of interacting with me, supporting me, mentoring me... In all honesty I can recall one singular day when he looked over his shoulder to the back seat after picking me up and asked, "How was school?" I was so shocked I couldn't even string together a meaningful response. Maybe it's a lot of MY fault; I mean, I didn't exactly ask him many questions. I didn't require anyone to "parent" me at that age, aside from, ya know, pay the bills, feed and clothe me, get me to school, etc. Had I tried to be more involved in our little family unit, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe instead of choosing to walk out that door, I would be playing catch with him, discussing girls, hoops, politics, anything. Maybe I wouldn't think back on the longest stretch of my childhood and wish that there were some resounding paternal impacts or at least something worth remembering. Instead I have white noise. Just years and years of kkkkchhhhhhhh, like static. They say that people tend to block out traumatic events or periods in their life (these days I attribute this solely to alcohol), but I don't ever remember things being so bad that my mind would have done that. Don't get me wrong, it was no picnic for me when I was young, but I'm an accepting person by definition. I took what I got, figured it was just the hand I was dealt, and did the best with what life gave me. It wasn't until I got older that I started to realize that it did not have to be this way. Normal kids at my normal school would talk about their normal lives. "Your family has game night? Awe, that's cool". I got old enough to figure out that the people raising me were not normal, and that's all I wanted out of life at that particular narrow-sighted and naïve age. So I left. I left that red-eyed, broken man standing in that farmhouse kitchen that day; I left him with his abusive and biased wife and their children to seek out what normal feels like. To this day I have no idea what normal "feels" like, I'm not sure anyone in the world can really articulate that feeling, but I do know that I learned one thing from my father. And that is simply this-No one is going to tell you how to be a great father, but I can guarantee that no matter how much you pay for the house, clothes, toys, and schools for your children, if you're not there in mind, body, heart, and intention, they won't remember you by anything but white noise.
