We’d be listening out the whole Christmas day to see if he would come.
That was extremely disappointing. My brother and I always kind of waited, anticipating that he would come. And also we would sort of be listening out, you know, the whole Christmas day, we’d be listening out to see if he would come. So he never did. And it was extremely disappointing to us.
He always, always brought us Christmas presents
The other thing though, I will say, for all you dads out there, is that even though he did that, what he did do was he always, always brought us Christmas presents. It was kind of a last minute thing. And he just show up. My mother would put us to bed, you know, on the 24th, and we would go to sleep. And somehow on the 24th, he would manage to come and drop off sort of an assortment of something that he threw together, but made sure that he did bring something.
I was always very grateful that at least he brought something. I cannot say that he ever failed to bring something for Christmas. I always thought to myself, he probably had something very special to him about Christmas, because he always made sure that something was there. Not what I wanted, not what I needed, nothing connected to me, but there was something there. And so as you can imagine, this created a lot of disappointment, a lot of anxiety around Christmas.
There was no way that my dad was going to come to dinner
To be honest, I never understood why my mom kept asking me or telling me to go ask him if he was gonna come. But in the process of writing For the Love of My Father, I realized that there was no way that my dad was going to come to dinner and sit down with my mom at the same table for any reason. And the unfortunate part of it is that he failed to be courageous enough to say, this is not something I can do, or present it in a way that would be absorbable for a child.
Waiting to hear his footsteps come up the stairs
It was devastating for us and it imprinted us in a very negative — I say us meaning myself and my brother — imprinted us in a very negative way, to be waiting every year to hear his footsteps come up the stairs and for it never to happen. Now, I’m only talking about my experiences.
I realized when I was writing the book that my dad was never gonna come and sit down, but he didn’t have the courage to, or maybe the words. I’ll say that for some of you guys who are out there, because I know sometimes you just wanna avoid the mother of your children like the plague. And rather than confronting her or telling the truth, you’ll say just about anything so that you don’t have to sit with this person. So while I was writing the book, I realized he was never coming, but he never said that. And maybe he never had the words to say it.