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Notes On Being A Father, And A Son
Essay by Creed Chris O’Hanlon
It was a
curious experience to read the biography of my late father, Morris
West. It was even more so, later, when I was invited to hear its
writer, Marian Confoy, talk “about getting into other people’s lives
who are not there to tell the story themselves…about staying true to
the facts and the emotional lives of their subjects,” at the Sydney
Writer’s Festival, this year.
I was the eldest son of my father’s second marriage, and I have never
spoken to Ms. Confoy. I wonder what I might have contributed to her
understanding of “the emotional life” of my father if I had.
When I left home for the last time, after a few false starts in the
life I’d already taken to calling my own, I thought it was the
beginning of an uneasy truce with him. The bad-tempered enmity I felt
towards him – and, God knows, he probably felt towards me – was not
so vehemently expressed as it was when I was a teenager. With some
hurt, we had both come to accept that neither of us was going to live
up to the other’s expectations and anyway, neither of us had ever been
really sure what those expectations were.
We kept our distance from each other, easy enough to do as I’d ended
up in another country, but I couldn’t escape the persistent itch to
gain his attention, and more importantly, his approval, an admission
that still embarrasses me not least because it reminds me of just how
much effort I wasted on futility.
“All I want is for you to be happy, son,” my father used to tell me. A
lot of fathers tell their sons the same thing but only a virtuous few
really mean it. The rest are being disingenuous, dancing around the
reality that, if confronted, would compel them to say, “All I want is
for you to make me happy.” The common flaw of fathers is that they
want their sons to be a credit to them. The common flaw of sons is
that they’re all too aware of this: even if they make it on their own
terms, they can’t rest until they also make it on their fathers’,
which are often less clearly defined and much harder to satisfy.
I was never close to my father. Notice that I always refer to him as
‘father’. I can’t remember calling him ‘dad’ much even as a kid, and
when I did it was with caution, as if it was somehow too familiar. He
often emphasized the 38 years that separated our ages, preferring the
image of himself as a wise elder, a counsellor, a confessor –
sometimes, his closest friends couldn’t help but think of him as an
avuncular prelate – rather than as a parent, with the tricky emotional
empathy and unqualified love that entailed. Not surprisingly, he was
easier to respect than love, and although I tried to do both, we were
uncomfortable around each other unless I let him interpret his
paternal role as instructive, consolatory or beneficent. He was
generous to a fault with his time, his advice and his money – and not
just to his family – but miserly with what I wanted most. Himself.
How is it, then, that everything about my father, good and bad, has
shaped my persona? From early childhood, my impressions of him were
the raw materials from which I created a moquette of the man I wanted
to be, and on it, I tried to re-work, if not set right, all the flaws
I perceived.
Most sons do this, but it disturbs many fathers because all they can
do is stand back and watch what has been modelled from them take on a
different life. The imperfections revealed make them nervous. They’re
frustrated by the possibilities they overlooked. Occasionally, they
try to guide their sons’ hands – as my father did – and berate them
when they struggle to break free of their hold. “I’m trying to do
what’s best for you,” my father used to insist, but we both recognised
it as a lie. A father is innately selfish in his concern. He meddles
in his son’s life, his whole life, to regain and correct a few moments
lost somewhere in his (lost – who knows? – because of his father).
For some fathers, a son is a second chance, an opportunity to improve
on an imperfect past and maybe even redeem its failures: the father
encourages the son to follow in – or avoid – his footsteps, and he is
sometimes uncomprehending or hurt when the son refuses. For others,
like those famous patriarchs whose family tragedies are played out in
public, a son can be an insidious rival, whose ambitions are seen,
however improbably, to threaten their achievements.
Either way, there’s trouble. A father tries to send his son along a
path that is not the one the son planned to take; rather, it often
runs in the opposite direction and as not even the father knows where
it leads, the son inevitably loses his way. In frustration, the son
strikes out on his own, turning his back on his father.
That I’m writing this – forget what I’m writing for a minute – might
be construed as evidence of how bootless defiance can be sometimes.
What could be more apposite than a wayward son appeasing the memory of
his father by going into the family business? And yet I am pretty sure
the last thing my father wanted was for any of his children to become
writers. Five of us tried, in different ways. Only three of us
persisted, and only two eked out any kind of living from it – my
youngest brother, who is a songwriter in New Orleans, and me. Such
emulousness made not only my father but my mother nervous; it
threatened to overturn a tacit agreement between them, made long
before I was born, that for the rest of my father’s life – and, given
her energetic management of his literary estate today, my mother’s –
the building and maintenance of his reputation was to be the main
focus of their partnership. They wanted their children to succeed, but
all of us got the feeling that it had to be in some lesser, if still
commendable – but lesser would do – calling.
The relationship between a father and son is always cat’s cradle of
conflicting needs, and between my father and me, the threads wound way
too tight. Right up until he died, at age 81, we squared off like a
pair of aging boxers whenever we were around each other. It was
tedious, especially as the outcome was always moot, and over the
years, the inability even to pretend a measure of everyday civility
eroded all but the most tenacious residue of affection. I was
middle-aged by the time it stopped. My father was middle-aged when it
started.
A similar, wearisome and disaffecting scenario is played out in many
families, but I’m not sure it revolves around a son’s need to assert
himself. If anything, it’s the opposite. A son grows up mindful of his
father growing old: a father know this. The closeness of their
relationship or, through a darker lens, the limits of their tolerance
of each other, depends on a father coming to terms with his imminent
mortality – and a son, with his own mutability. In other words, it’s
about both father and son being able to accept themselves.
My differences with my father, some fundamental, some just plain
foolish, chafed through the last strands of our patience with each
other in his last years, and I learned too late how much my love and
admiration for him were overshadowed by my stubborn intolerance of his
failings. Now I have grown to miss him more than I thought was
possible. As I grow older, he has become more, not less, real to me,
and more understandable.
My most persistent memories of him have also made me mindful of my
relationship with my own son. Ironically, 38 years separate our ages
just as they did my father’s and mine.
For the first couple of years of my son’s life, I puzzled over how to
raise him. Truth is, it scared me. There was nothing in my own
upbringing that I could draw on to help me. Or so I thought. The
writer, John Steinbeck, warned, “Father and son are natural enemies
and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.” (I always
knew he was referring mainly to writers and their sons.)
I was wrong. So was Steinbeck. Empathy may not have been one of my
father’s strengths but his intellect and ability to articulate big
ideas unarguably were. So while our emotional communication was
limited, we talked. A lot. And somewhere within those many, long,
occasionally Socratic conversations, was my father’s real legacy: a
way of looking at the world that had, in the end, enabled me to frame
a rich and eventful life of my own.
Even before my son had learnt to talk, I started talking to him. He is
now a teenager, and we are still talking. Unlike my father – but also
maybe because of him – I have learnt to listen. Only time will tell if
it makes a difference to my son. It has already made a difference to
me.
© Creed Chris O'Hanlon - 2006
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Creed O'Hanlon is a
well-known Australian polymath, writer, photographer, and traveler
whose four children are unlikely to be discouraged from following in
his footsteps.
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