Dad was a man of many moods, and some of them were not fun to be around. He certainly had his fine traits. He was honest and smart and handsome and had a wacky fascination with horror films, and with movies in general. (According to him, he started drinking martinis because William Powell in "The Thin Man" made them look so debonair.) But I remember a lot of my childhood as a time of tension, wondering if Dad was in a good mood or a sour one, if I needed to tiptoe or could dance. Because he was not a man who could talk about himself (I don't remember a single time he said how he was feeling, either physically or emotionally), I didn't know what were the driving forces in his life, didn't know what he was up against nor what he thought of himself. Because I didn't understand him, I took his moods personally. It took me lots of unpacking later in life to see him as a person, someone who was doing his best and simply didn't have the vocabulary to express himself more clearly and lovingly.
Mom, on the other hand, was sweetness itself, easygoing, cheerful, kind and loving. I used to wonder how she could have made such a happy marriage with someone like Dad. I know I couldn't, mostly because I'm too much like him. I find myself wishing sometimes that she had married an easier man, a man more able to express his love, a man more affectionate and happy. I keep wondering what her life might have been like if she had married someone else.
But it had to be her who married Dad. Not many women, maybe one in eight million, could have made a happy marriage with him. If he had married a woman who criticized him, or asked for more from him, or tried to make him talk, I believe he would have been terribly unhappy, and his worst traits would have been exacerbated. I can imagine him sinking into depression and even worse alcoholism. He needed someone with Mom's temperament, her patience and sunniness, her compliance. She was the Belle to his Beast. She alone could see the handsome Prince inside of him. She alone could love and adore him as he wrestled with his very private demons. So I just have to believe, or hope, that she was as happy as she seemed, that she had found her own Sweet Hubby.
Funny how much of what you say about your dad is so similar to my mom: "Dad was a man of many moods, and some of them were not fun to be around. He certainly had his fine traits. But I remember a lot of my childhood as a time of tension, wondering if Dad was in a good mood or a sour one, if I needed to tiptoe or could dance."
ReplyDelete"...to see him as a person, someone who was doing his best and simply didn't have the vocabulary to express himself more clearly and lovingly." This hit home with me, Babs.
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether part of it was a sign of the times, that generation's idea of how society expected men/fathers to behave.
When I'd just turned 18 and was about to get married,my parents were against it. I told my dad he didn't understand how I felt. He said, "Don't you think I've ever been in love?"
Well, hell no, I hadn't! Nothing before that moment had ever prepared me for or presented that idea. It took the adult me to begin to see it. ~xoA