paternal trifecta

*****

Today was Father's Day.

I noticed that Google changed its design to correspond to the multiple, but narrow-minded concepts we have of a father's involvement in the world. They're the same images found on the fronts of cards: dad during a young child's life, whether that means kite flying on a Sunday afternoon or wood sawing during tree house assembly.

I don't send cards anymore.

Part of this is due to knee-jerk environmental reasons. The other part is more complicated and less easily rationalized or explained.

When holidays like this come around, I wonder to whom the card companies and other corporate entities are still selling this illusion of the Norman Rockwell family. Whatever happened to the illusion of one's dad beating up another's? That one got plenty of playground buzz, but seemingly no press. Isn't that what the masculine influence has really offered our society?

I talked to my dad today. There's a predictable formula to our conversations. I should point out that conversing with one another is not common. When I use the term "conversation" I mean it on the most remote level possible, such as what might be shared by two strangers in an elevator. There's seemingly no escape from it and boy do you wish that other person hadn't started talking.

On-going banter about the weather is always the centerpiece of our conversational template. There's the curiosity: how's the weather been there? That's the jumping off point and there are always follow up questions and responses. Things start to get a bit shakier, should the chat go anywhere else. There are no follow-up questions. Most of the time it's not clear whether what you said was even heard.

Today I got a couple more lines of conversation out of him. It was interesting. It felt like a break-through. Part of me suspects I might have scratched the surface of another way to relate to one another; the other part thinks I'm foolish.

I called my brother next.

He's a father seven times over. Sometimes I have to backtrack in my head and do a mental headcount to ensure I've gotten the number correct. I'm sure I could do the math to determine just how many of the planet's resources are being used by my brother's family alone, but I'm sure it wouldn't help our situation.

Let me tell you, I loathe speakerphone. Okay, to be fair, mostly I loathe it if I don't know the person that well. I don't know my brother. We don't relate at all. I know we don't see eye-to-eye on anything. This leaves us reduced to obligatory holiday conversations. The speakerphone while driving with a person who I've never met probably didn't help matters, but the contents of our talk were too minimal to get into. There was mention of them going to Starbucks. I kept my mouth shut. Unbeknownst to some people, I can do so, but it's one of many things that remind me that one of us is part of the Confederacy and the other the Union (or some similar historical divide of your choice).

***** (thanks to Stevie for the photo)