Today—well, yesterday now—is/was Father's Day. I don't really feel anything about it one way or another. I have, sporadically thought about dad, but not in any deep sense. I just didn't feel like it. Most of the news I have read about it is some remarks Obama made about absentee fathers, and whether it was a dogwhistle to evangelicals/social conservatives as well as a statement aimed at blacks (as they were said in a black church). All the summations I have read sound like things he already said in The Audacity of Hope, so I figure he just means them, and they probably stem from the fact that he grew up without a father, and he didn't like that. Hence, his thoughts on father's day are about absentee dads, though he probably wouldn't voice them if he thought they would be politically harmful, I guess (is anyone really gonna fault anybody for excoriating deadbeats?).
But I haven't actually read the remarks, because I don't really care that much. To me father's days is just a relatively empty day to mark the number of years since Raymond Raven left the world. It's been seven. It is a minor day, because for me, the day that I remember my father will always be February 2nd. Even though his birthday was earlier this month, on the 8th, and I remember that date so well, have internalized it so well into daily routine that I had completely sanded off it's features, so that it slipped right past me, and I didn't even notice until over a week later. In fact, the reason I am writing this right now, it's the guilt, mixed with grief coming up from that lapse, that has me thinking enough to want to write about it.
He would have been 67. God, that's so fucking old.
Elsewhere I read some blog thread talking riffing on the Obama speech, talking about masculinity, and it's changing definitions, and the standard stuff liberal types bring up and try to reason out when talking about father's and how they think of their fathers and how they want want to act as father's and how this all relates to the continuing progress of feminism. I suppose dad was fairly masculine, or macho, in his way. Mom and Dad seemed to conform pretty well to your "traditional" tropes of married couples. But there was nothing overbearing, harsh or judgmental about it. And he treated all of his kids as human beings, and didn't expect differing forms of behavior from us based on our sex. There was no, oh, you have to be polite, and you should be strong and tough, and don't show your emotion, or any of that kind of crap. And for that, I am thankful.
But it's so hard for me to care about these things. I can't really get bent out of shape these questions or concerns of cultural roles. Because, regardless of how those things affect others, the day is hollowed of significance for me. Because my father is not here, and that is all it means. It means that I might forget his birthday, and then find my self in the early morning staring off into space and feeling guilty about that, that no matter how much time passes, it still will come around every so often and settle in like a fog. And one not entirely unpleasant; sometimes, you just need to feel your parent.
So I raise a glass of rum, since i don't have any whiskey. Here's to Raymond Frederick Raven, 1941-2001. Rest peacefully father, and may we meet again in the land of eternal summer. Though hopefully not for many many seasons.
I love you.
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