My Father Wants to Reconnect After Years of Being Absent
By: Brian Abbey
Tags: Life Lessons, Life, Relationships, Family, Mental Health

He’s calling again. It’s the third time this week. He does this around my birthday. Do I want to talk to my dad? Now? Ever? My wife asks why I don’t answer the phone. That’s a long conversation — one I’ve been having for more than 25 years.

My dad doesn’t mesh well with people — not me and especially not my mom. Those two fought all the time, bickering until their words flared up into more physical confrontations or until one of them would walk off. Usually, it was him leaving the house for hours or sometimes days. He preferred to be gone. We have a collection of family vacation photos of me, my sister, and my mom. Dad would be somewhere else blowing off steam and mom would ask strangers to take photos of the three of us. There we are at Disney World. There we are at Six Flags. There’s our summer in New Mexico.

However, he wasn’t always absent. He was more interested in me when I was a kid. He taught me how to throw a baseball and a punch. He showed me how to safely use a knife and fire a gun. He built me an elaborate playhouse on stilts with a trapdoor and a rope swing in our backyard. He was amazing with a saw and a hammer.

As I grew older he grew more inconsistent. Work kept him from showing up to my football and baseball games. I was crushed the day I hit my first home run and scanned the bleachers only to see he wasn’t there.

He blames my mom for his missing out on so much of my youth. My parents had the kind of fights that weren’t acceptable to the nice older couple who lived next door. Sometimes the police would show up after the yelling escalated beyond a civilized level. Sometimes my neighbors would ask me if my sister and I were okay.

After the fights settled, my dad always apologized. He was good at fixing things but no so hot at maintaining them.

When our kitchen was falling apart, he rebuilt it from the ground up. He laid the concrete, did the electrical, built the frames for the walls, and installed all the appliances. He had a gift for making things, for wood and nails. He was also great with cogs and gears. He could tell you what’s wrong with your car or your washing machine by listening to it and then he knew how to repair it.

Sometimes when people are exceptional at things they don’t understand how the rest of us function. He often lost patience with me for not knowing how to do the things that came so easily to him. I didn’t share his innate talent and, even worse, I didn’t share his interest in cars and Home Depot. I did enjoy spending time with him, though. I would gladly tag along with him to the hardware store or shadow him when he was working on a project. I tried my best to learn from him but his lessons inevitably turned into angry lectures on my incompetence.

He was a gearhead and I loved books. He could have handled my being a bookworm but I especially loved poetry and plays. He didn’t see the use in such frivolities. Over the years, little things such as a lack of interest in cars can grow into gaping canyons of misunderstanding. By the time I was sixteen, it was if we were from different planets and spoke foreign languages.

His lack of attendance in my life spiked during my high school years. He liked to tell me he was coming to my school or sporting events but then would flake for no reason. He missed the speech I gave my senior year as the president of the National Honors Society. After the ceremony, one of my teachers asked where my parents were. I told him my mom had to work but when he asked where my dad was, I could only shrug. I wasn’t sure where the old man was.

A few weeks prior he had run off with some woman and I hadn’t heard from him since. He and my mom began a nasty divorce that would continue for almost two years. We didn’t have much so they weren’t arguing for possessions as much as for spite. During this time, I saw him on occasion but I’d given up on relying on him.

I left for college soon after and he faded into the background of my busy student life. I breezed through my studies until my senior year and had only intermittent contact with him. Then, one day I needed him.

My mom remarried and found a new job, which was fantastic, but it impacted my financial aid package and my tuition shot up in my final year. When I went to register, they told me I couldn’t attend class until the extra $2,000 in tuition was paid. I had worked two jobs all summer and thought I’d have enough based on past years. The extra amount was a surprise.

I called my dad and explained how I was short on my tuition. He listened to my story and then asked me what I was going to do. I had hoped he might offer to help. I never asked him for anything before but I hadn’t previously been this desperate. He suggested I call my mom but we both knew she and my stepdad didn’t have that kind of cash. We also both knew he did.

Something I learned about him over the years was that he used money to fix things. He told me to go to my mom knowing she didn’t have any savings and planning to play the hero once things became dire, But, he didn’t anticipate my going elsewhere for help.

I called my longtime best friend Daniel to ask if his mom might loan me the money. She agreed as long as I promised to repay her within six months. My father was irate I went to someone else and asked for help. He told me I embarrassed my family. I was just happy to have friends who care so much about me.

A few weeks after college graduation, Daniel was hit head-on by a drunk driver on a lonely Texas highway. After his death, I spiraled into a deep depression. I had graduated from college with no real plan for what to do next. My girlfriend and I broke up and then my best friend was killed. I stayed with Daniel’s mom for a few days before the funeral, drinking cheap wine and looking through old photos. She asked me to speak at the ceremony and I, of course, obliged, but that time is a blur for me. It could have been the tears or the wine but the memories are all out of focus.

After Daniel’s funeral, I went back to Dallas and crashed with my dad for a while. He had a spare room and told me I could stay until I got on my feet. I sort of fell apart while living with him. I went numb. Looking back at this period feels as if I am looking at someone else, a stranger in my skin.

My dad tried to console me but we didn’t have that kind of relationship. He was never the sympathetic type so his helping was usually the ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ variety. I had no interest in picking myself up and that frustrated him. He began yelling at me the way he used to yell at my mom. We had similar fights to the ones the two of them had when I was a boy.

One evening he was especially angry and backed me into the corner of his kitchen. I was crying, miserable, and a complete wreck of a human being. He grabbed my face so I would have to look at him as he shouted at me. I pleaded through my tears for him to stop but he was undeterred. He was going to fix me. He’s not a big man; I’m not a small one. My punch sent him sprawling onto his back. The same punch he taught me years before.

I moved out of his apartment that very night. For a while, I would see him during the holidays and call him on his birthday, but over the past few years, I stopped including him in my life. He made no effort on his end and so he disappeared. For me, his role as a parent ended somewhere along the way and I began referring to my stepdad as “Dad.” He’s the kind of man you might dream up when you realize your dad isn’t a great guy.

Now, that guy is coming around again and I’m unsure whether I have room in my life for him. I’ve filled the void he left with people I love. I’m a grown man now. I don’t need him to help me work on that piece of shit Camaro I bought when I was 16. I don’t need him to build me the bookshelf he promised me when I was 10.

The phone is ringing and my beautiful wife looks at me and tells me to pick it up. I answer and my dad and I talk. It’s the stilted conversation of two people who should know each other better. We’re a long way from the banter of father and son.

I’m conflicted after our talks. I realize he’s alone and in poor health but our conversations are tense. He wants our relationship to instantly become something more meaningful and grows angry when it doesn’t. I take a deep breath and let the years of disappointment pass in the exhale.

I don’t expect him to be the world’s greatest dad. I know who he is. So when he calls, I appreciate it. I appreciate his effort and I understand his uncertainty about what we’re going to talk about next.

We take each call one conversation at a time. That’s all we can do for each other. That’s enough for now.

Another version of this post previously appeared in Salon.