Published: June 13, 2007 11:01 pm         

Relationship with father can be complicated

ROSSTON — I might have to head back to Iraq for a few months. It’s my job. It’s what I do for a living so it can’t be avoided. But my father, a two-time Vietnam veteran nearly forbade it the last time we talked.

“You have been to that war zone twice and I was in Vietnam twice. That is the Van Horn average so you need to stay home now,” he said, in a rather convincing tone.

Things with me and my dad were not always good. Like most father-daughter relationships and for that matter — relationships with anyone, there were my expectations and then there were the realities.

On Father’s Day, I think a lot of lying goes on during a day that could be used to say something more real than Hallmark has been able to express. But much of the time it, just as Mother’s Day, is given a nod. A card that doesn’t really say anything is sent and maybe we go to lunch.

Parenting is hard business and there really is no school for it. We children, especially today’s teens, have a plethora of media telling us what our fathers and mothers should be and look like. When that falls short, we now are granted permission to blame them for our bad choices and even because we decided to murder someone, and the courts actually allow it.

I recently learned from a friend who pays child support we now are making the non-custodial parent pay child support until the “child” is 21 years old. He said, because the state believes those “children” to still be in school at that age. This is where unrealistic expectations come from. I do not believe my parents owed me a college education. Now we are teaching children just one more way to avoid responsibility for their own adult choices. Another column.

It was about 12 years ago when I finally grew up and accepted that, while my father was not the perfect father, he was a faithful provider, as well as someone who, once I learned what he was trying to accomplish, could have been a good source of advice. But I was too stubborn. Now he is one of my best friends and confidants. I wasted a lot of time being angry that God didn’t give me Ward Cleaver from “Leave it to Beaver” for a father, and now I thank God daily that he didn’t.

There were disappointments of course. And he had his with me. We both survived them and now share a close bond that many don’t get to enjoy. Believe it or not, disappointments come in this ol’ life, and it actually taught me something just as soon as I shut up long enough to learn.

I have several friends who lost their fathers before they could forge that bond, forgive each other and become family again.

Some, whose fathers were truly depraved individuals were, perhaps, better off. Unfortunately, the pall that was cast when their fathers crossed those boundaries that shouldn’t ever be crossed, never goes away totally in those circumstances. There are times when the actions of a parent are so egregious there is no happy ending — only the end of pain — and maybe not even that. Nevertheless, the burden of forgiving, even if for the benefit of one’s own self, falls onto the adult child of that parent because that is just how life is.

Finally, we must own our futures and chances of happiness. Fair? Well of course it is not fair. But it is what it is. People ask me daily how I lived and found happiness in a war zone. I said, “I accept that it is a war zone and then I choose to live.” A good friend once told me, “Unforgiveness and regret looks backward, fear looks furtively all around and faith and forgiveness look forward.”

I say all that to say this — most of my friends had the normal “father disappointments” that come with life. They would tell you it would have been nice to have been given the chance to say things left unsaid. Things that, in many cases, are so emotional we tend to avoid them — even when what would be said would be good or loving.

It is odd, isn’t it, how we can fling accusations and offer criticism of our parents much easier than we can say how wonderful it feels to still be able to plop down in our father’s lap after a day spent fishing in Arkansas. It is unfortunate that it is our choice many times, to be put off by one sharp word and sulk for valuable hours when we could, instead, mention to the family how we look forward to seeing them even though we all know each other’s faults but simply allow them. We might feel these things, even think them, but do we verbalize them? Or do we assume that since we think and feel them, others must know how much we feel and that is doesn’t need to be said?

When I give it some thought, perhaps it is those utterances that are the hardest.

I finally got the courage to tell my dad how important he had been to me in real terms while I was in Iraq. I wrote it in a long e-mail he still has. I think it took courage because when we admit need, we are making ourselves vulnerable again. It was important for me that when I did this, I was merely being honest and giving, not expecting something. Our own motives in offering true feelings need to be inspected. It’s not truth if we are using it to manipulate a change we desire. We either have learned to accept our family or we have not. If not, we must do some more work on ourselves or agree not to spend much time with them. I can almost promise this — they are not changing and we probably aren’t either. But of the two, the only one we have the power to change is ourselves.

I feel lucky to have been given that chance. I am indeed, fortunate neither of us was killed in a war so I could float on a river in Arkansas and listen to his line whistle as he expertly laid it on the icy water of the White River; so when I wake hearing the annoying tapping of a spoon in a coffee cup, I can know he is still alive; so I could help him bury his dog; and so, finally, in end for either of us, there is no regret.

I think my time in Iraq helped me to understand my fighter pilot father better. After all, he either was in a war zone or coming back from one during some of my most formative years. Sigmund Freud might suggest that is why I ended up in a war zone to begin with. Perhaps he was right. None of it made either one of us more right. But all of it made us better.



Van Horn is a freelance writer and government consultant living in northwestern Oklahoma. She spent 21/2 years in northern Iraq as a military liaison and recently was embedded with 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment. E-mail her at vconsult@ptsi.net.