When a Son Doesn't Respect a Father

You know the desire to be loved. If you’re a parent, you understand this desire grows exponentially when you consider the affection of your children. For men, oftentimes this love is saddled up with a need to feel respected by your kids. And maybe, just maybe this is more true for sons than daughters. I don’t know. It’s just kind of seemed that way for me.

I wanted my son to love and respect me.

For most of his teenage years, the love was there, but the respect faded into the background as he grew to know me. The two of us were close, but there was always something missing. As best I could tell, he thought I was a good dad. We had fun together. We told each other we love each other. We meant it.

But slowly, an emotional distance grew between us. As he grew more perceptive to our family’s dynamics things began to change between us. It wasn’t always this way. Things were different when he was small.

One memory in particular shines like the dentist’s light in your eyes. When adjusted correctly it can be an important tool for health care. But if it’s off just a bit, it blinds you to where you can’t seen anything else.

I was tucking my son into bed when he was young, probably not yet ten years old. I could see a look of sadness on his face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, pulling the covers up to his chin.

“Nothing.” He lied.

“Josh, I can tell something’s wrong. What is it?” He remained still for while. Then his eyes began to fill with tears. One rolled silently out of the corner of his left eye and into his ear. He blinked hard.

“I just… I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!”

It touched my heart. I made a pursed-lipped smile and tilted my head with furrowed eyebrows to show my loving concern. Caressing his wet cheek in my hand, I did the best to set his little heart at ease. “Bud, you don’t need to worry about that right now. That’s just not something a kid your age needs to worry about. I mean, look at me. I’m a man in my 30s and haven’t quite figured this out yet.”

That’s an understatement. I scoffed inwardly.

“Yeah, but you have an important job working for very important people!” He cried, not quite sobbing.

He didn’t know it, but those words cut me. At the time I was working as an overnight security guard at the Harvard School of Public Health. I assumed it was the Harvard School of Public Health part that impressed him. I couldn’t conceive of the idea that it was the overnight security guard part.

I kept my feelings of self-loathing to myself.

“I love you, kiddo.” I said as I leaned over and hugged him before drying off his cheeks. I took his face in my hands and guided his eyes to mine. “Listen, you don’t need to worry about what you want to do when you grow up. You have time to figure that out, ok?” He nodded at me, kissed me on the lips, and rolled over towards the wall bringing the chin-tight bedcovers with him.

As I left his room I was a ball of contradictory emotions. I was touched he believed in me. His faith in me was far more than I had in myself.

Fuck. He’s going to figure out the truth some day.

I went into our bedroom and told my wife of the conversation. She gave me a knowing look. Josh and his mother both understood something I didn’t at the time. I did have an important job. It was important to the people I worked for. It was important for the family I provided for.

I just didn’t understand that yet.

As he grew older, Josh would indeed figure out that my career was a bit different than he had perceived as a young boy.

He’d come to discern that I was a person who struggled to stick with anything. He’d see I would develop an interest here and there, work at it a while, and then move on to something else. He’d watch as I’d wallow in entry-level positions but talk a big game. He’d witness me look for jobs that made me feel inspired or that I saw as meaningful while his mother just worked her tail off for the sake of doing a job well.

So, yeah, Josh figured it out. And my relationship with him suffered. It wasn’t that he stopped loving me. It was never that. It was more that, I think - and this is just me trying to understand in hindsight what might have been going on - he couldn’t trust me when it came to looking out for the best interest of our family. My shortcomings as a father and husband were glaring. My wife was suffering to provide, and as Josh came to understand it, some of that suffering was a direct result of my refusal to build a career in anything. How could it not drive a wedge between us?

And it wasn’t even so much about the career. It was my lack in consistency. It was my lack of motivation or drive. Over and over again Josh would hear me talk about things I was going to do and then observe as I took no action to do those things.

It was like that episode of The Office when Michael Scott declares, “What people don’t know about business I could fill a book with!”

“Then do it.” Ryan implores.

Michael goes into his office and begins to dictate the book into a recorder, but quickly realizes he doesn’t have any idea what to say.

That was me. Over and over. Passion is one thing. A willingness to learn what it takes to explore passion is another. For most of the first part of my life I preferred dreaming of success rather than working for success.

Eventually, after a crisis in my marriage, I did begin to change.

I learned to not let my passion and desires dictate what I had for a job.

Josh noticed. I think it was last year that he and I began to talk about these things. He saw that I learned to find other ways to contribute to the family. He watched as I stuck with a job, and learned to let my passion flow into my “after hours” time, so to speak. As I did, he began to develop a newfound respect for me. My wife even told me once that he stuck up for me when she was voicing some frustrations.

She listened and saw that he was correct.

About a month ago my son called me to give me some of the most encouraging words I’ve ever heard from his mouth.

On that day I was struggling to get out a post on time - Wednesday of each week - as I’d committed to my readers. I was walking in the parking lot at work one early afternoon when the call came through my ear-pods. I looked at my watch. The caller ID showed the face of that little boy I’d tucked into bed smiling up at me, though a decade of aging had occurred since.

“Hey, bud!” I answered. Bud is what I call him. It’s the closest thing I can muster as a term of endearment without sounding to mushy.

“Hey!” He replied in good spirits, which always sets a father’s heart at ease.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I just wanted to call real quick and tell you I’m proud of you. You know you I haven’t always felt this way. Not that I wasn’t proud to have you as my dad, nothing like that or anything…”

Josh tried to make sure I wasn’t offended by a potential unspoken slight. The words were pregnant with accusation about failures as a father. But my son and I had already held that colicky baby. We’d found ways to sooth it until it grew out of the colic.

With a, “No, I know what you mean…go on.” I put the question to bed. He went on.

“I don’t know. Just, for the past year, or for however long you’ve been writing on Substack… you’ve been consistent. I know it’s hard. Trust me, as someone who’s trying to get content of my own out there, I know it’s hard. I just want to tell you I see your work. I’m really proud of the change. You know…”

“Yeah, I know. Thank you. That means a lot.”

We talked for a few more minutes about life and how college was going. As far as calls from Josh go, it was a short one. But the brief call teemed with more meaning than any I’d ever received.

As I hung up the phone my heart smiled and my vision blurred.

It’s happening again now as I recount the moment for you.

They’re the best kind of tears. The kind you work hard for, unsure if you’ll ever get to experience them.

But the mid-April phone call in my 49th year as person, 27th year as a husband, and 22nd year as a father was evidence I’ve begun to find my way, at least when it comes to writing, the thing I really want to do.

But who’s counting?