My son is now a little over a year, and I’ve been a parent for a little over a year now. It’s quite a coincidence how that worked out. They say that in order to become an expert at something you must dedicate over 10,000 hours to it. I am 8000 hours in, and I have no clue what I am doing. I don’t feel another 20,000 hours will make it any better, if I am being honest. I have no specific roadmap to figure it all out. I guess none of us really do, but I feel like I am less equipped than most.
When I was younger, I had a dad that was one call away but never picked up his phone. When he was living with us, he was either sleeping or drinking. He once popped my balloon with his cigarette because I brought it into the bath with me. Then once he started his second family. He turned his life around. I think the problem with that was that when he saw us. It reminded him of the person he was trying to run away from. I don’t think it had much to do with us and more to do with my mom. We saw him once a month if we were lucky, and when we did, he was on his phone most of the time. This was early 90s so texting wasn’t a big thing back then. He was literally talking on his phone the one day out of maybe ten that we got to see him out of the year. At least, if he was texting it could seem he was paying attention. To my point, I have no clue what I am supposed to be as a dad. I had my uncles that helped raise me. They taught me more about being a dad than my actual dad ever did. My uncles love me, and I know that without a doubt. At the end of the day, they are my uncles. They didn’t choose to spawn me. Their sister did, and I am not their responsibility. I can’t expect them to teach me how to be a dad. That isn’t fair. My only reference of how to be a dad is what I don’t want to do. What I don’t want my son to feel.
My biggest fear is becoming my dad without knowing it. I am sure that he didn’t wake one day and chose being absent. I am sure he had all intentions to be a good dad the best way he knew how. He grew up in Vietnam, and my grandpa was in the military. I believe the Vietnam was the only country that America couldn’t take down, so their military must me wildin’. I can’t imagine what my dad went through with his dad. I’ve heard stories, and they were pretty harsh to say the least. R.I.P. grandpa, I miss you and your distinct voice and wise anecdotes. He was always super nice to me, so I could never see a mean side to him. He sent my dad to America by himself at 16 years old. Which is a pretty young age. There wasn’t a lot he could have learned on being a dad. I believe my dad did the best he could with what he had. I can’t explain the balloon, or the fact that he used me as distraction for his loneliness while he transitioned to another family. I am not even exaggerating. He has had 7 different families move in and out of his house. This is after the 2 families he created. I don’t think he was specifically looking for families. The woman he dated had kids, and that was something he had to accept dating at his age. I guess he didn’t like his kids fresh and new. He wanted them with all the options built in already. I guess that why he loves driving a Mercedes. I think the one that hurt the most was his family 2 after mine. He was with her for the longest. I watched him be a good dad to her son. If I am being honest, that stung. He ended up becoming a bit of a brat, so maybe I lucked out.
With all of that being said, I don’t have the slightest clue what to do to make sure my son doesn’t grow up to have mental scars like me. The things that we do as parents last for their lifetime. I look at how happy my son is, and how brave he is already. I am not equipped with the tools to make sure he remains happy but not oblivious or stays brave without being careful. I don’t know how to teach him to be the right amount of careful, so that he will still take good risks. I am scared that if I make him too careful. He will overly focus on what may go wrong. Which then may turn into anxiety when he gets older. They say that ignorance is bliss. Most of the time overly happy people are oblivious. I don’t want to take his happiness away, but at the same time I don’t want him to become so oblivious people take advantage of him. It’s a cruel world out there and showing him that will chip away at some of his happiness.
I hope you didn’t read this to get any answers. I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have them. I think we are all trying to do the best we can to chip away at the trauma that was passed on to us. Our parents did the best they could to not pass on the trauma that was passed on to them. Except for Vietnamese hierarchy, that seems to stick around. They take respect your elders to a whole different level. The younger you are in our culture the less you matter. Your opinions don’t matter. Your feelings don’t matter. As the younger generation if you do what you want to do and if it doesn’t align with what the older generation want you to do then you are disrespectful. It doesn’t matter how old you are. At 35 years old, at a wedding that I paid for, that is supposed to be a day about celebrating the love of my wife and me. I was told countless times that the day isn’t about us. There was a 3-day long disagreement about a dessert vendor. I wasn’t grateful enough that my aunt asked her friend to cater the desserts. All because I suggested that our wedding planner would lay out the desserts. I thought that we would take that off her friend’s plate since she was already making the desserts. Apparently, that wasn’t okay since her friend likes to display them a certain way. It turned into my grandma and my mom coming to my house at 1 in the morning upset with me and making me stop everything to apologize to my aunt. We were two weeks away from the wedding at this point. You may be asking why we didn’t have a dessert vendor pinned down yet and let me tell you why. We found out four months before our wedding that my wife was pregnant because you know your boy don’t miss. We moved our wedding date up three months and had to move the wedding to a different venue. Dessert vendors are readily available, so I put it on the back burner. So far on the back burner that I didn’t book one until a week before the wedding.
I believe as parents if we are there for our kids and be patient and mindful of how we act towards them. We can limit the trauma we pass down to them. I don’t think there is a way to not pass down any. We just have to do our best to identify what we may have passed down and help them through it.
