Sunday, 17 June 2012

Happy Father’s Day a tous!

i used to be called ‘Father’ and then I was lucky enough to become a biological  one.  I had more training for the first than I did for the second, and I often wondered how I would rank on an objective score card qua father. I have to confess that I have long felt that my own father would score higher than me.  He was always there, forever proud of me, never judgemental, [unlike my mother], always supportive , endless encouraging, present at everything I did while growing up,  and unconditionally accepting of all my choices, even those he could not quite understand.  He was a simple man, but someone who gave me unconditional love.

My history is quite different. Admitted I provided half decently well, but looking back now  I think of everything I missed, and I regret some of  the choices I made. I tend to  be hyper focused on what I obsess upon, and it was not unusual that I would leave at seven in the morning and not show up at home till eight or nine at night. I would often leave before they got up and come home after they had gone to bed. I was also too often absent at Spring Holidays at Disneyworld, or when Moya Greene and her daughter and Brenda and our two went on their annual  sojourns to Corfu, Greece. Turkey, Spain, Italy and the like. One year they lived for a month in a villa on Corfu formerly owned by Lawrence Durrell, author of the Alexandria Trilogy, and looking back, what an idiot I was to pass that up, and indeed so much else up.  I was not there with them to show them Florence, Rome. London, Vienna, or when the new century dawned in New York City; instead I watched it on TV wishing I was .  I do now so regret some of my choices, for they were mine, and I do own them.   My  boys are now gone, one to LA and the other to his own place in Toronto. My oldest and I are extremely close, and we talk on the phone almost every day; my younger is another matter, ours is a more distant  relationship. He may look like a Mooney, and indeed with his jet black hair resembles my father, but he is 100% Parker. There has been much flint between us, but finally and thankfully, we are getting a little better. I love them both.

Please understand that I do not live in regret; what’s past is prologue.  But I  think it important to reflect honestly, to do what I call a “consciousness examination”, not at all related to the old negative examination of conscience. I have already apologized to both my boys for my absences, and because they knew no different,  they were somewhat surprised. Alas, I am aware, and there’s the rub.  Perhaps when the times comes, I will be a better Grandfather