Bill Gaston - Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood

THIS YEAR FOR CHRISTMAS my two boys gave their mother Dede a beautiful gift, a double frame holding two photos. In one, three-year-old Connor sits in a yellow plastic laundry hamper, holding up baby Vaughn by the armpits. Connor smiles proudly and Vaughn isnt sure whats going on. In the second photo, the present-day boys, in their early twenties, sit in and crush the yellow plastic hamper, legs splayed. Theyre dressed as before, Connor in black T-shirt and shorts, Vaughn a red onesie. The background scatter of chair and table legs is painstakingly recreated. Connor has Vaughn by the armpits, and they copy their expressions of proud and clueless. The gift moved Dede to laughter and tears. Its likely the closest to gushy well ever see from these two young men, who took her hugs in stride.

The thing is, they didnt also give it to me. I know why, but cant explain it, except that it feels like a sons gift to a mother just like it doesnt feel like a sons gift to a father. If I were to ask either of them why they didnt also give it to me, at most Id get some grunted irony. And that would feel natural too. My gift from them was a selection of odd craft beers, one with kelp. They know me.

Maybe this book is about how fathers and their children do, and dont, communicate. That is, maybe this book is about yearning.

If Im going to write something from memory, best start now. Ive turned sixty, and this truth shocks me from my hair to my feet. Age doesnt have much going for it as far as I can tell. Maybe Ive calmed down in a way that lets me admit how little I know, which I suspect is wisdoms first door. My father knew this kind of humility sooner in lifebut I dont think he valued it or saw it as a door. Maybe he did, in ten-second blooms of clarity. Alcoholism does have its moments, though theyre so well erased they dont count. I recently heard a good one: alcohol gives you wings and takes away the sky. In any case, my father wasnt allowed to not know something. His was an era when a mans only pose was to know everything. A fathers pose? Even more so.

Im hoping hed forgive my scrutiny. The lens Ill have him under. But I had him in sharp focus the whole time. Parents watch their growing kids for strengths and flaws, but kids also eye their parents, and of course in adolescence the scrutiny kicks into high gear. Its part of love, isnt it? A parents fault-finding is seen as a facet of love, so why not a childs? His hot disgust over a fathers stumble wouldnt happen if he didnt feel so deeply. His turning from a father in fury, hyperventilating as he drives awayisnt it a manifestation of love?

Despite all these years I doubt that Ive learned how to live my life, let alone anyone elses. And yet when I lay out my fathers life the air will be thick with judgment. I dont know how to avoid this. Its what I felt. I dont claim that I could have lived his life better than he did, and Im aware that Im seeing someones agonies from the safety of distance and the clarity of time.