Fathers and sons

I don't have a picture album.  In the years since I've migrated to my current home, I've moved from place to place.  All my worldly possessions could be summed up in a green tote, a couple of overnight bags and suitcases.  I don't have too many pictures, hardly any at all.  Especially none of my father.

I was raised as a Ward of the state.  My grandparents took care of me. I've never thought too hard about my father and mother's decision when it came to me.  Mostly because from a young age, the raw emotion- anger, rage, inadequacy, guilt was too much to negotiate.  As a young man now, I think more reasoned about it, slow and dainty.

Recently I received a phone call from my father.  His son keep in mind- a college graduate, had successfully hurdled the pitfalls of reservation life; things like becoming an unprepared young father, transient and shallow romances, seduction of alcohol and substances.  His son, had become everything he had not.  Not that I would ever demean my father.  At a glance it doesn't look like we have much common in all- my size and girth, his smallness and fragility.  Yet when I talk to him, my father, I realize I have his temperament, his sense of humor, and his general attitude towards compassion and empathy.

The most telling of our conversation is in the moment in which he shared about my mother, a woman he's been estranged to for almost 28 years.  He had crossed paths with her, and as they talked, naturally the topic flowed back to the one thing they had in common, their son.  He was softly candid and vivid in appealing to me with a pride that even after many years, he had remembered my mother's birthday, and that he was shamelessly still attempting to charm her.  I softly tried to validate the moment and told him I was impressed or "it was cool" that he remembers that.

Yet there was an eerie contrast in this tale.  Not a few days later, and for no particular reason, my dad wanted to go to a Yakama sweat lodge ceremony.  It's not uncommon for me to hear this from any relatives back home as to doing this.  So with a chipper and meek attitude, dad set out to prep the things necessary to make the ceremony to go.  His father was there, and in no time was berating and belittling the work my father had done.  I don't say too much about my father's father.  From the course of the conversation, I had just said "sorry" for being on the receiving end of that treatment.  He had called to "just talk".  I knew he wanted in no way, for his son to feel the same way about him.

I appreciate that.  I am immensely happy about it too.  One of the leading questions my father asks when we talk is if I have an 'i'yat' which in Yakama is asking "do you have a woman"- a better half, a significant other, a lover?  As least awkwardly as I can each time, I say no I do not.  I reassure my father his good courtship genes haven't been wasted.  I'm going to get there.

Even more so, I think of that day, a festive, God giving, and God glorifying day of bliss- my wedding perhaps, and it dawned on me.  A legacy and a patterned had devoured my father's relationship with his father- deeply ingrained pain, hatred, betrayal, abandonment, and resentment.  And it dawns on me the opportunity to reorient our family tree to a healthy, loving, redemptive relationship my father can have with his son.  And the hope comes in when I told him I go to Church, and he shyly asks "do you read the Book [bible]?"  I said I do. I hope this opens more doors of communication in the future.  But ultimately I'm grateful and encouraged because I lapsed into a vision that in the face of our relationship, I can see my father being the best man at that long awaited day down the road.