My dad used to tell a story about his silver-haired steel-executive father visiting the big office Dad got when they made him creative director of the Detroit ad agency, Campbell-Ewald.
"Bud," said the old man, gaping in astonishment that pleased and pained my dad for the rest of his life. "Are you this good?"
Dad's gone now, but sometimes I imagine him looking around my little home office, strewn with my papers and kid's toys and empty cans, coffee cups and granola bar wrappers, and asking: "Bud, are you this bad?"
* Yes, I do realize I've been talking about my parents even more than usual here. Maybe it's the time of year—my mom died on Thanksgiving, 1990, and dad departed January 2009. I often say I don't miss them because they're still here, but maybe that's a load of bullshit.
Rueben says
From everything I’ve read here about your dad, David, I suspect he wouldn’t have been fooled. Doesn’t sound to me like he was a “the clothes/office make the man” kind of guy.
And I, like many others, know exactly what you mean about departed parents and this time of year. They’re there, and yet so palpably not there as well.
David Murray says
I reckon he ain’t fooled by my desk. I think one of the things about dads and sons is that dads are the people WE assign to tell us whether we’re good enough, or whether we’ve just accepted good enough as good enough.
Of course, Dad didn’t know whether I was doing my best at life either. He didn’t even know whether he had.
And on we grope, we grope, we grope.
Rueben says
As dads we assign the same role to our kids – to tell us whether we’re good enough, especially at being dads. Because our own ability to assess that is too tied up in our own perceptions of our fathers.