Waiting for your father

I don’t know how many of you have watched Reservation Dogs. It’s a series on Hulu. IMDb describes it as a “comedy series about four Native American teenagers growing up on a reservation in eastern Oklahoma.” It’s very good. Original. Poignant. And funny.

There’s one relationship in particular that got to me. One of the characters, a young guy named Bear, lives with his mother. His father, a would-be rapper, is, what’s the word? Absent. Bear longs to have him in his life. At one point, his father promises to visit. Bear goes to all extremes to prepare for the visit, borrowing money to buy his father a costly present. His anticipation builds. And builds. We go with him, knowing, somewhere in the back of our minds, the dad won’t show. He doesn’t. He calls and makes some transparently flimsy excuse. Hopes dashed. Watching Bear take in that disappointment is hard. You feel it through the screen. The vulnerability. The want, the need.

This is the same thing that happens at the beginning of J.R. Moehringer’s memoir, The Tender Bar. The young boy, our hero, who lives with his mother, yearns to see his dad, who is a well-known radio personality. Absent. His dad calls him one day and says he’ll take the boy to a baseball game. The son, overjoyed, sits on the front steps of his house, hours early, waiting for his dad. Waiting. And waiting. It’s painful to watch him there, Mets baseball cap on, glove in hand, watching the road, for hours. His father never comes.

The great deep disappointment of waiting for a father who doesn’t show up. Literally or figuratively. Who promised he would. The disappointment runs as deep as disappointment can. This relationship is lifelong, no matter what state it’s in, requited or unrequited. There is a reason you find this son-father yearning dramatized again and again in books, plays and films. It always will be.

When I was a kid, we had something called Field Day at my school. It was on a Saturday, in the spring, and it was a day where there were games, contests and races. Parents came and watched their kids run, jump and throw. The races and contests were divided into two categories, Upper School and Lower School. Lower School meant 4th, 5th and 6th grades. Generally, the 6th graders won most of the contests because they were bigger and stronger.

This year I was a 6th grader. I was excited, for months, with anticipation. I was a good athlete, fast, and there was a strong chance I would win a few races. I burned with a desire to have my dad come and watch me. It meant the world to me. It’s so different having your dad watch you at athletics than your mom, especially if you’re a boy.

The day finally arrived. Saturday morning. My father was in the living room, sitting on the couch, reading the newspaper. I came up to him cautiously, hopefully, and said,

“Dad, today’s Field Day. Are you coming?”

Without looking up from his newspaper, without acknowledging me, still reading, he said,

“No.”