father and son visits, forwhichever reason I didn’t feel the love that was expected and would have made everything right. I wondered why I didn’t feel the love expected. I knew, in many cases that I didn’t want to go with my father but I went. And though I went, I didn’t feel the love the adults in my life seemed to expect.
This paradoxical paradigm, the contradictory expectations and feelings played out many more times in my life. Back then it felt wrong to pretend I had the feeling of love for Paul when I didn’t feel it. I must have wondered why I didn’t feel it. I knew pretending it was wrong. I determined early in my life, based upon these experiences that I would NOT pretend love to please any adult. This was fairly straightforward.
The corollary was troubling, difficult and damaging and the part that was buried by that young boy. This was the part that I needed to recover and examine. What was the corollary? It was that I didn’t want anyone else to pretend love toward me if they didn’t really feel it. But who will decide if it is real or pretend love? Of course I was the one who would determine that.
That was the flaw in my young boy logic. What if I was wrong? Poor choices and actions would follow that would damage relationships. The flaw in the corollary was that if my judgement was wrong the relationship would be damaged, the judgement would then be self-fulfilling in a sense.
One of my formative years memories was the visits with Paul and the emotional/social dilemma that it cause for me. The social term I have come to associate with these visits are double-bind.
My memory is of living at my Grandparents house in Detroit on Alma street on the east side of Detroit. Elm trees lined the street and created a canopy over the street, roots of the trees erupted and tilted sidewalks on the whole block. The front yards of the houses were small, maybe twenty feet by thirty feet of grass in front of each house. I lived on Alma street with my mother after my mother’s divorce.
For me it was a peaceful place. My grandparents loved me and opened their hearts to me and my brother. The only exception to the peacefulness of their house, from my perspective was the occasional Saturday night card game. Not every Saturday, just occasionally friends and family of my grandparents came over. We went to bed early, but my brother and I heard the noise from the game late into the night, arguments and raised voices, mostly between my grandfather and grandmother.
Into this peaceful place, my grandparent’s house (my mothers parents) came my father for his visits with his two boys. Naturally, my grandparents did not welcome Paul into their house. They did not speak to me about their natural hostility to the man who divorced their daughter and two young sons. They didn’t have to speak of him, their feelings were there and I can now imagine Paul did not free too comfortable or welcomed into their house.
Next was the fact that Paul, in my child’s mind always wanted to take my brother and I to places that I was not very interested in going. What I remember is Air Shows and Auto shows or Race tracks. To me all deadly boring or TOO LOUD. I still don’t enjoy events that loud or that “jam”the senses. I wanted to go to a baseball game or to . . .
My grandfather won my heart, and created a life long baseball fan, by taking me to see the Detroit Tigers at an early age. I never remember Paul taking me to a baseball game. I do remember Paul took my brother and I to the Diary Queen and enjoying these ice cream visits.
Finally, what troubled me most about these fatherly visits, was what I felt was the universal adult expectation that I love these visits. The expectation was that I show my child’s love toward my father. Perhaps I knew the adults close to me at the time did not like Paul (to me this being a contradictory and confusing message) or, if not that, maybe the fact that I didn’t get to chose the place for our
