THE TEMPTATION to compare children when you’re a parent is bad enough, but when you have five (5) sons born in a span of 13 years, it becomes overpowering. Strengths, faults, weaknesses and quirks, these all inevitably surface in a single-gender, largely homogenous brood.
My father (or for that matter our mom) never played favorites, it just wasn’t in his DNA. it was almost like he had one son, and the way he treated any particular son was the template for all the other offspring, nothing personal. He was warm and nurturing, and always encouraged us. but more than anything else he was consistent, never loved too much, never too little.
Through the years, as our fortunes varied and relationships changed, I began to realize who began to impact most on him, whether he liked it or not.
Two brothers combined to give him the best financial and logistical support late in his life, important at any stage but doubly so when the going got tough; another brother, a doctor, gave all the medical attention he needed before he got sick, and yet another brother who never married stayed by his side until the very end.
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I earned no generous income to give his twilight years extra comfort, had no special skills on which his last few years depended for a pain-free existence; and lastly my job and geography prevented me from even attending to his final days, a privilege denied those who nearly always don’t realize it until it’s too late.
I delude myself into thinking that in my own way, we gave each other a mutual gift unique from my other brothers.
My last two visits home from New Zealand I was able to sit down and just listen to whatever my father wanted to tell me. He earnestly told me his worldviews and prejudices, his proudest and weakest moments. He was frank enough to tell me how disappointed he was how I turned out, but alos optimistic enough to tell me that not everyone measures up to greatness (small comfort, that).
In turn, i gave him the greatest treat of a respectful audience: I would give him the floor nearly all the time, pausing only for him to catch his breath, ask a question here and there to confirm what I already knew to be his point (for I had heard his stories many times), and to help him embellish first-person accounts of him as a child of the Japanese Occupation, the postwar boom, the psychedelic 60s – 70s and everything that followed.
Constant themes in his life? Never be afraid of hard work, and never doubt yourself, for in the end, there’s just you and only you that you live with. In so many ways and stories he told me this again and again.
I missed his dying days but in the end I gave him the only gift I knew: whenever I was home and whenever I had time, I listened to him, just as he listened to me all those years ago.
Happy father’s day Dad. You are missed.
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