My father (again)

Over the past couple of months it's become clear to me that the topic I'm going to have the most trouble blogging about is my father. I really want to be fair and balanced - he was loved and respected by a lot of people - he was married to his second wife for 32 years before he passed away and they have children who are the same age as mine - I assume members of that family will be reading this at some point.

And yeah - I'm being a total whiner. I grew up white, intelligent, well educated and well-to-do in the most affluent country on earth. Maybe there was constant screaming (and the occasional flying object) plus some emotional instability, but there was no pervasive physical violence and a lot of kids would have traded places with me in a heartbeat. Still, it's impossible to talk about my life without delving into my issues with my father. So here goes:

He wasn't around that much when I was growing up - he traveled extensively on business. From the time my parents split up when I was 11 (April 65) until 1989 I only saw him 8 or 9 times. (I spent about a month with him in New York in early 1971 - it didn't end well). In 1989 he moved his family here from Sweden (and/or Germany) and that's when I finally got to know him (I was in my mid 30s and he was in his mid 60s by then).

I've already mentioned that at some point during his childhood he consciously decided that his wants and needs were more important than anything else - but that's just the 'tip of the iceberg'. He also told me that when he read about people like Alexander the Great and Napoleon he identified with them. That was his self-image - a person whose existence was of critical importance and consequence to mankind. To say that it colored his interactions with his family would be a gross understatement...

I never saw any signs that he felt slightest bit of regret for anything he had ever done. I found it hard to believe that there wasn't at least a 'twinge' of remorse somewhere inside of him, so during the mid 1990s I confronted him about a relatively benign incident that occurred when I was 9 years old:
One Saturday morning as he was about to head into the office he told me he'd be back around noon and we'd go do something together. So I sat by the front window all day waiting for him. He didn't get home until that evening - come to find out he'd headed over to the Cynwyd Club to play tennis and hang out with his buddies. I was very deeply hurt and (obviously) never forgot it.

So I told him that story (and explained how much it had hurt me) and waited for his response. I don't know exactly what I was expecting (maybe an apology?) but he just looked puzzled and said:
"Well, you should have been more sympathetic to my needs!"

For a few seconds I was trapped in a Dali painting - the entire universe melted around me as I tried to wrap my mind around what he had just said.
I was like "Uh, Dad? I was only 9?" And he was like "Yeah... so what's your point?". It was a revelation. Almost every question I'd had about my childhood had been answered by that single response :-)

I'm certainly not saying that I didn't love him - I did. And we did do a lot of things together - tennis, skiing, playing catch, etc. I have many fond memories, and those are the ones I need to hang on to. But there was nothing in my relationship with him I could rely on. And when you're a kid that's a bit tough to handle...