For most of my teenage-hood I skipped out on that phase of intense embarrassment of my parents and seeming need to make my entire belief structure stand in stark contrast to theirs the media is constantly promoting. A lot of that rebellion just comes naturally with age, but I’m sure shows targeting pre-teens with caricatures of “lame” parents, examples of the socially disastrous consequences of groundings, and the need to be constantly socially connected with your peers versus your parents don’t help much either.
There was, however one rough spot (okay, a few) of my adolescence. It came with the second year in a row of several that my dad was an absent member of the household. Though he had been deployed the first year, the second and third consecutive years he was elsewhere he was able to visit about once a month. And though I was thankful to be able to see him that limited amount, it made reintegration a long, drawn out process.My dad didn’t know who my friends were, what my teachers looked like (he hadn’t been to a parent-teacher conference or awards assembly in years) or even what it was like to go through the daily household motions of carpooling, schedule tweaking, and pick-up times. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when he showed some concern about who I was hanging out with. But I interpreted that concern as an insult. In my mind, I had been hanging out with the same friends and mentioning their names often enough for him to know exactly who they were- but he had no faces to match names with. He had a few measures of catch-up parenting when he was home to make him more a part of the daily picture that I took serious issue with. A curfew that was a whole hour earlier than my mom allowed? You might as well have told me women’s right to vote had been revoked or the sky was falling. If I got in trouble while Dad was home I had two options: pick my own punishment (a grueling psychological test), or manual labor. If you haven’t ever experienced friction with your parents, try scrubbing all the windows of your house inside and out on a 100+ degree summer day when you could be doing something obviously more important. Failure to come home on time meant a stern talking to, and forget dating.
Needless to say, I had a tough time dealing with the efforts of absentee parenting. Now I can say my anger came from not having him around more often, though then it seemed like I’d rather him just not be home because it was stressful all around. But I remember the minute I realized none of that friction ever really mattered much to me in the scheme of things. I was home from my first year of college and at the high school Academic Awards Banquet to see my brother receive an award. As teachers stopped by the table to catch up and say hi all night, it didn’t even cross my mind that I’d have to introduce my dad since I had known them for four years. But as the night came to a close, my dad pointed out that we hadn’t introduced him to one teacher. We hadn’t even realized he’d never met them.
That, to me, was big. I had been so concerned with so many nitpicky things like curfew that I didn’t even realize I was ignoring the wealth of those few weekends I had him home, and how important they were for him. And now I know, if asked years from now about that particular curfew violation or Friday night I thought my life would end because I couldn’t go to a concert, I’d be way more likely to remember the times I spent with my dad and the times he missed.
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