Performance Review
I read this today on Reddit.
"It's your parent's job to raise you. Your adult relationship with them is their performance review." *
Father's day is coming up (this Sunday). I've been thinking a lot about it. Not just from the context of being a father, but also as a person who doesn't know their father.
I was raised by strangers. By people who made the conscious decision to lie to the children in their care.
By definition, they were people who parented. As a late discovery adoptee, it's difficult to see them as parents.
The lying and deception make it feel that way.
Whatever the case, my adopters raised me. And while that technically makes them parents, they had a job to do, and they did not do it well.
My adoptive father never wanted children for starters. The day he told us this, is a memory that lives clearly in my mind. It was about 14 years ago. I was 23. Sitting at the dinner table in a Texas apartment that we once lived in.
Just knowing that explained so much about our lack of a relationship. Why it was difficult to bond with him.
He was talking about life in general. Sharing some of his regrets. And that's when he shared that he never wanted children.
I remember my response. "Well, gee. Thanks, I guess. For still raising us?"
The fucked up part is in my mind I remember thinking that at least he still kept us. That they didn't just give us up for adoption.
I don't speak to him anymore. I don't speak to any of my "parents". The strangers that lied. If that doesn't say something about their performance...
Today, I am a father. To two amazing children. Do they drive me nuts sometimes? Absolutely. Do they make my days uniquely interesting? Indubitably.
Most importantly, no matter what kind of day we're having, I will do everything I can to be a better father than the man I was told was mine. I may not have a good example of what to do, but I certainly know what not to do.
I will do whatever it takes to have not just an outstanding but an upstanding performance review.
