Parental Unit Visit: Days 2-4

The continuation of my parents' visit has turned out surprisingly well. Much of the better cheer stemmed from some of the places that we visited and my new found ability to steer the conversation onto subjects on which we can all vociferously agree.

On Friday, my mother wanted to see fall foliage, so they decided to drive north west. I had suggested Harpers Ferry, and I must confess that I fell down on the job by not realizing that Friday was the big anniversary celebration. They also went to Antietam. So, that evening, I made sure not to let the conversation get further than, "Oh, the pretty fall leaves. That was a very nice battlefield. There was a big celebration at Harpers Ferry." Really, you don't want to engage a couple of Confederate apologists in conversation on either Harpers Ferry or the battle that led to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Instead, Friday night at dinner, I managed to keep the topics of discussion confined to:

1) How cute are my nephews? Please show me the pictures again. How cute is that? Aren't they adorable. Let me see the pictures again!

2) Some managers and administrators (like the fellowship coordinator) prove the Peter Principle. This one can get tricky because my father was a government bureaucrat and the topic can become political very quickly.

3) My grandmother has a narcissist personality disorder. My mother's iPhone came in handy on this one since we could look up a semi-clinical definition. I think my grandmother's picture was next to one.

4) How cute are my nephews? Let me see the pictures again!

That seemed to work. Nothing terrible happened.

On Saturday, we went to the air and space museum out by one of the big airports. They have the HUGE birds out there, such as a Space Shuttle, the Concord, and the Enola Gay. I'll have to write on the museum in another post (with pictures!). Suffice to say for now that they convey tons and tons of technical information with very little historical context or awareness of what some of these planes actually did.

My dad has always loved airplanes. I get my love of flying from him. He has studied planes and the history of planes for his whole life. I don't mean his adult life. I mean since he was a small boy. That meant that he could tell me everything about every plane: How the construction of one evolved into the construction of another, how this particular bi-plane led to the creation of that particular airline, how that reconstruction there was built by former employees of that airline, how those two planes were misused in that war, how that plane over there was designed specifically for fighting another type of plane, how these planes were used for tactical air power, and on and on.

Many of you may think, "oh. My. God. How tedious!" I didn't. I loved hearing about the evolution of air travel and power. I loved seeing how some of these planes essentially started as some wild-assed, what-the-hell idea and either took off or became "what the hell were they thinking?"

Mostly, I loved being with this version of my dad. This is the dad that I love and like. This is the knowledgeable dad who purely and deeply loves something, and the love, not the thing itself, is important. This is the dad who wants my company as a junior comrade, interested in what he is interested in. I loved feeling like he was being the father I wanted and I was being the grown child -regardless of gender - that he wanted. In those several hours, we were.

I also had a vision of what my father's life should have been. As I wrote, he was a government bureaucrat for 25 or 30 years, and he hated his job. Worse: he hated his job, but cared too much about doing a good job in it that he would neither disengage emotionally from it nor find another job. He had an irrational terror of "running away."

Before he was a bureaucrat, he worked as a civilian for one branch of the armed forces. Before that, he was in the Air Force. He left the service because his next assignment was Saigon, after Tet, as chief of Air Force police. That is the second point in his life where I wish he had made a different decision (the first being when he married my mother -- really, that fucked up both of their lives, and their three children's in the process).

At that point, I wish he had gone to graduate school and become a historian. Sure, he would have been one of those old school military historians, but he would have been much happier and my brothers and I would have had a less abusive childhood.

Better yet, I wish that he had found a path that led him to the restoration hangar of this or a similar museum. The manual labor, the almost religious calling of restoration, and the historical and technical knowledge for such work would have made my father a much happier and more satisfied human than he ever was. We may not have had much of the class privilege that we had growing up, but we also probably wouldn't have been beaten as much nor have had to tiptoe around rages (at least in regard to one parent). Heck, maybe he might have been happy enough to have realized that divorce would have been a superior solution to the unholy nightmare that was my parents' marriage.

I know he has found a certain peace in his life now (just keep him away from Fox News!), with his post-retirement work, with my mother, and as a grandparent to two grandsons. I'm happy for that. I also like being around him the way he was at the museum and on Sunday when we went to the National Cathedral (gargoyles!) and this shockingly kitschy German restaurant (complete with polkas and lederhosen-wearing dancers). This is my Good Father, not my Other Mother Father. After he dies, I hope that this is what I remember of him. I wish it were all that I could remember of him now.

Meanwhile, I have to keep politics out of our interactions, and I have to recognized and clean up after the damage that was done to me during those 20-25 years in which both of my parents were miserable, small minded, narcissistic, and taking all of their rage out on their children.

One of the steps in accomplishing that is to draw a line in my memory. On one side of the line is "that was then," and the other side is "this is now." On the "then" side, I was a child with no power, and was warped. On the "this" side, I am an adult, and in charge. That second part helps me stop any continuity of the warping from the "then" side. That second part also helps me appreciate the good parts of my parents while reducing the guilt that I feel over my powerful reactions to the bad and the past bad parts.

At least, I hope that this is a good approach.