A Sunday Morning's Mental Meanderings

For some reason, as I penned my most recent political rant, I wondered what my dad would think of the "Current Occupant." Dad was not much of a political animal. I’m sure he had his views; but, along with religion and "family matters," he felt personal politics were something best kept to oneself. Still, I pondered…would Dad have voted for Bush? Once? Twice? The only political statement I remember Dad ever making was that some president who was running for re-election (and I can’t remember which one it was...Nixon?) was doing a pretty good job so far, so why make a change? Was that the prevailing political agenda among my parents’ generation—that if a guy was "doing okay" you just kept him in office? Perhaps… maybe that’s why FDR had to die his way out of the White House.

And then I wondered what Dad would think of my political writing…or any of my writing, for that matter. Would he read? Even if I asked him? Dad worked with computers practically from the time they cobbled together the first mother board. He set up the first computer system in the business office of the hospital he "controlled" for thirty-five years. So he was hardly one to reject newfangled technology. But he retired in 1982…long before the computer became the be-all-and-end-all of communication devices. He’d be 88 years old now…would he have given the nod to the technology of twenty-first century personal connections? Probably not. I just can’t picture my dad pecking away at the keyboard of a laptop. Sad.

Sad because none of my family reads my journal. It’s public. I’ve invited them. They could read if they wanted to. But they don’t. In fact, they’ve made it abundantly clear they have no interest in what I have to say. I’d like to say I don’t let it bother me. But it does sting. More than a little.

As a result, I am unencumbered by the constraints that confound some bloggers. When I read some of my friends’ worries about what might happen if someone from work or from—god forbid—their families read their journals, I have a hard time relating to their fears. I just don’t have that problem. If anything, I tend to be a little more acerbic when writing about family matters than I might otherwise be…since I know nothing short of tying them up, taping their eyes open and holding a shotgun to their heads will induce my family to read my work.

So I had to wonder…what or who would compel me to censor what I post here? And I had to concede that I probably wouldn’t change much for any of my surviving sisters… Our history of the last decade has created a certain climate in our relationship; one that does not encourage me to suck it up and suffer in silence. And the idea of my mother reading is so unlikely I can’t even entertain it. At this point in time, sadly, she’s lucky she remembers she has children (no she doesn’t have Alzheimers; she’s just…winding down.) But even were it not for her aging issues, she never showed much interest in any of her offspring’s escapades or accomplishments, good or bad.

The husband? I read him most of my posts, so he "reads" whether he wants to or not. So I’m not really worried about him.

There are only two people who would have had the power to influence what I write. My dad. My oldest sister. It would have mattered to me if I hurt or disappointed one of them. My sister was extremely sensitive. She spent her entire too-short life struggling to relate to a world that was often too cruel for someone as deeply emotional as she was. My writing would be completely different if Joyce read my journal. But I would have done it, for her. I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t do just to have her here now; to have had her for even a few more years…

And if Dad was reading? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if I could handle it. Dad was always the guy who set the bar just a little higher than you thought you could reach. Not to set you up to fail, but to get you to stretch yourself to get to the good stuff. And I can’t help feeling that, for the most part, we let him down. He tried to be the subtle, strong and righteous influence in our lives…and most of the time, what we really needed was a baseball bat upside the head. I think I might just turn myself inside out trying to write up to what I would imagine were my dad’s standards. It could have made me into the writer I’ve always wished I could be. Or perhaps the self-imposed pressure would have caused me to explode after my first couple of stabs at writing for eyes other than my own, never to be heard from again.

The could-have-beens. The should-have-beens. Useless to ponder, I suppose. But an interesting exercise, nonetheless…

Tags: what if