A lesson in fatherhood

It startles me how often my kid hears me apologize to her.

I remember being about six or seven, maybe, and pissing tears to my mom because my dad had “hurt my feelings” with some admonishment or another. Now, I’m either unravelling or sharing a fond memory here, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with how truly useless I was at handling a basic, age-appropriate chore.
 

Dad and I were pop-blocked from the git-go.

He got uber-pissed at my sulky, soft-sale rebuke of his insensitivity. Whatever clumsy gesture on my part had originally provoked that special fatherly dissatisfaction had been long set aside in Dad’s mind in favour of a cold beer, peanuts and ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

And then there I was, like static interference, playing the guilt card.

What does any child realize about their role in the grand scheme of grown-up expectations and insecurities? Kids are the same naïves that conform to some pie-in-the-sky notion of “fair” until they learn how not to get screwed back.

Grown-ups then encourage that instinct with apprehension, awkward, self-serving reward systems and threats of alienation and possible imprisonment until children become old enough to call bullshit on the whole operation. And until they become individuals despite us, our kids learn to be guilty until proven otherwise.

My father wasn’t pissed that his kid was some sissy. He was bothered by an apt instinct that his youngest would, as he had, refuse the bypassing of insignificance — “letting go,” as he tried to explain it to me when I became a dad.

Little kids don’t recognize that their truest loved ones don’t hold grudges. The cosmically preordained role of a loved one is to be all up in those cute little faces, knowing that they cry for that bond and smile when it’s fulfilled.

If I apologize to my daughter, it’s because I was being a jerk, plain and simple, and I’m extending the same courtesy I would to anyone else in my family.

Whatever incident sparks the harsh dialect of consequence understood between parent and seed will scarcely find me in the wrong. To me, the difference between my dad and me as parents lies in that action of apologizing — of letting go.

What I can’t let go of is the idea that my six-year-old daughter grows comfortable accepting the volatile precepts of parental roles. Just because parents and authority at large present themselves as never being in the wrong hardly makes it so.

Saying sorry to your kid isn’t a weakness, unless sorry is all you ever have to say. When I found out I was gonna become a dad, I made one vow: I will not put another asshole on this earth’s surface.

I’ve learned that that involves reckoning with this asshole right here, often through my experiences as a parent. I guess there is such a thing as “fair.” ■