Bye Dad.

So, my dad died yesterday. Lung cancer. I know, I know… what a shock that several decades of inhaling tar might not be the ideal conditions for healthy lungs, but who knew?

Okay, we all knew. For a really, really long time.

I had a dream the other night that I was taking a long bus ride. We made a short pit stop, and for some reason my dad was there, with my mother and sister. He was in a wheelchair, with a nurse by his side. I walked up to him and asked him if I could help, and he accepted. He was helpless with a sweet and gentle disposition… qualities I longed for from him as a child. The dream wasn’t much of a stretch: I’d done home care for the ill and elderly before, so it felt natural to change his diaper, get him dressed, stroke his forehead and tell him he was doing really well.

When I woke up, I lay in bed with a profound sense of loss and sadness. My own son had crawled into bed with us sometime in the night, and lay snuggled up beside me, his eyelashes long and dark against his soft cheek. I wonder if my dad ever woke up like that, looking at me beside him, feeling as though his heart would burst with love. Given our strained relationship during my childhood, I find it very difficult to imagine even in the strongest flights of fancy.

But the feelings I felt in the dream… protectiveness, love, tenderness… they lingered. My dad may not have liked me much when I was an effeminate kid, never mind later on as a sissified teenager and openly-gay adult. But I’ve seen his kindness towards others. His generosity. His humour. His way of helping people without making them feel like a charity case. In some ways, it made his obvious disgust towards me doubly hard to bear, but I saw it and, I hope, learned to emulate these humane qualities.

I can’t imagine disliking my son. I can’t imagine my lip curling in disgust at the way he speaks, or walks or cries. I can’t imagine not looking at him, even in the midst of the worst tantrum imaginable, and feel love for him. Not like my dad.

Like any pain or trauma caused in childhood, my dad’s rejection of me has lingered and shaped my personality. My aversion to unfairness, cruelty or rejection is such that I can completely disconnect from a friend or loved one whose behaviour manifests as such. Part survival technique, part avoidance, I think. I just move on, and I rarely look back. Perhaps that’s a gift as well, in its own way. I don’t feel saddled with difficult relationships, and am free of friends who are a drag on my sense of peace and harmony.

I used to think my dad regretted kicking me out of his home. The few times we’d see each other, I fancied there was sadness in his eyes – a lament for his actions and the reality of our history. But last year, at the funeral for a family friend, I realized it wasn’t regret or sadness. He just seemed embarrassed to be seen near me. In some ways it was liberating: I wasn’t failing in forgiving my parents, or in maintaining a separation caused so many years ago by their hatred of gay people. They’d maintained it too.

My sister, who is very close to our parents, is handling everything right now. She’s struggling through her own fear and sadness of losing the dad who adored her. And she’s concerned for her own daughter, who my dad treasured as the sports-playing, rough and tumble kid he always wanted. A while back she asked if I wanted to see our dad before he died. I said that if he wanted to see us, we would absolutely come. Her lack of reply told me everything I needed to know.

My dad excluded me from his life, from his love, from his support and nurturing. And now, surrounded by his wife, his daughter and his granddaughter, he has passed from this world. I inquired about a funeral service, but was tactfully told that it was to be just a small graveside affair, as he wished. No dates, no location, no invitation.

He’s excluding me from his death as well, but in an odd way I’m okay with that. The dusty remains of our relationship as father and son are too fragmented to resurrect at this point. I’m relieved that he passed peacefully, and I’m glad he had his beloved daughter and granddaughter with him. In a way, and despite the sadness I feel at what was lost so long ago, I’m glad they were able to give him the kids he wanted, instead of the son he had.  

A friend of mine challenged me this week, remarking that she remembered my father sometimes being nice to me, and quite nice to her. I pointed out that she was a hot young redhead at the time, and my father was careful to be nice in public. But she was right, in a way. My dad did do some nice things for me. He’d give me lunch money, unasked. He’d bring home treats from their bulk food store. He’d occasionally try to soften the fury of my mother’s continual rage.

But his frequent expressions of disgust towards my effeminacy, towards my orientation, towards my personality as a gay person, were the mortal blows that killed our relationship. Enough time has passed that I can appreciate the things he did, or attempted to do. But the sneers, the expulsion from “his” home, the threats… they did their ugly work and they did it well. The wounds were never healed by a making of amends, or apologies, or explanations, or any show of remorse. There was no love given to keep it alive.

I’m sad. I feel the loss of something I never got to have. My dad was overjoyed that he finally got the ‘son’ he wanted in my sporty, amiable and fun niece. But I never got the dad I wanted… someone who loved me unconditionally, who made me feel like I was of value, who protected me and nurtured me.

Now, in my middle-age, I am reconciled that I never will get that. But at least one of us finally got what they needed, and that’s just going to have to be enough.

As Butch As We Gonna Be

I’ve never been terribly butch. Okay, if I’m completely honest with myself, my degree of butchness falls somewhere on the scale between Charles Nelson Reilly and Miss Piggy (if you’re too young to know who either of those celebrities are, please don’t tell me). I may not lisp or swish, but a lack of sibilant sashaying does nothing to detract from my androgynous voice, arched eyebrows and the ability to suck in my stomach for up to 14 hours a day.

Given my inclinations towards the more feminine expressions of existence, nobody is more surprised than me that my son, Pre-Schooler N, is a little bundle of rambunctious, rollicking, raucous boyhood. Yet, despite my earlier and continuing attempts at introducing baby dolls, tea sets and other non-gender-specific playthings, he has always gravitated towards construction diggers, talking cars and toy trains named after an assortment of British royalty.

It’s not that I don’t like Hot Wheels or Thomas the Tank Engine, but I can’t quite figure out my son’s predilection towards traditionally masculine pursuits. He loves to kick and throw a ball, race around with his friends and generally behave like the boisterous boy that he is. I guess that’s why I've come consider that children are born with an innate inclination towards gender expression, despite  outside intervention or encouragement.  How else can I explain my uber-butchy little kid, whose only interest in Barbie or Ken is to see how fast they can scoot down his toy garage’s ramp or hammer in a plastic peg with their heads?

That being said, I remain convinced that raising a well-rounded child means avoiding the boundaries that might hem him into a single note of gender expression. I do believe that boys are frequently more naturally aggressive than the female of the species. Is this an absolute conviction? No, of course not. Hell, I was a femmie little sissy who loved playing quietly with dolls and wearing colourful clothes while listening to Julie Andrews LPs. And god knows there are (thankfully) a wonderful abundance of girls who play cowboys, frolic in mud and eschew pink fabric as though it were sartorial poison. But there certainly does seem to be a biological component at play.

Case in point: We’re a no-hitting household, full stop. I don’t hit my kid, and don’t generally raise my voice above an imperious reprieve. But historically we’ve had issues with Pre-Schooler N smacking other kids (or occasionally us) when frustrated or angry. And he gives ferocious bear hugs that are positively stifling at times. I can tell he’d love to rough house and wrestle, but the closest I can get is holding him tight while squeeling “Not gonna let you go! Sorry! You’ll have to stay like this forever!”

He loves it.

But I ensure there are plenty of lessons about being gentle, playing quietly and running instead of racing around like an ad for Ritalin Smoothies. Sometimes it’s exhausting, and there are people who insist that a boy’s natural impulses should be allowed to run wild. But I figure we’d all be peeing our pants and suckling at our aged mothers’ breasts if we simply allowed our ‘natural impulses’ to go rampantly un-curbed.

Sometimes it’s not easy. One of Pre-Schooler N’s favourite playmates has been watching violent Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man cartoons since the age of 2, and delights in bellowing out “Hulk Smash!!!!” while breaking shit or pretending to beat other kids into submission with fists, sticks or any other weapon-like item at hand. It’s seriously disturbing to me, even though many parents think it’s “only natural.” Yeah, well when you’re ready to let your kid crap all over your living room without benefit of toilet training or a diaper, I might buy into your conclusions regarding ‘natural behaviour.’

 I was lucky, I guess. I grew up with non-violent cartoons like Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs and the fabulous Super Friends who passed their adventures avoiding capture by innocuous energy nets and trapping their enemies in glowy magical lassos.

Come hell or high water, my kid isn’t going to have his four-year old mind programmed to believe that busting stuff and hitting people is fun, funny or anything other than plain bad behaviour. “Good luck with that,” snarked one mother of a cherubic hellion that is equal parts adorable lovebug and squalling stubborn brat. I don’t think she was being mean, but has rather surrendered to the idea that her son’s more volatile aspects are impossible to curb.

Maybe I’m just more stubborn than some. Or perhaps the idea of future dealings with an overly-aggressive, entitled pre-and-post-teen is just too appalling for me to entertain; 3-year-olds who slap mommy tend to turn into bigger kids with harder fists. Either way, this middle-aged sissy will continue to hand out penalties for aggressive behaviour, and insist on gentle and considerate manners when I have a sneaking suspicion that my little monster would rather be wreaking destruction alongside his less-well-controlled brethren.

But hopefully, when he’s 25 and not doing time for aggravated assault or regretting an abusive relationship, I’ll feel all the effort, censure and time-outs were worth it.

Or I’ll have died of utter fucking exhaustion, and the increasing sense that the sound of my own voice only marginally less irritating than blessed eternal sleep.