A boy should have the chance to know his father as man.
A quote that to this day I cannot properly cite even as it haunts my hollow mind. I was near my father well past the age of 18, but I neither new him as a man or while I could be described as a man. I failed the quote in both of its intentions. Growing up was like a contest between us. A contest I understood little of then and understand less of now. I learned little from the man, and threw away more.
After years of being thousands of miles away, I return to my father now a man.I understand him as I never could have growing up. I can look back and measure the years of devotion and love lavished on our family not through the gentle touch of a mother but as father pouring everything he is into providing. I see now the sacrifices he made for his wife and children, how he carried himself without complaint under his burdens knowing they were his choices, his weight to bear and others depended on him carrying it without falter.
I raised myself, my own character. I picked what I thought would make a great man. On some details I was correct, others needed and still need frequent erasing and rework. Now after decades of effort I realize myself to be a pale imitation of my father. That I have arrived at the same conclusions as him after inventing and solving the problems rather simply reading the book before me. I should have emulated my father, now I have to work hard to simply catch up. I can only hope that in thirty more years I can compare myself to him more fully.
My ingratitude's are known to me through an exchange we had. After hours of conversation, an unheard of detail in my youth, I let slip " I never appreciated you enough as a kid" and my father stumbled through his next few syllables. A slight slip in the wall of control he has always demonstrated to me, fractured by a single comment.
Every boy should have the chance to know his father as a man. To look back and reread the chapters of his own life from a different perspective. To realize the value of having a father, a model of how to be man. How to lead, make hard choices, be responsible, face reality, work hard, love, and through it all still be a human being.
Perhaps the title should have been "Wasted youth".
