Cat’s in the cradle..

I have daddy issues. Massive ones. It’s no secret, I don’t deny it any film/ad which plays on the difficult father child trope will usually send me fleeing to the nearest toilet so I can cry my eyes out in the privacy of a stall. By cry, I mean really bawl complete with sobbing, not that signified single tear falling from eye soap opera crying…

It’s not that my father was a bad parent, no, he was pretty much a par for the course Asian father. The kind who didn’t say much to his kids but who worked and toiled to ensure that they would never live the life he had to live growing up. So growing up, my father was an invisible presence in my life. Growing up was definitely a case of ‘Cat’s In The Cradle’. When I first heard that song I was in college, immediately made me cry… Also, just watching that Nissan ad from the Super Bowl? What was I thinking? I haven’t worked up the courage to watch the Toyota one yet because I know that I will double bawl and one ugly cry a day is enough for me… Also, that Bud ad.. Why?!!! I cried so much.. There’s something about lost pets and friendship which sets my tear ducts off as well. That or I just like to cry a lot..

Anyway, my father used to take a lot of business trips overseas; one year, he was gone for a cumulative 9 months. And when he was away, it wasn’t that I missed him particularly since him being away was the norm. But now that I am all grown up, I realise that I never had the experiences that most kids have of spending time with their fathers.. Of having their dads teach them how to cycle, or of playing sports with their dads. Ok, I was fat and generally uncoordinated as a child so that was never going to be an option.. But still, it does feel that now, as an adult, I missed out on something.

My father was away so much, he missed seeing his kids grow up. And by the time he was ready to ease of work and make overtures of trying to get closer to his kids, it was too late, we had gravitated too far away for him to ever reach. Me towards a brittle tough aloofness, wherein I never trusted anyone enough to let them in; my sister going the opposite direction of being so extremely convivial that she had no qualms letting the wrong people in to her life. In other words, my sister and I had neither the time nor the inclination to bond with our dad.

All my life, I figured that my father regarded me as a big disappointment; not the son he wanted at all. I kept seeing his disappointment, it manifested itself in his rare words, never of encouragement but always, always telling me I wasn’t good enough. Did that contribute to my own crippling insecurities? Oh of course not, I just came out of the womb thinking that I could never be good enough for anything…

It’s not that I regret having little to no relationship with my father.. It just is a fact; generations of Asian men never had relationships with their fathers. Couple my homosexuality with the general feeling that my father wanted a different son and you have a recipe for a disastrous relationship. One of the reasons I so adamantly refused to leave Australia, even though it was the wiser thing to have done in terms of my career, was because I never wanted to risk having to live within a 100 km radius of my father. Every time I go back to visit, I am reminded of the general rot in our relationship.

After all that is said and done, how do you repair a relationship that has been damaged for so long? How do you repair years of neglect and disappointment? How do you look the man who birthed you and yet who always seemed disappointed in the way you turned out in the eye?

I missed out on a father’s affection.. And now it is too late to repair whatever damage that was wrought.

Those ads wrench my heart not because of what my father did or did not do with me whilst I was growing up, but because I rue what it is I never had and what could have been…..