My father, in the years since he turned about sixty-five, has become a different man than the one who raised me. I want to be careful in how I describe this, because the cultural register tends to assume that the becoming-different of an older parent is either decline, in which case it should be mourned, or growth, in which case it should be celebrated. The becoming-different I am describing is neither. It is, on close examination, something more specific and structurally harder to sit with than either of the available framings.
The man my father is becoming, in his late sixties and now early seventies, is softer than the man who raised me. He is more emotionally available. He laughs more easily. He says things, occasionally, that the man who raised me would not have said. He has, in the past year or so, started ending our Sunday phone calls with a mumbled “love you, son” that I have written about elsewhere. He has, in his last two visits to Bangkok, sat with me in restaurants and asked questions about my life that the father of my childhood would not have asked. He has, in some real way, become more like the father I had, in private, occasionally wished for when I was young.
What is hardest about this is not the becoming-different itself. The becoming-different is, by every external measure, a good thing. The man who is emerging is more enjoyable to be around than the man who raised me. The relationship we now have is, by every reasonable measure, better than the one we had when I was a child.
What is hardest is the slow recognition that the man emerging now was probably in there the whole time. The softer, more available father who I am now meeting at seventy is not, on close examination, a new construction. He is, more accurately, a person who has been in there for the entire forty years I have known my father, and who, for reasons neither of us has ever discussed, was not allowed to be in the room when I was small.
What this means, when you sit with it
The implication of this recognition, when one sits with it, is uncomfortable. It implies that my father, throughout my childhood, was performing a version of fatherhood that was not, on close examination, the version of himself that was actually available to him. The version he performed was a more restrained, less verbally affectionate, more emotionally contained version than the version I am now meeting in his seventies. The contained version was the version of fatherhood that was, in some real way, considered appropriate by the standards of his generation and his particular cultural background.
The version of fatherhood he performed was not, in any clean sense, fake. He was a real father. The love was real. The attendance was real. The provision was real. The performance was, in some structural sense, sincere. But the performance was also, on close examination, a particular calibration of what he was actually capable of being. The calibration was set, somewhere in his own upbringing, to a register that did not include the softer features that are now, in his seventies, finally permitted to emerge.
The implication is that the father I had as a child was, in some real way, a curated version of the man my father actually was. The curation was not malicious. The curation was the available script. The script was the script of British fatherhood in the 1980s and 1990s, in a particular kind of household, raised in turn by a father whose own script had been even more restrictive. The curation was what was available to him. He did the curation. The curation was, in his own internal experience, what fatherhood required.
What this means, for me, is that the father I had as a child was not, on close examination, the full version of my father. The full version was being held in reserve, somewhere out of sight, while the curated version conducted the actual business of raising me. The full version is now, in his seventies, being slowly released. The release is, by every external measure, welcome. The release is also, on close examination, retroactively reframing the entire relationship I had with him for the first thirty-five years of my life.
The grief that does not have a name
There is a particular grief that this recognition produces, and I want to describe it carefully, because it is not, on the available cultural register, an obvious grief.
The grief is not for the father I am now getting. The father I am now getting is a gift. The grief is, more specifically, for the father I did not have access to during the decades when I most needed him. The softer, more verbally affectionate, more emotionally available father who is now showing up at my dinner table in Bangkok was, on the evidence, available all along. He was simply not, by the rules he was operating under, permitted to show up in the form that would have helped me most. The not-showing-up was not, in any sense I now believe, a choice. It was, more accurately, the structural feature of the script he had been given. The script did not have a setting for the version of him I am now meeting. The script, accordingly, did not produce that version. The version remained, for forty years, in reserve.
What I am grieving, on close examination, is the version of my childhood that would have been available if my father had been operating in the script he is operating in now rather than in the one he was operating in then. The version is not, in any real sense, accessible. The version is hypothetical. The version is, however, vivid enough in my own imagination that I can, in some real way, mourn its non-occurrence. The mourning is not, by any external measure, productive. The mourning is, in some real way, what the recognition produces, and the recognition is, by this stage of my life, not something I can easily unrecognize.
I want to be clear that this grief is not, in any active sense, resentment. I do not blame my father for the script he was operating in. He did not write the script. He did not, in any meaningful sense, choose it. He inherited it from his own father, who had inherited it from his, in a chain that stretches back further than anyone in our family is currently in a position to trace. My father did, on close examination, what his generation’s available equipment permitted him to do. He did it well. He did it with as much warmth as the equipment allowed. The equipment was, on examination, limited. The limitation was not, in any moral sense, his fault.
What I am grieving is structural rather than moral. I am grieving the structural fact that the equipment was what it was, and that the version of him that is now, finally, emerging is the version I would have liked to have had access to when I was eight, or twelve, or eighteen, or twenty-five. The eight-year-old me, the twelve-year-old me, the eighteen-year-old me are, by this point, fixed in their childhoods. They will not, in any retroactive way, get access to the version of their father that is currently sitting across from his thirty-eight-year-old son and saying, in mumbled tones, that he loves him.
What the late version is, and what it cannot do
I want to be careful, in describing the late version of my father, not to overstate what is possible at this stage.
The late version is not a complete reversal of the earlier one. The late version is, more accurately, the earlier one with a few of the previously locked features now unlocked. My father is still my father. He still has many of the features that defined him in my childhood. The careful reserve. The reluctance to dwell on difficult emotional material. The particular kind of British self-deprecation that operates as a small ongoing fence around the interior. These features are still in place. They are not, in any final sense, going away.
What has changed is the access to a few specific features that were previously not available. The willingness to say, occasionally, that he is proud of me. The willingness to ask, occasionally, how I am actually doing rather than how my work is going. The willingness, at the end of a Sunday call, to mumble the three words that the cultural register considers the standard articulation of paternal love. These are small openings. The openings are, in some real way, considerable, given the script he was originally operating under. The openings are also, on close examination, partial. The full version of the man who has been in there all along is not, even now, fully visible. The openings give me glimpses. The glimpses are, in some real way, more than I had access to for the first thirty-five years of our relationship. The glimpses are also not the same as the full availability that, in a different script, I might have had from the beginning.
This is the structural feature of late-life parental recalibration that the cultural register does not, on the available evidence, particularly well describe. The recalibration is real. The recalibration is welcome. The recalibration is also, by the structure of how long it took to occur, partial and late. The partial-and-late nature is not anyone’s fault. The partial-and-late nature is, however, what the relationship now consists of, going forward. I will have, for as long as my father is alive, the partial-and-late version of him. I will not, in any retroactive sense, have access to the full-and-earlier version that, on close examination, was probably available in there the whole time.
What I am, slowly, learning to do
What I have been trying to do, in the time since I first started recognizing this pattern, is to receive the late version of my father without continuously comparing it to the version that I now suspect was, in fact, available all along.
The receiving is harder than it sounds. The comparison runs automatically. Every time he says something that the earlier version of him would not have said, some part of my mind registers, in real time, that the saying was always possible and the previous decades of not-saying were, accordingly, a kind of structural withholding I had not previously been aware was occurring. The registering is involuntary. The registering is, in some real way, the source of the grief I am describing.
What I can do, more modestly, is to not act on the registering. I can receive the late softness as the late softness. I can let the comparison run in the background without giving it the floor. I can recognize that the man who is now showing up is doing the most he is currently able to do, and that the most he is currently able to do is, by every reasonable measure, more than he was previously able to do, even if it is not, by some hypothetical measure, the most he might have been able to do if his original script had been different.
The receiving is, in some real way, the most important work available to me in this stage of my relationship with my father. The receiving does not undo the grief. The receiving does, however, allow the late version of him to do whatever work it can still do in the time we have remaining. The time is finite. The remaining work is, on close examination, real. The man who was probably in there the whole time is, finally, partially in the room. I am, slowly, learning to let him be there without continuously reminding myself that he could have been there earlier. Both things are true. The both-being-true is, in some real way, the structural condition I will be living inside for the remainder of his life. I am, in my late thirties, just beginning to figure out how to live inside it without being undone by it.
The man who raised me did, by the lights of his own time, the best he was permitted to do. The man who is now showing up is, in some real way, the same man, with a few of the previously locked features finally unlocked. The unlocking is welcome. The unlocking is also, on examination, slightly heartbreaking. Both responses are, by my honest accounting, accurate. I am, finally, learning to hold them both.
