I awoke this morning thinking about my older daughter’s children. Though she lives down the block, this Covid has kept us a million miles apart. She sent out a photo of the kids and I realize they are growing and I do not know them any more.

It got me to thinking about the distance I had with my own dad. I was a disappointment to him; my being uncoordinated and left -handed. The worst thing you can tell a child is what a disappointment they are to you. He had such high hopes about me learning and enjoying sports as much as he did in his youth. I was his first born son! It was a disaster. I failed him and it hurt me. I grew to hate the words “Come on son lets toss the ball around.” All I ever felt was performance pressure and his impatience with my “lack of natural abilities”. Holding a golf club, hitting a or throwing a baseball, putting the spin on a football, all became areas of severe panic attack for me. Lord! He would get so frustrated with me. I rejected all and anything to do with sports my entire life, it was such a stressor. Luckily in a way, he was a work-aholic. A food vendor salesman he was always busy with work on the road or buried in the basement “office” till midnight with spreadsheets and sales call. With sports bonding gone, Dad had no real use for me. No way to connect.

I was more the artiste. A writer, soul searcher, poet. I wrote songs and poems and plays and movie scripts that never came to fruition. I learned to play guitar which was perhaps my only saving grace in High School. Had I not played guitar I would have had zero sense of an ability to accomplish or contribute anything to the world. Later I would become a journalist. Growing up, I was a difficult child. Non-compliant. Troubled. Always getting into mischief. Just a goofy looking mis-fit. The class clown. Never aggressive, angry or destructive. Never a bully. I would burst into tears before ever considering throwing a punch. It drove my dad nuts. “Be a MAN! Wait until they get you in the Army!”

Growing up, lyrics from pop songs about fathers would resonate with me.

“How can I try to explain? When I do he turns away again. It’s always been the same old story” – Cat Stevens: Father and Son.

or the song by Sandra and Harry Chapin, Cat’s in the Cradle

“When you coming home dad, I don’t know when, But we’ll get together then. You know we’ll have a good time then.”

These songs spoke to me. You should listen to them.

I am profoundly aware that my relationship with my first-born daughter is much like the one I had with my dad. Both, mostly distant. Filled with anger and / or disappointment. It is never easy to describe the canyon. So the lyrics from a 1988 song (A year after my oldest daughter was born) by Mike and the Mechanics strikes several chords. “The Living Years” opens with a very prophetic verse”

Every generation blames the one before
And all of their frustrations come beating on your door
I know that I’m a prisoner to all my Father held so dear
I know that I’m a hostage to all his hopes and fears
Wish I could have told him in the living years

I did tell my dad, in a father’s day card in 1978 after I had achieved some success as a journalist, that I appreciated that many of the good traits I had, were because of him. It was sent in the mail. But it put me at peace to have said something I needed to let him know over all the years of friction and distance. In a sense I did tell him I was okay and he was a part of that okay-ness , “in the living years”. So I am at peace in that department. I would learn later after he passed, that his own passion was to become a sports writer/ journalist. I found some of his High School newspaper articles. He was a great writer, with unrealized dreams.

Oddly perhaps, my younger daughter with whom I do have a closer relationship, was a sports junkie of sorts. I encouraged (not pushed) lots of sports activities with her. Saturday Soccer. In the videos you can hear me cheering louder than any other parent (maybe because I was holding the camera). I was the single parent to her in Middle School and up. Unlike my own dad who was always buried in his work, I would leave my job early. I tried to attend everything she did. Almost every basketball, soccer, volleyball game and most of the swim and track meets. I honestly believe her interest in sports and my cheering from the sidelines, kept her away from drugs and gangs to a degree. Not that she wasn’t just a bit non-compliant like her dad… but I want to think “being there” being close, made a dribble of a bit of difference for her.

The important message here is that despite my own deeply ingrained loathing and pain associated with all things sports, I pushed past it so as to not carry the “damage” down another generation. I barely knew any of the rules of the games my daughter played in. But no one cheered louder than me. It was important to her, so it was important to me. The cat in the cradle lyric would not be repeated by me to my children. I would have given anything to have developed such a similar rapport with my older daughter too. God must have a different plan there.

Another prophetic oddity worth noting: my wife and I had been trying in vain to conceive a second child for several years. I mention that only because we had become keenly aware of every attempt. We had decided to give up trying if it didn’t happen before 1992. My father passed away just before midnight in California, Nov,21, 1991. My daughter was conceived around 10 PM Central time the same night. I know… chills right? God doesn’t close one door…

The final verse in The Living Years goes like this:

Well, I wasn’t there that morning when my Father passed away
I didn’t get to tell him all the things I had to say
I think I caught his spirit later that same year
I’m sure I heard his echo in my baby’s new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years

I am not convinced my littlest girl is my dad reincarnate, but I do catch his spirit in her at times. Sometimes when it is cold, she wears his old ski hat with his name Jim embroidered on it. She sent me a photo recently and warmed my heart.

And so ends this morning’s stream of consciousness about fathers and kids.

If any of this is of interest to you I encourage you to listen to these songs.

They are burned into my brain.

One final note: I only knew the songs I have never seen the videos before this writing.

If you have not heard these songs before, Please listen once before you watch. The video detracts from the message sometimes.

Father and Son https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=P6zaCV4niKk
Cat’s in the Cradle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUNZMiYo_4s

The Living Years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hr64MxYpgk



About the songs.

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/harry-chapin/cats-in-the-cradle
https://www.smoothradio.com/features/the-living-years-mike-and-the-mechanics-meaning/