I feel like I've been one-upped for Father's Day. My dad is impossible to buy
presents for because he has no hobbies, unless you count napping. To make things
more difficult, his birthday is June 15, so we have to think of two presents at
once (or one big one). He does have an interest in military aircraft, having
served a hitch as a mechanic in the USAF, so lots of our gifts play to that. This
year, I paid to have an honorary plaque with his name put up on the wall of the
new facility the National Air and Space Museum is building at Washington
International Airport -- a way of helping to build something he'd care about in
his name.
My Brother the Writer gave him a certificate saying that
his name would be burned onto a CD carried to Mars. One-upped, yes, I am. What Dad
doesn't know is that the Mars thing is free (you can do it yourself
href=http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/">here, and print out the certificate)
while the museum sponsorship was not cheap. Still, I make a good bit more money
than MBtW, so while it's more than I'd normally spend on a gift, it's not the
stretch it would be for him. And he more than made up any difference, anyway, by
investing his time and using his writerly skills to compose a long Father's Day
letter that so affected our normally undemonstrative father that he read me the
entire thing. (It boils down to "Dad, you may not have given us material things
but we knew you loved us and were always there for us" sort of thing that always
brings tears to parental eyes.)
I had issues with a few minor
points in the letter, but the gist is correct. My parents did love us, did do
their best, and in a world of abusers, self-interest, and indifference, that
counts for a lot. And they got us both reading, which in my view counts for even
more. (MBtW, thanks to a talent for scoping our booksales, may own even more books
than I do.)
Well, it's not a competition, and the point of presents
is to make the recipient happy, which he certainly did. Here's the thing that
puzzles me: why is it I would be so very uncomfortable writing such a letter? I
think it's the idea that it might make the parents think they did everything
right, which they certainly didn't. I have some issues with their insularity and
even more with their tempers -- while we were never abused, there was certainly
more screaming than necessary and some slapping, also. Still, so what? No doubt we
were difficult children to raise, and if we didn't have a wide range of experience
directly, we certainly did so vicariously through our books. Besides, they did the
most important things right, so why does it matter what they did wrong? I think
it's really just fear they might take it as an admission that they were right and
I was wrong (about what, specifically, I don't really know). And -- confession of
Dichroic character flaw here -- that's something I can only stand when I really
was in the wrong.