Crippled, mean and crazy. I can see that now. That's what I had growing up. At the time, though, it was just mom and dad. Their marriage was a...well, a thing. An ordinary 1950s thing. You know, that thing we now call in social services to fix.

They laughed together, sometimes. He permitted us some jolly fun. Dad worked 9 to 5, and stayed busy all weekend. Mom kept a clean house. This is not about them. It's about me and my kids, who are all but grown up. It's just that...well, you'll see.

He was selfish the way men were supposed to be back then, and mom indulged him. Also typical. He was number one, and so he was optimistic. This was no small accomplishment, because he got polio between kids two and three, and walked with a cane and a leg brace. I used to think the polio made him mean. My mom told us later, no, he was always mean.

She was dreamy-headed, prone to paperback mysticism. She was lonely and frustrated, and had to endure seeing her kids knocked around a lot, and at the time women fixed this with prescription pills. So she did, too. They expected her pretty and his handsome to fix everything else. It was an ordinary 1950s idea, and we were mostly an ordinary 1950s family.

When I was eleven it was 1966. The country went kablooey and so did they. They got a divorce, and then just stopped being parents. I know, this can happen in any generation. But they set themselves free in that special year of revolutionary freedom. It was in the air. So they did their own thing, because this was the ordinary 1960s thing to do.

It wasn't any noble, consciousness-raised thing. It was their own un-hippie, black turtleneck, capri pants, long sideburns, swingin' 60s thing. They got out from under a bad marriage. She worked at bars and was gone a lot. He dated, and re-married. We were left to fend for ourselves. An ordinary thing.

For three of us four kids, ordinary was soon replaced with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

I swore when I grew up I would do better with my own. It was after one bare-ass belting, and I must have been around eight or nine. I went out to the curb and made up a song. One foot kicking the leaves in the gutter, the other dragging on the grass – I was grounded to the yard for the day, an extra punishment; Dad was a big fan of punishment lists – so I walked back and forth, kicking on the fourth beat, singing "God-DAMN, go to HEH-ell" in my mind.

Then I decided I could sing it out loud, if I covered my mouth and was real quiet. I sang it a couple of hundred times, until I was dizzy from the daring of it. From hyper-ventilating, too, probably. At some point I began to see absurd cartoon images of my own kids someday, bathed in a golden light, and happy. Nothing clear-cut, just a certainty that justice would be done, someday – and a ferocious separation from my parents  occurred. That singing, chuckle-headed boy set the course of my whole life, that afternoon. No shit, he really did.

So I figured when I had a child I would do better. But when the time came, when my own first marriage went spectacularly south – an Herodotean south, full of one-eyed cannibals and flying snakes – and I had a baby girl to raise? I didn't "figure" anything.

I just made a choice, then another one. Ordinary decisions. Choices to stay and be and do. After a few weeks of washing cloth diapers and filling bottles and exhaustion, and with the dawning awareness that my junior year of college would be my last, I had a crisis. I wanted to tear it all up by the roots, float away those heavy stones, and  shove that bad, cold river I was in right back up that cold, bad mountain. I wanted to quit and run away, and any number of difficult and cowardly things.

I couldn't do anything like that, not in real life. I got up every day, instead. My focus got narrow.

Thank you for your patience, because here at last is the point: I decided I could expect a reward someday. One day I was barely coping and the next I was better, because all this sacrifice meant there would be a glorious outcome, someday. It seemed realistic, at the time. But ridiculous, right? I would give her a better life, the right kind of life. And she would love me and I, I mean we, would both be bathed in golden light. And happy.

I wasn't crippled, mean or crazy. I could do this.

And I did it. I got up every day. Before she was eight I got re-married, and some years later she had a sister, and then another sister. The roof held and we did good.

Turns out, I burdened them all with the obligation of my reward. I made them my savings and loan. They held in trust my proper return, my due. All they had to do was be successful and un-scarred and love me for permitting it. Yep, that's what I did. I expected my daughters to fix my world, by turning out whole and happy.

But... But, but, but. Turns out they can't fix me. Can't fix my world, can't un-do the pain or re-do what never was. It's not their job. Turns out, I've been doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

It seems life appoints to us a nemesis, when we are too young to choose or understand. We spend all our years learning his name, what he wants of us, and how to defeat him. And it's all crap. Some of us take it too seriously, the defeat of our formulary foe. I enlisted my children in a cause, made them do better, be more, for my sake.

I wish I could take it all back. I would smile more. I would have cried it out, and then walked away from my dead, instead of carrying their ashes with me everywhere. I would have invested more in myself. I would have been less afraid.

They got my best effort, my girls. But I required that they hoard it all, tally it regularly, and feel it deeply. Of course, they didn't. They lived their lives in the ordinary way. It turns out that when you don't have fear and belts and slaps, you don't run accounts. You just live. My internal mechanism is foreign to them. And they dislike me for imposing it on them.

They are splendid, even so. Well, mostly. They need to learn a more routine and ordinary kindness.

I wish I had been raised by me. I would have been splendid, as they are.  It's the goddamn truth: I am, in spite of all, crippled, mean, and crazy. I surely am. But I could have been someone better. Steady and relaxed, loyal and funny. With heaps of degrees and a better career. Like attracts like, so I would have and be such good friends.  

Oh, and a life of adventure.

I know now why they struggle so. Why they want out from under me. Why I am so tiresome and talky and frightening, as they get ready to leave. Why they are unhappy around me. It's because they figured it out: they owe me happy. Nobody likes to owe their father their own good life.

I didn't see this coming. They got all the grades and trophies, they have proper ambitions and zest, plenty of zest. I gave them constancy and safety and opportunity. So why isn't everything OK? Well, because, ya dope ya,  no one can fix their parents. We all acquire that nemesis. and when we try to defeat him, he changes shape. And so it goes. No one can tear it all out for us, get every root. Heavy stones sink. Cold, bad rivers come from the cold, bad mountains. I have spent too much time at that high altitude, with rot and stone in my tired hands.

No one, but no one, is safe. Might as well return to the fertile ground, and live.

I blew it. I taught them dream and work and persevere. And they ran with it, not to satisfy me, not to make of it a shelter. Theirs is a wilder, stranger thing. They are petulant and sharp-edged. I have little say about all that, as they go off on their own. My eyes are too bright and wide, my hand grasps, and my need is too great.

Plain as dirt: Dad is kinda screwed up. He was fine when we were little, but now, I don't know, let's just get out of here. Let's all get tattoos. Let's take off for Louisiana this summer. Tell him whatever he wants to hear. Hey, pull over. Hang on a second, I'll take off this shoe and shake him out.

Every kid sings "goddamn go to he-ell", dontcha know.

Wait. Wait, please, please no, please love me and cherish me and honor me. I am the guy who did right. Give me your glorious existence, is that so much? I cured - no, I inoculated you. You will never feel a hard slap for spilling peas off your plate, never pray for the belt to stop, never sit in a tree and wish for invisibility. I did this and this, for you, and I did not do that or that, for you. I conjured encouragement. I told you I love you, too often, and I meant it, every time. I admired your effort and respected your outcome, and said so. So pay me back for this, forever.

I know. Unrealistc expectations. Our children can't save us.