Of adversity and raising a son

I stopped speaking to my Father at the end of seventh grade. At best he was an example of what not to do do as a Father. My most salient model of being a Father came from a Uncle who lived within thirty minutes of my mother, brother and I. From him I took this: Do some of the cooking, purchase a leather chair in which to listen to classical music force your children to think about saving money and "a good job."

The day to day relationship between a Father and son is something for which I had no real life experience of value. So I made it up as I went along with my son. Using my mother's relationship with me as a starting point. There were limits to this, however, because my mother often worked two jobs and had long commutes and so had little time to spend with us and no time to play.

In retrospect a part of my relationship with my son was me vicariously living out the Father-Son relationship from the perspective of the Son. I bought him all the things that I wanted when I as a child. A glaring example of this was I bought a train set for him when he was maybe a two years old. He had no interest in it, but I set it up and watched the trains go round and round.

To the extent that I am a strong man, with a good sense of self I attribute to living in poverty for a while and close to poverty for a long while. Adversity and the lack of things forced my brother and I to turn inward for satisfaction. This stands in absurd contrast to my son who had sushi at the age of six and had an X Box, Playstation and Gameboy all at the same time.

My son has never faced adversity or real challenge. He has never had to eat buttered rice for dinner for a week until I got paid. This is a good and a bad thing. It is a bad thing because he has not been made to realize--in practice, not just intellectually--what is important. It is a good thing, because, I'm here to tell you that eating nothing but buttered rice for a week is no fun at all.

Unfortunately the conclusion of this has no solution, at least yet. It is something that keeps me up just about every night and is one of the two things to drives and propels my desire to live. I will find a way or make one.