![]() This past year, I went on a three-day fishing trip with my oldest friend Tom Booth. Obviously, I need to change before it’s too late, lest my children be saddled with the same lack I’m describing. My older brother James reminded me about how whenever we were angry over punishment or parenting we considered unfair, she never failed to tuck us in at night, saying, “I love you,” melting any resentment, restoring our worlds. Though my mother did not similarly withhold affection, she bestowed it sparingly. Our succeeding generation saw our forebears’ stoicism as a badge of manhood, perceiving it as an Ernest Hemingway/John Wayne ideal, not a shortcoming.Īccordingly, I am hesitant to make myself vulnerable, to tear down the wall I built to project a strong father image, but which my erudite children characterized as “aloofness.” My father wept quietly on our front porch. The only time I ever saw Dad drop his guard was after my brother Patrick was drafted and walked out the door for his ride to the airport and the flight that would take him to Vietnam. He performed selfless, sacrificial acts for each of us, like the day I wrote about here when he left work to take me to Aqua Pool to help me overcome embarrassment over an unsightly scar on my side.įor men of the “Greatest Generation,” stoicism was a coping mechanism for the horrors of world war. My father never said it to me.Ĭertainly, we felt the love he harbored for all eight of his children, giving up so much in his own life to raise us. “But our kids would probably think you are dying.”Īnd that’s the crux of it: there’s no precedent in our family because there was no precedent when I was growing up. “Summer won’t think you’re weird,” said Marianne. “So why,” I added, “is it easy for me to say, ‘I love you,’ to Summer?” I asked. Like ‘love you guys,’ or ‘love that song,’ or ‘love the White Sox.’” “‘Love you’ is something you just flip in the air. “‘I love you’ makes a direct connection with one individual,” said Marianne. Since Marianne can cut to the core of an issue faster than I can, I asked her the difference between the two expressions while writing this column.
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