Father's Day's Sorrows

I used to think that among other things, I would write cautionary tales. I would explain to the reader that smoking is bad, so don't do it. I did it, and look what it did to me. I would try to save the world from itself, like Holden Caulfield.

I realized long ago the utter folly of this endeavor. Experience is the true teacher.

I emulated my father, and I tried to appropriate some of his behaviors. Before I was married for the first time, I had the intention of just being temporarily married. If my dad could divorce my mom, then I wanted to divorce my first wife, too. Playing with fire sounds more fun than the reality of being seared actually is.

Dad gave me advice about sowing my oats. "Don't get them pregnant," he told me. He never told me what to do if I did happen to impregnate a young woman.

The culture told me. Since I was in college, the conventional wisdom held that a baby would "derail my career" prospects. Nobody wants to "be stuck with a baby."

My oldest offspring would now be thirty-three. There were three others, conceived by my seed, and aspirated from their wombs. I was so ashamed of the suffering generated by my procreative impulses, that I saw a urologist and tried to persuade him to perform a vasectomy on me. Dad had one of those, too.

I spent my twenties and thirties climbing into a bottle almost every night. That is a pretty effective way to derail a career, too. I was tormented by my actions, and I thought that I was going to hell. One day, I went to All Saints Episcopal Church, just walked in and asked to make confession. I knew that they didn't have true confessionals, like in a Catholic church. A pastor was kind enough to take me into his office and hear my admission.

He told me that it was incumbent on me to pray for the souls of the women involved, and he also directed me to pray for the souls of the unborn. That advice has helped me a little bit over the years. But it can never erase the shame that I feel, and the regret about roads not taken.

I don't know if I'm going to hell anymore. I used to feel like I deserved to, if there were such a place. But now I think that maybe hell isn't a place under the earth with sulfur and fire. Maybe hell is just the prison that incarcerates my soul. I punish myself with self-reproach.

That's a pretty good way to derail a career, too.