Too Smart For My Own Good

 I wish I knew now what I didn't know then. Way back when I figured that I was so clever because I could see how easy it would be for my father to simply show up and apologize for his bad decisions. I would say now that I had no right to be so judgmental. 

Which would have been a source of great amusement for my dad, who coined the phrase, "People can be so judgmental," without ever realizing the irony. I insisted that this was one of the most ridiculous moments of logical overreach that I could imagine. I was in my twenties at this point, so I figured that I had seen most of what I needed to see. 

And my friends? They were dumbstruck by the departure of my father from the home that he had created for all of us. For all those years. The strays. The misfits. The sons and daughters of divorce. The kids who came home with me to get a little of that Ward Cleaver vibe that they must have been missing at their own homes. 

I had no idea how different the jobs of being a dad and being a husband were. I had no idea what that statistic that fifty percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce was describing a real thing. I could not understand how this man who had appeared in my life as the man with all the answers had turned into this frightened and confused guy who was leaving my mother. 

He didn't get far. Because I'm fairly certain now that I still had plenty of lessons to learn from my dad. When we used to go out for dinner in those days, I used to quiz him. I figured that I was going to be the one who could bring him to his senses. I imagined, back then, that I understood the range of his fear and pain. I would do the thinking for both of us. And someday someone would write a song about what a wonderful son I turned out to be, because I could save a marriage. I could save our family.

I couldn't . I didn't. It is only now that I am beginning to reckon with the notion that sometimes when something gets broken, it stays broken. This is true of people too. Which doesn't keep me from trying, even now, to use all my cleverness to put Humpty Dumptys of the world back together again. 

I still have things left to learn from my father. 

I miss him today.