Ms. Lee Etscovitz, Ed.D.



A Letter To My Son

Dear Son,
I have been thinking a lot about our recent phone conversation. At first I was surprised by your anger over my way of storing the family pictures. It is true that they are not in an actual safe, but they are dry and well preserved. So now I am beginning to wonder if your anger has to do with more than just my storage methods.

When you were two years old, you used to put each of your feet (actually each entire leg) into my work boots and walk up and down the apartment hallway. You were apparently doing the normal thing for a son: be like Daddy and even try to fill his boots. As a father, I was impressed. What more could a proud father want from a son than to have him copy him and even try to fill his boots. And there are some things about me which, as an adult, you have continued to copy, though in your own way, such as your interest in various vehicles and your purchase and maintenance of a house.

But now, many years later, I turn out to be a father who, in a lot of other ways, is not exactly what you, or any son, for that matter, might want to copy. I have changed. I have sold my motorcycle, and I have obviously changed my appearance. I thus hear in your anger towards me more than anger about the pictures themselves. I hear what you yourself said on the telephone, namely, that I do not seem to care about my family roots. Well, I do care about my roots, I do care about you, and I am not running away from dealing with this matter with you. But I also cannot run away any longer from myself nor from my own inner roots.

That is my own personal growth issue, and I have to state it as such if you are to understand what your own deeper anger may be about. You may very well be angry at the fact that the pictures are all that seem to be left of the father whose boots you once tried to fill. To lose even the pictures would be to lose the only tangible reminder of what you have valued so deeply all your life and what has given you a basis for doing many things, namely, your father with his family name and history.

At this point in time, the pictures are in my possession. They mean something to me, and I am taking care of them in a way intended to preserve them. So in a sense, the pictures are out of your control, just as what I do with my own life is out of your control, though I am not ignoring your concerns. But one thing you can control is how you handle your own situation and your own life, even though at times you may feel somewhat rootless with a father who seems uprooted. The fact is that I am still your father; I always will be; and I do know what I am doing.

I am proud of the fact that you value so highly what we both share: our family name and our family history. But none of that is really changing, even though I am personally changing. The fact is that I have to be true to myself if I am going to feel alive in this one life of mine. I do not want simply to exist. I want to feel alive as much as possible, and I feel alive by being the person I have to be. Yes, my appearance has changed, but I am still me, still striving to do things and to enjoy life and to have whatever family life I can arrange.

So, too, do you have to find within yourself the strength to go on in life, even if the meaning of our name seems to be threatened by my "strange" development as a person. The pictures are a symbol of that meaning, but they are not the meaning itself. The meaning is in You. It is you. The pictures are a reminder of our common heritage, and they tell us of our roots, but even without the pictures, we could still go on. You and I each have to find the strength to accept the fact that there are forces greater than us which we cannot always fight, forces which we may not even fully understand. Your inner unrest and distress will not determine how I run my life and do things. I am living the way I live for reasons that fit into my life. I am not leading my life the way I do simply to be selfish or self-centered in some uncaring way. I am living the way I do, just as you live the way you do, for self-preservation, for peace of mind and heart, for personal sanity and meaning.

Perhaps the boots you should now wear are your own boots, your own inner boots, so that regardless of what mine, both inner and outer, may look like, we each know what it means to stand on our own two feet. Maybe we each have to wear boots that fit us individually, inner boots that reflect who we really are. Pictures of the outer boots are pleasant reminders of our travels in life. Ironically, there are no pictures of the inner boots, and yet those are the ones that really count, for they fill the outer ones.

I love you always,
Dad

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© 1996 by Human Dimensions