I started to live my life my way, free of expectations. I had given up because wanting to make my father proud was driven by ego. I was older. I had to at least resemble an adult and deal with my own problems.
I realized that I was wrong to assume that he had survived the torture camps unscathed; I’m convinced that the torture blocked his heart in a way that made it difficult for him to be intimate with other human beings and even his own children. Because when treated as subhuman, it’s easy to guard one’s humanity from others. What goes from father passes onto son. I faced the same problem—part of the reason O and I broke up was that I couldn’t be intimate with her, because I would not share with her the deepest parts of my thoughts and feelings. I couldn’t tell her that I loved her. I just couldn’t say it. This was one part of my life that I decided would not be parallel to that of my father’s life.
I worked to let the people in my life in. I started writing. I had suffered inexplicable chronic depression for years. Now it faded and vanished completely.
A few more months floated on by. I stopped by for dinner. The showers and toilets in both bathrooms had clogged. He hinted that maybe I could take care of it. Plumbing…because that’s all i’m good for right, with years of overcoming poverty and survival in its purest form, with a college degree from a private school, with years of running my own business…plumbing. Fine. I unbuttoned my white dress shirt and flung it across the sofa. I rolled up my slacks but they got wet anyway. I plunged and I plunged and I plunged. I drained and transferred and flushed. It would have cost less to call a plumber than to use my own time to drive to Home Depot to figure out how to undo a major clog. Home Depot. The strongest acid I could find. Sulfuric acid. Maybe I could submerge my head in it. A little more dirty work and I unclogged all the drains in the house.
After dinner, I remembered my resolution to overcome my problems with closeness. My father and I didn’t really know much about each other because we didn’t know how to let people in. I wasn’t scared any more, because I had nothing more to lose. I had lost everything that I thought I had mattered….my career, my relationship, my identity. I let him know who I was.
I chose carefully, something new in my life: “Hey…so, I’ve been doing some writing… I haven’t been doing it very long—maybe only a hundred short pieces. It makes me no money. I’m not very good…but writing comes so naturally that I think I could really be good at it.” I readied for the wall, the cold, aloof look that implied, “Why do you still chase useless endeavors?”
Instead, he turned and regarded me. His eyes glinted and he cracked a smile. He was genuinely proud.
That’s it? All those years and that’s all it took? Writing for nothing to gain at all? Jesus Christ.
If I ruled the world, as Lauryn Hill sang, I’d free all my sons of the scars handed down. I’d force people to do what is best for themselves, because in achieving their potential, they will benefit others more than if they were to continue the internal wars of those who came before.
| <—Part 10 |
