Fathers and Sons vol. 2

 ---- in attempting to start this post, Paco aka Phat Paco aka Pacito, decided it would be a swell time to jump up onto my lap and take a nap... now if one has ever lived with a 20lb cat one would understand the difficulty in typing while said kitty decided to take a nap in one's lap... and as it's been well documented that i am a complete sucker for my cats i had to let him chill for a bit, he curled up into a ball and slept and purred and then his brother Archie came down to see what was up... Archie then walked into another room and since it was obvious to all involved there must be something awesome in that other room Paco immediately jumped down to follow his brother... these two in particular crack me up on a daily basis and it's interesting to see how Archie has brought Paco out of his shell a bit... they're buddies... having stumbled upon a great observation, about how our pets are part of our lives but we are their whole life and that we should not take for granted the time we have with them so i sometimes put off what i was going to do in order to spend more time with them, let them lounge on me, toss the jingle ball or string for them to chase, (Paco is a fetcher and will bring the toy back to have me toss it again) but it's something that i keep in mind when it comes to my cats... and probably something i should keep in mind when it comes to humans it's just that i tend to like cats more than i like most people... ----

We move through days... much of the time caught up in the trivial bullshit that encompasses modern living in a a culture based on consumption... and of course these days there is the ever present shit show known as Dumbfuckistan which could easily eat up most of the waking hours if one let it but there are other posts for that... from the Longest Day (Feb. 13) to the Last Day (May 16) i tend to think a lot about that time seven years ago, going back and forth to Cleveland, cleaning out my dad's apartment, hanging out with him in his assisted living home, i think a lot about the relationship i had with my father, sometimes things dawn on me and it reminds me how much i loved that guy, how much i still miss him and how there are many times when i still talk to the air as if i'm talking to him, maybe it's those little things that in my own mind keep him alive because i thought the world of him, yes i know he was human and yes i know he had his flaws (and he would be the first to tell you that) but dammit if he wasn't one of the most decent and honorable human beings i've ever met, much more so than his wayward son... though i do know Pops was endlessly amused by the shenanigans of his only boy... 

Thinking of Pops inevitably bring me around to my own sons, his grandsons, the boyos, and my ever evolving relationship with the two of them... i understand now (that i'm older) that when you're young your dad (sadly i must add, if he's around and/or involved) is this mountain, this rock, this pillar of stability that offers safety and knowledge and wisdom... not that this necessarily is true in all cases and in fact most times it is not... on one hand this, call it myth for lack of a better word, is perpetrated on men through an outdated and crumbling mindset, most likely rooted in that consumer culture which attempts to make men feel inadequate if they don't have a garage full of tools and landscaping equipment and golf clubs... (for the record i have none of those, yes i have things to take care of the "yard" and this also presupposes that we're all affluent white people living in the tree-lined suburbs, a close study of advertisements of all sorts and one can easily see the narrative being pushed/sold to both men and women), i'd say that a decent number of men would like to lounge around watching the telly or spend time down at the old pub debating any number of things or better yet getting laid (though ads do tend to insinuate that if you have the aforementioned things you'll get laid)... a far cry from the image that's being sold and much closer to what i'd call the truth... (Honest Abe somewhat said the same thing...)

Looking back at my own life i understand why and how i ended up being what the suburban sect would call "weird"... i watched my father do what he thought he was supposed to do only to have it all yanked out from under him... his job downsized out of existence (only after he redesigned the company's whole accounting system), his wife bolting mainly due to that fact... i was 21 when it happened, barely a man, but i saw the crippling effect it had, that pillar was suddenly crumbling and when he looked around what was there? who and what did he have? it was in the great middle management purge in the early to mid 90s, done in order to increase shareholder value, that the suicide rate of men in their 40s and 50s began to skyrocket, why? that was easy... because everything they'd ever known, everything they'd been told they should do, turned out to be a lie... a handshake and a severance check and good luck out there... i worried about my own father and he was the most even keeled guy one could imagine... luckily he had his family,, not his soon to be ex-wife or his daughter who was wrapped up in her own world but his brothers and sister, his mom, and his son... 

One of the things i miss most are the long conversations i had with my father and now, as that strange and wonderful thing called existence is apt to do, it's come around to conversations i have as a father with my sons... the Imac is now starting to take those baby steps into adulthood, going off to university and learning what it's like to live on his own while understanding he still has a safety net... Disaster is still winding his way through high school and it's interesting to watch them both as they are most definitely different in their approaches to things... if i can say i've done anything right in this parenting game it's that i've cultivated a love of knowledge along with a healthy dose of skepticism, instilling that they need to think for themselves and questions things and not blindly accept what  they've been told by would be "authorities", before the Imac went off to college i schooled him in his civil rights as small town cops are one of the worst types of the species especially when it comes to college students... and while the Imac has always been eyeing my bookshelf i've noticed that Disaster is suddenly beginning to eye it up as well, even commenting on the book i was reading the other day (by Noam Chomsky) and stating it looks interesting and asking if he could read it, i told him of course he could and that he could read any book on those shelves... after he walked away i doubt you could have punched the smile off my face... 

But back to that circle of fathers and sons... with the Imac up at school i often laugh when my phone rings and it's the boy on some excited diatribe on the state of things... there are strains of his old man running through his excited rambling and i'll be damned if i don't hear the calm and calculated tones of my father when conversing with him... these days most of our conversations are about politics, the hegemony of white butthurt, the world of futbol or his interest in a certain plant... yes the boy likes his cannabis and while it started when he was in high school (and seriously who doesn't start smoking weed in high school? if one is partial to that sort of thing) he has a genuine interest in the science behind it while still maintaining his status as partying college student... Disaster, on the other hand, is just now coming into his own and talking about all kinds of things with me but his two favorite seem to be space and the universe at large (he just wrote a paper on the Big Bang Theory, the event not the tv show) and posing me philosophical questions, sometimes pulled from social media, to which i often am stumped and tell him i need to think about it which then leads to us talking about it for a bit... to say their weird old father loves this stuff would be and understatement as it's one of my favorite parts of this mortal coil i'm wandering through... 

Which of course brings me round to this mortal coil... if there's one thing i've tried to drive home to the boyos is that someday they will have only each other and they need to look after and out for one another... the BW has a close relationship with her siblings, one in particular she's really close with unlike myself who is pretty much estranged from both my mother and sister, things previously well documented her at the lounge... and it warms their old man's heart when i watch how they make time to hangout with each other when the Imac comes home from school... yes they still have their brotherly battles, that's part of the game growing up but i also see how close they are and it brings me a sense of comfort... there is an interesting dichotomy between the way they process and handle things... the Imac being far more emotional and reactive, he wears his emotions on his sleeve yet still seems to get over or move by things quickly, he has an understanding and self awareness of things even when he's being a right shit and will freely admit, after the fact, that he was a right shit... 

Disaster, is a much more reserved when it comes to things, he does not wear his emotions on his sleeve like his big brother but feels just as deeply if not more so... this trait also reminds him of his old man as his father has often been told, by numerous people including the BW, that i keep things in and yes i worry about my boy being like his old man cuz i do understand the need to let things out... my baby boy is a lot more sensitive than he let's on and there are times when he hangs onto those feelings unlike his big brother who can be screaming at you one minute and pleasant and smiling the next, (often the Imac doesn't understand why the party being berated hasn't moved on in an instant but his mama often tells him, particularly when it's her in the crosshairs, that the other party is allowed to have feelings as well and might not get over it as fast)... these days i have a pretty good read on when Disaster is pissed or upset and also unlike his brother who tends to talk his way through it Disaster is more like his old man, he processes and eventually moves on but doesn't say much... they are each their own person and damn if their old man doesn't love them both even when he's frustrated with them though i laugh thinking about what Pops must have thought dealing with his kid... 

Which brings me to the words... when i talk about someday they'll have to look out for each other it's interesting to see how they handle it, meaning their father will be gone... i remember how they both talked to their mom about the day my father passed and the Imac stating he was surprised by how well i handled it... granted i had time to prepare, i knew it was coming and i knew it would be sooner than later... when i speak to the boyos about my impending exit there's a marked difference to how they respond... the Imac is very pragmatic, he understands when i discuss how that's the natural order of things and that's how it hopefully shakes out... when i speak of death being a part of life and that there's nothing to fear about the former he takes it all in and understands what i'm getting at... 

Disaster, on the other hand, handles it a bit differently, granted i know he's young, at 15 you don't want to think about that sorta shit and it's a bit frightening when you do... recently i was talking about things as his other grandfather probably doesn't have much time left, the man is scared shitless of his demise and one of the main reasons is he wasted most of his life being a horrible shitbag... i was talking about if you live a decent life, love the people you care about unconditionally, find things that interest you to study and learn, use the mind and body to the fullest and enjoy the ride you won't have that fear... i explained i didn't fear it and wasn't all that worried about it when it happens and it was at that point that Disaster turned and looked at me and said, i don't like when you talk like that... and it was one of those moments... sometimes people don't realize how much someone loves them until it hits them square in the face... i could see the look on my son's face, he's always been his father's son, i raised him when he was a little dude, his brother at school and his mom at work it was me and him, in that moment i realized how much the kid loved his old man and the thought of him not being around was horrible to him (and something i could fully relate to)... it also struck me that though one never knows when the number is up that i needed to watch how and when i talked about it to him, how hopefully i'll have the time to talk about it later on down the line but even then i know he'll be uncomfortable with the conversation... but it'll be okay... i also understand just how much the kid loves his dad... and he understands how much his dad loves him... both the boyos do... 

And so i move through these days doing the best i can to help develop and raise decent human beings... ultimately i know it's up to them and they can be whoever and whatever they want to be but i also realize that they've grown up around people who are empathetic, compassionate, kind, interested in the world around them, thoughtful, skeptical, critical thinkers, who enjoy a good laugh (and a good time) and i know that they've developed these traits on their own as well, yeah one could argue the nurture vs. nature thing and how they've been raised but i tend to believe that we all have to make our own way and our own decisions and take responsibility for that... looking at the boyos i know they are on their way to being decent human beings... yes they have their flaws, like both their father and grandfather, but i'd tell them Pops would like who they've become and to keep up the good work... their weird and once wild man father would tell them the same thing...