Leave it to the combination of Facebook and Father's Day to leave me feeling all weepy and mortal.
Seriously, all these Father's Day wishes, and old photographs of fathers long dead (or only wishing they were) have got me thinking about the basic, irrefutable unfairness of life. I mean, how did my father – a God-fearing, exercise-crazy, all-around nice guy (at least with these rose-colored, 20-20 hindsight bifocals I'm currently wearing) – end up dead when most people his age were just getting around to picking out their next Cadillac? He didn't smoke. He barely touched alcohol. Not a caf-fiend. He was in better shape at 60 than I was at 45. I go out and photograph centenarians who tell me that the secret of a long life is smoking a stogie every morning and then jaywalking on Interstate 80. How did the Grim Reaper get my dad's name and address?
I want an answer! And, "It's a mystery!" is not gonna cut it.
Father's Day also leaves me wondering – in a speculative, road-not-travelled kinda way – about my own decision not to be a father. Which was not so much a decision as I was just so terrified by the prospect of taking care of (read: paying for) raising a child. As I've grown older, and watched my nieces and nephew grow up, I think, "Hmmm… that doesn't look that hard…" Of course, none of their parents are living on subsistence wages…
In my previous life, when I was co-habiting with the Bird Whisperer, we scoffed at the notion of children, and the result was that we ended up having none. In my present life, there's been no scoffing, but a distinct lack of fecundity. That's what we call "getting old."
Not that I spend a lot of time on it, but every so often, when I see some parent savoring a moment of childish innocence, I think to myself, "That'll never be me." And it makes me wistful, not to say sad.
Of course, it would make me sadder when I had to send them off to an Oakland public school…
Don't worry, I'm recovered, but look for something similar to this tear-jerker next Father's Day. Or right after It's A Wonderful Life airs at Christmas. Please don't suggest that I adopt – I am so not interested in raising somebody else's kid.
Hi Ross. I love this story. I have friends who have decided they don't want children and I wonder if there are any regrets. I am happy you shared yours. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to discover that this was a "story." I thought of it more as a set of reflections... and oddly sentimental reflections, coming from you, Rosski-Sue.
ReplyDeleteThe world is full, as the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman put it recently: full of humans, full of their debris and their waste, and full -- need I say? -- of their offspring. Do we really need more? And is fatherhood something that we really want to tout and sentimentalize? People will continue to have children, more or less heedlessly, more or less selfishly. But it's the people who choose not to, who have the strength, the self-abnegation or, if nothing else, the simple ambivalence to put a stop to the effusion of humans who serve our human interests best. So give yourself more credit. And don't be wistful 'bout the "innocence" you've missed. It exists, sure, though not for long in our kids. But it endures in other places -- in the world, the increasingly fragmentary world, that we have so far left unspoiled.