My Dad and Me: Unspoken Antipathy
It was a lot for my dad to bear during those years. For all of his dreams, of which he made every member of the family a party during his short life, he had been pushed aside from the one thing he loved most: being self-employed in a business in which he had passion, and through which he could provide a good living for his family. Dying as he did at the early age of 41, his resume was by comparison a short one. But to say his life was without substance would be a grave symptom of myopia..
Keith, as he was referred to, began his professional career immediately after high school. A subject of the family lore, I have formed in my mind the image of an 17 year-old boy who found himself one day attending Roosevelt High School in Fresno, Ca., and the next day appearing before potential employers with the impression of his father’s boot planted firmly on the seat of his pants. For in the world that shaped Charles Keith Jones, there had been years of forwarning about my grandfather’s expectations of his son that made it only too clear that Keith would begin repaying to his father the debt of his childhood the moment he was of legal age.
Consequently, at age 17, Keith began a long trail of sales positions. I note recently on my own birth certificate the profession of my father was listed as salesman for a chain link fencing company. He dabbled in various jobs, including sales of insurance, until he finally came to rest for a decent length of time working for the Boy Scouts of America. But my dad had vision for himself, somewhere deep down, and this vision was based on being self-employed in the sales industry, and becoming a wealthy man.
Providence, as it turns out, had other plans for him. For while he strategized, and organized, and became more and more proficient at his art in sales, his own body let him down at the early age of 37 with the event of his first heart attack. But recoup he did. And for several more years he lived his dream of owning his own insurance agency, and providing a good living for his family.
Then, a second heart attack, and then a third. Keith’s wife always held a psychological advantage over her husband in that she was a college-educated nurse, and was chronologically older than he by three years. So while my dad’s desire was to continue picking himself up after each of his physical downfalls, and continue the pursuit of his dreams, my mother convinced him that it was the pressure of being self-employed that was killing him. Weakened, and reduced to a shell of the man he was, Keith allowed himself to be pushed aside inside of his own life. He gave up his life’s dream of self-employment and a growing sales agency, at at time when there was nothing that could apparently fill the void.
I was sixteen years old at the time of these events; and I hated my father for what he had allowed to happen to his life. Please understand, I had no misgiving about his physical handicap. I had no resentment of his need to “slow down” a bit, and perhaps engage in new habits that could extend his life.
But what I resented to point of painful embarrassment at “being his son” was his acquiesence to other people who thought they knew better about what would keep him alive, make him a man, infuse him with the thrill of life. his life My resentment bordered on hatred.
I was to find no consolation or relief of my immature judgment of my father in the years that he continued, on his own, to live by the rules of another, and still be a man. After a 6-month stint as a bank employee, my dad returned to insurance sales, only this time as one of the “low men on the totem pole” in the company for which he worked. I watched him, as a son does, “too closely” and found new ways to feel disgust and antipathy toward him. I recall that each morning, before the sun rose, both he and I were “up” and organizing ourselves for our respective roles that day. And I recall how I would clench my teeth with anger as Keith Jones would push the red Volkswagen that sat parked immediately next to the window of our neighbor’s bedroom down the driveway and out of hearing range…..an overt act of self-effacement in the name of Christian charity, not wanting the sound of the car’s motor to awaken our neighbor at that early hour of the morning. And I seethed at this attempt at invisibility. Yes, I wanted people to know how hard he was working. He deserved it!
I wanted a father who would stand up for himself, and claim the injustices that had been done to him by others. I wanted a father I could be proud of, even in the midst of personal adversity. I wanted a father who would tell the woman who was killing him inch by inch to look upon her own evil face in the mirror, and examine the rules that governed her own life—–and leave him alone.
These were my feelings at the tender age of 16 toward the only man who could claim to be my dad and mentor. And now, at 60, the carousel of life has come full circle. And I have been that “hated man” who wanted nothing more than to be a positive role model for those who engaged in the observation of my life. ‘Tis true: “we reap what we sow.”
Today, I can honestly say that I love my father. I love him for always doing what he thought was “right.” Right for him, and right for his family. I know him today as a man who was overwhelmed by the responsibilities imposed on him by his own father, and his wife. I love him for the choices he made as he daily discerned the path that he was on, and the path that he, by obligation, would have to take. I wish that I could tell him today how much I’ve learned to love him. But I think, in God’s way, he knows. There is an expression “like father, like son.” As God would have it, I have had the opportunity to walk more that one mile in my dad’s shoes, and I know deep in my soul that I was blessed to have him as a mentor for my life.
