First, let me just say that I love my father. If I can be half the man he was, then I will have lived a good life.
He fought through every conceivable adversity. He lived part of his early childhood in a prisoner of war camp. His father died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. He had to help support his younger siblings after the death of his father. He joined the navy in his teens. He came to the US with a young wife and two babies. He worked two and three jobs to support his family. He never complained about how life was too hard for him. Compared to him, I am a wimp.
That said, he was also an angry man who did not know how to relate to his children. He had a very bad temper. Yet, although, he did hit me, I cannot say that I was physically abused by him. However, he did verbally abuse me. He used demeaning language toward me. I was afraid of him.
Now that I am a father of two little girls, I often wonder about the kind of parent I will become.
I still vividly remember how my father would respond after I accidentally knocked over a cup of water at the dinner table. He would yell at me and tell me that I was stupid and worse.
This comes to mind, because last week, my four year old daughter knocked over chocolate milk, getting it on the floor and barely missing the furniture. I yelled at her and demeaned her. I asked her, “What is wrong with you. Why do you always make a mess?!” I didn’t call her stupid. But, I remember the shocked look on her face when I yelled at her. I couldn’t help but remember my own childhood and the hurt and fear that I felt around my own father.
I don’t want Johanna to be afraid of me or feel like she cannot talk to me. I don’t want her to live a lifetime of hurt thinking about her relationship with her father—me.
When did I become my father? Why did I yell at my little girl? These are complex questions.
Personally, I would like to display the best characteristics of my father. I would like to have his perseverance and his unswerving loyalty. I am less interested and maybe afraid of displaying his less savory characteristics, including his temper.
We all inevitably mirror the image of parents. We display some of their best characteristics and some of their worst. Maybe I have the right to point to my background as an excuse for my behavior. Maybe this is how I was nurtured. Like my dad often shared with us, “This is just the way I am. Nobody is going to change me.”
But to offer these kinds of excuses somehow seems painfully inadequate. It doesn’t address the real choice that I have each day regarding my behavior and my response to the events and people around me. This isn’t my dad’s fault. This isn’t the fault of circumstance or events. This is my responsibility and if I want something better for my girls, then it is my responsibility to change.
Any excuses on my part also ignores the very real consequences if I do not change. I don’t want my girls to fear me or hate me. While I am not perfect, and have any number of faults, I hope that my girls can hopefully come to see me as someone that they love and respect. Lastly, although this seems part of the distant future, I hope that when they eventually begin to date that they will want to compare their potential boyfriend to their papa. And if he doesn’t treat her right, I hope that she will think of me as an example of someone who did treat her right and who showed her what it means to love. I hope that she will realize that some behavior is never acceptable, and that she deserves better, because that is what she learned from her father.
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