My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents by Jonathan Silin (free novels .txt) 📗

he even turns to look at her as he speaks. Over the last two years he has found continuous fault with her efforts to care for him. The sweater she offers him is too light or too heavy, the water she brings to soothe his radiation-scarred throat is inevitably too warm or too cold, and her attempts to reach the doctor, too frequent or not frequent enough, seem only to occur at the wrong time of day. Harsh and overbearing, he sees her as the cause of his suffering. If she were dead, he has said, he would not feel obligated to go on living. But for the moment, my mother beams with his approval.

I am also pleased that my father receives such satisfaction from his conversations with my brother about investment strategies. He even manages a smile through his tears when he concedes that my brother is getting pretty good at the stock market. Here he permits himself a moment of real pride even as he declares the work unfinished, thus certifying his ongoing importance as paternal mentor.

Now, as the tone is less somber, I take the ultimate plunge into the icy waters of self-affirmation. “And what about me?” I ask.

“You . . . ” my father stumbles, embarrassed, caught by my directness. “You I don’t talk to that much.” I am momentarily silenced by this willful lapse of memory.

“Come on,” I cajole, “I can’t always answer your calls immediately, but we do speak at least once or twice a day.” I don’t mention the hours of calls I make each week to insure that the health aides are always present, that the doctors are speaking to each other, and that the needs of the accountant, banker, and lawyer are satisfied. In short, I defend myself without feeling at all defensive.

Curious and interested in my father’s feelings but experiencing neither anger nor offense, I am not drawn into the emotional maelstrom he creates as he continues to weep. I am baffled by the sudden-ness with which the storm has hit. Then, the words welling up from deep inside him, a new wave breaks as I hear my father say, “I feel so terrible about the way I have treated you. The way I have fought with 18 n jonathan g. silin

you all the time.” I am taken aback and wonder if it was my own question that elicited this admission. But just as I felt no anger at my absence from his earlier thoughts, I feel no vindication in my new presence. Mostly, I am sad for him and worried for myself, fearing that he won’t be able to regain control of his emotions. When I point out that conflict has been part of our history but that over the last month we haven’t had any disagreements, my father cuts to the heart of the matter. “Yes, I know all that. But I guess it’s my subconscious that is troubling me. I have been so unfair to you.”

Now I understand his earlier concerns for my whereabouts in a new way, as an indicator of his own deep turmoil. While his subconscious is bubbling to the surface, it is being filtered through the screen of a demanding superego that will not let his bad behavior go unpun-ished. But once these admissions of guilt are in place, no actual apol-ogy offered, the therapeutic power of self-expression begins to take over and slowly my father recovers his equanimity. His turbulent emotions are momentarily at rest.

As I prepare to leave, my mother says sotto voce, “I have never seen your father upset like that before.” When I remind her of the Oc-tober incident when he railed against my lack of respect and his loss of control over his affairs, she cannot recall it. When I note that he does not name me among the things that make his daily life worth living, she says that I have misheard him. My mother only recognizes his admission of wrongdoing and hopes that it will erase all traces of prior conflict. She desperately wants me to feel loved and that in return I will continue to love my father despite his thankless behavior. She speaks as his advocate and out of her own self-interest, for she fears that I may abandon them if I feel abandoned by them.

And what are my own interests in these encounters? I am learning not to get on the emotional roller coaster ride that used to make me sick from the sudden heights and death-defying plunges my father engineered. Watching from the ground, I preserve my own mental health. I am a better caregiver, more energetic and clearly focused. At the same time I worry that when I sit out the rides, coolly professional m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 19

and in control, I have indeed abandoned him in some way, no longer taking his worries seriously. And despite my best efforts to separate and distance myself, can I ever be impermeable to the emotional as-saults visited upon me by my parents?

My struggles to become a responsive and caring child to my elderly parents often bring me back to the urban classrooms I visit during the day. I think about the many teachers I have observed who spend much of their time seeking to control their students through a combination of angry outbursts and displays of genuine affection. Larger-than-life maternal figures, they pride themselves on their ability to change the daily schedule on a dime in order to respond to the children’s interests. Good cop and bad cop rolled into one, these are charismatic women who appear to teach through the force of personality rather than structuring routines, designing physical space, and developing a curriculum that supports student autonomy.

I think too about the constant surveillance that children are subjected to—not dissimilar to the paternalistic supervision teachers receive from administrators and the school district itself experiences from the state—and