The Fathers in our Lives

The Hollywood version of fatherhood has always been glamorous, kind of dashing, hard working, Father-know-best. 
     No...maybe that's the TV version. I remember Robert Young like that, or other TV actors playing Dad, even the bumbling Ozzie of Ozzie and Harriet fame. When Oz stumbled out of the fog to step up to his sons when they needed some guidance, Oz cleared his head offered his best, hands in his pockets, maybe an arm wave, " Gee, guys, maybe
     I watched those shows. I listened to the Dads, My three sons with Fred MacMurry, listened to him, and others. I wanted to know how to act, walk, talk, think like a man.
     I wasn't getting it at home. My father was never there. He wasn't there WHEN HE WAS THERE. He was busy, busy, busy with the Atlantic Refining company, or the Atlantic Refining bowling league  4 nights a week, or the Redfield Street Card Club, or the US Coast Guard Reserve Officer Temporary Squadron 4 times a month. 
    My mother raised me. She did a wonderful job, more about that later. 
    The importance of fathers on the job being fathers is the keystone of a family. The effect on me, and the AFFECT on me is felt to this day. Large pieces of what should have been me are missing and I know it. I hate sports and I made up for it in other, strange ways. We never had a good relationship, never close, often antagonistic. He once attacked me with a golf iron. His passion for sports was re-directed towards my sister.
    Any semblance of normalcy in the family relationship was skewed from childhood on. My father's desire to be close to his children was never there. My sister and I suffered a deprivation until his death, then neither of us felt any great loss after his departure. That in itself was a great loss. 
    My emotional balance had been effected by all this turmoil from my early adulthood through most of my life, at the loss of a firm foundation that a relationship with my father could have provided. 
   I would encourage others to explore what ever counseling, psychiatric intervention into a bruised family relationship exists in repairing this problem before any further damage continues for the same of everyone involved.
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