Father's Day

My late wife always used to say that the days for celebrating parents were inventions of the Hallmark Greeting Card company, vulgarly commercial and to be disregarded.  Unfortunately the one for fathers has sunk into my consciousness enough that I am always aware when it rolls around.  It makes me so sad, since I seem unable to look at anything other than my many flaws as a father.  First off, I did not play catch.  These things are part of tradition, I guess.  No one threw the ball with me (I cannot imagine my father, even if he had lived past my sixth year, throwing the ball with me, but then I can scarcely imagine him, period.)  I never ever thought to throw the ball, nor encourage my sons in neighborhood sports, and actually declined my younger son's request to join something called the Pop Warner league, I guess it was for football.  There is an article in this Saturday's Times op-ed page on the virtue of a man demonstrating a strong work ethic to his son, the idea being that a male is defined by his having a work ethic and a serious job.  I was always compulsive about fulfilling any obligation that my work imposed upon me, and I was always ambitious to succeed at a higher level than that at which I was working.  But at that same time I valued slacking off, wasting time, and doing nothing.  One day--out of the blue--when the children were in grade school out in Palo Alto I perversely said, "Let's all go to the beach," and so they did not go to class, but instead we packed lunches and went over to San Gregorio Beach  My older son says he was oppressed by the energetic ambitious drive of both his parents and wanted none of it.  That's one of the few remarks that have come my way since the children have become adults.  As the song goes, we don't talk much anymore.  It's probably inevitable when strong personalities develop and go their own way.  My younger daughter once said when I complained how unlike me all four of my children were, "You gave us independence, complete independence, and that meant freedom to be different from you."  So there you have it.  I guess I am sad because I don't have the sense of being a father.  And maybe that is because I never had one and don't know what one is supposed to be like, and thus can only imagine myself to be me, not a father.  And that has to do with my instinct for playing roles, and not knowing how this role goes.  And that probably has to do with my being gay, and though I managed to my mind to conceal this from my children while they were growing up, I never felt close enough to other fathers to belong to the fathers club and thus never got the walk, the talk, the attitude.  Years ago my children's friends once called me "more of a Jewish mother than our own mothers."  There I was in the kitchen making cookies for them when they all trooped in after school.  I guess I auditioned for the wrong role.