fathero

[The] Father as Hero incorporates both aspects of this century's version of the heroic pattern: The father enacts the first part of the heroic journey while abandoning the second. In the first part, the father is the bridge between the family and the outside world, and each day he is tested. Even with the dramatic changes that have occurred as a result of the women's movement...The family identifies with the father's trials and triumphs and eagerly awaits his return. Like the hero in literature, the father-hero of the twentieth century is absent. Although it is his privilege to come and go as he pleases, this privilege carries an enormous burden. He is encouraged to abandon the home front in his task of serving society, yet he is expected to remain responsible for the welfare of his family. Today's father is successful at slaying the dragon, but he has not been taught how to bring the boon home; the second part of the hero's journey has been collectively abandoned. As poet Robert Bly has stated, the child receives her father's temprament but not his teachings. The father is forced to carry an image (and its attendant glory) that may bear little resemblance to who he is as a person.

from The Hero's Daughter by Maureen Murdock

how much this books tells the tale of my father worship. my hero dad could do no wrong in my eyes. even when i cowered as a teenager in the closet because he was angry and raging. i thought he'd kill someone and i opted not to be that one.

dads certainly have a crushing load to bear, and bly went on to say in the passage he was quoted above as, that we imbue them with godlike powers because we do not know them. we cannot know them. they have not been taught how to relate as real persons.

their task becomes providing and seemingly ends there.

but there is so much more.

i do not understand all i'm delving into here. it rumbles and quakes in my psyche. i can only let the passage of time and the journey forward unlock what it will. but memories come to me of the girl who knew her dadgod was soveriegn and yet, he was not. i could bend his will. i could move his heart. i could make him laugh.

such confidence he gave me. that i could do anything. such confusion when i did anything i wanted and it was met with wrath. such guilt i could inflict when i wanted, for deserved consequence. inflict it i did. yield he did. i became a master manipulator.

i forced myself to stop bending wills, cutting corners, trying to be the exception in college. i made myself do every last damned thing to the t. but these tendencies are deep. they trouble me now as i know the remnants are still in me.

how many times i have used words, or looks, or silence to get my way. how easily this comes to me. as i took to my training.

it was not the gift of my father that made me this way. it was the perversion of a great love, an unconditional immature love that did it.

being fallible and raised by a fallible man, i understand the consequences and ramifications today are all mine. i get to reckon with this thing in me that would get my way at any cost. often, i find i must consciously yield. and keep silent.

to curb that thing in me that would pick her teeth with the bones of men, i must learn instead to trust and be kind.

it is a process. one i do not profess to understand. but one i hope to progress along, as the days pass and i grey.

so slowly the grey comes. so slowly the changes come.
but come they will.