No paisley tie for me: What if you are not a father on Father’s Day?
by Edmond Manning
I’m not getting a Father’s Day card from my kids this year. No necktie to go with the shirt they gave me at Christmas. No new TV remote. No weeding tools for the back yard. Why not? I’m not a father.
As self-pitying as that sounds, I am mostly okay with the decision I have made to not become a biological father. And while marrying into a family with kids might still work for me, that option seems less likely as I grow older. Could I get up in the night and change diapers? Could I help my pre-teens with homework, the way I sometimes feel after finishing a long day of work? I do enjoy my solitude. Those zany sitcoms with two gay Dads and a house full of teenage girls with their wacky friends seem further and further away from my destiny.
I guess I have always known I wasn’t going to be a father.
I know plenty of gay fathers, men who have found ways to be Dads, so it’s not really the gay thing. I just didn’t think I would be a father this time around.
It’s odd to know that when I die, the quirky DNA pool that has assembled into me will end. Never will the world see the blend of English Manning stock and Irish Hemmer stock swirled together in one chunky, pasty, comic-book-lovin’ wonder of a man.
I am told my Grandpa Manning was a rabid fan of White Castle hamburgers. Me too. If I do not have a biological son, will the White Castle gene eventually die out? Don’t I owe it to humanity to keep the White Castle gene floating around in the gene pool?
You’d think that perhaps Father’s Day would be a day of mourning, a reminder of a relationship I will not explore first-hand. Hell no, I think it’s awesome.
My Dad
I’ve had so many fathers this time around, grown men who have loved me and treated me well. And since discovering MKP, I have experienced loving elders who have put their hands on my shoulders and told my 40+ wrinkled self, “I love you son,” and I believed them. I have met so many powerful fathers.
My own Dad is pretty great. We have fought, and we often don’t ‘get’ each other, but we have our great moments, too. We talk about books, and trade funny cooking banter on the phone until he finally puts Mom on the line to answer questions like, “How do you cook a baked potato?”
I think of Dad whenever I have to put up my [expletive] storm windows. I think of all those hours I spent as a kid unlocking screen windows inside the house or pretending to hold the ladder steady. I now cherish those memories, when I would stand around and watch him work, thinking about who he was, how he came to be the man he was.
Dad also taught me how to make a monkey face that causes people to recoil in fascinated horror before they say, “Oh my god, do it again.” I’m pretty sure the Monkey Face gene is from Dad because all my siblings can make the Monkey Face.
Mom, a genetic outsider to our little sub-grouping, cannot make Monkey Face. The summer Dad taught us Monkey Face, she really gave a good try every so often at the dinner table, making us all squeal with laughter when she crossed her eyes and squooshed up her lips.
If I never become a father, what happens to the Monkey Face gene?
Wallpaper
Years ago, fresh out of college, I asked Dad to help me wallpaper a room in my newly acquired apartment. I had never attempted something this domesticated, and he had many rooms of wallpapering experience on me.
We did the work together in the afternoon before New Year’s Eve, often working in silence. Around 5 pm, he announced that he was finished, heading back to Mom and a quiet night of ringing in the new year in front of the TV.
“But we’re not done,” I sputtered, surprised and angry.
“There’s only three more strips to put up,” he said, and I understood his leaving was deliberate. “You can do it.”
We had yet to work around half a window, and though I had improved over the day’s work, he was much more skilled than I. Even as I hugged him goodbye and tried to thank him with genuine gratitude, I was not showing the sliver of resentment growing in me, the message bleating in my heart: Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! I can’t do this without you.
Dad knew I needed to finish this project on my own, to earn the confidence I could handle home improvement projects. Maybe he even wanted to stay so we could celebrate with the beer I had purchased. I have since theorized he had another father lesson to impart that was more important than beer.
He left. I sat and stared at the unfinished wallpaper, trying to appreciate I was never too old to learn from my father. Mostly I felt self-pitying resentment that my New Year’s Eve companions were a bucket of drying wallpaper paste and six cold bottles of beer.
Don’t Leave Me
Dad will die one day, and on that day I will bawl my eyes out (thanks to MKP, I will actually cry). My heart will bleat, Don’t leave me, Dad! Don’t leave! I’m not ready for life without you around!
Some days I think about how I won’t have a son to weep over my coffin, a man who thinks his world ended because I departed, the only father he has ever known. Yeah, it makes me sad some days. But honestly, I don’t want a lot of coffin weeping at my funeral anyway, so maybe it’s for the best. I have this fantasy of people eating cheese fries and arguing over my comic book collection.
I don’t have to be a biological Dad to love with my father energy. I have three godchildren and at various times I have been blessed and terrified to have each of them sleep against my chest, an experience so beautiful because this tiny creature trusted me, big stupid me.
Is this what fathers feel, holding their child? This crazy love, this ‘”I will do anything for you” feeling because you trusted me, though I am flawed, confused by life sometimes, and I don’t know how to bake a potato without calling Mom.” With all my baggage and corresponding excuses, I was loved beyond reason by a sleeping child.
Is this what a father feels? I didn’t really feel all that warm fuzzy joy until mostly after the fact, of course, because my arms were shaking in terror, trying to honor this great trust.
My Godson, The Doctor
I have also seen the dark side of fatherhood.
I prided myself on carefully avoiding the full length feature film, “Scooby Doo,” but when my goddaughter, Logan, eagerly wanted me to watch it with her from beginning to end, I did. When I groaned in relief at its conclusion, she said, “Let’s watch it again. Please?”
I would have protested we could play a game or go outside, but her younger sister was sleeping against my chest at the time, and I was busy falling in love while being terrified with responsibility. I was not in much of a position to entertain big sister Logan, so yes, we watched Scooby Doo again, every horrible moment. Like I said, I’ve touched the dark side.
My other godchild is Narayan. He’s a doctor now. You may meet him soon when you go in to complain about the pain in your elbow. I remember holding his tiny little body at his baptism, me, a meager 15 years old, completely baffled why they would give a new baby to a teenager who was not qualified to drive a car without adult supervision.
I love Narayan. I must admit the pride I have in him, even though I have no right to this pride. I did not raise him. He is his own man.
Narayan’s parents did a great job. Although he is ridiculously smart and movie-star handsome, the first thing you notice about Narayan is that he’s kinder than most people. He listens better than most people. He tries to love you when he speaks. Narayan’s father, Basu, has done an amazing job. Way to go, Basu.
But perhaps I do have a child. I just finished writing a novel exploring the father and son dynamic, specifically the impact of a father’s death. My fiction is my child, I guess I would say. At the risk of being completely tacky and quoting myself, here’s what I wrote about fathers and sons near the climax of the book:
People underestimate how the death of a father impacts a young boy. They don’t understand what it means when the man you thought was going to teach you everything suddenly doesn’t exist. He doesn’t die just that one time when everyone cried and wore black. No, he dies on every birthday. He dies at school award presentations. He dies when that horny teenager has no one to ask about crazy wet dreams. He dies every time a surviving child has to pretend the death means nothing and say, “Oh, him? He died a long time ago. No, no, don’t worry. I’m over it.”
Father’s Day Gifts
But fiction is not the kind of child who buys you a paisley necktie on Father’s Day, or gives you a “WORLD’S GREATEST DAD” coffee mug. I was screwed by this not-being-a-father thing in a really goofy way: I love ties. I never have to fake enthusiasm for getting a necktie as a gift.
Still, I have many reasons to celebrate Father’s Day. I have my own father, a good man who did his best. I have my three amazing godchildren. I have the fathers I have met through MKP. And I have fathered a novel.
There’s never enough Good Dad energy ambient in the world, so I will find opportunities to give some loving father energy, even though it may not be through children of my own.
This year, though, I know the perfect place to celebrate Father’s Day: White Castle. But first, I’m going to call Dad and thank him for teaching me Monkey Face.
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Edmond Manning: After reawakening his life’s mission and passion for writing, Edmond is shopping around his first novel, King Perry the Forgiver. Feel free to visit him at http://www.edmondmanning.com |
– is a deeply personal issue that everyone decides for himself. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes low. But this is not very important for life. Life is an interesting thing. And the price on Viagra – too.
