The last piece I published, Seeing the snake, was about waking up to the pain that has run in my family for a very long time. Throughout the summer, I’ll continue to share writing that takes a closer look, scale by scale.
If you’d like to know more about my motivation behind my sharing and where I see all of this going, I recently updated this publication’s About page with more on that.
It was a giant Millennium Falcon, probably two feet long. When you pushed its buttons, it made noises like from the movies. It was the perfect addition to the Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and Darth Vader action figures we had accumulated in Christmas stockings and with our allowance money.
Dad had swung by Wal-Mart and bought it for my brother unexpectedly, on a whim, before he drove to the airport to fly back to Seattle. He got us lots of nice stuff over the years. Baseball jerseys, iPods, guitars, etc.
I’m sure the Falcon sticks out in my memory partly because I was jealous that it didn’t actually belong to me. But there’s another reason, too.
It makes me think of this stretch of time that lasted maybe a month or two, when I kept asking Dad to sit down and play Star Wars with me. There was a bunch of hype around the Phantom Menace coming to theaters, and having seen the originals back in their day, he knew the names of all the big characters. I wanted to hear him talk about this new universe that I was so enthralled with. I think I also just wanted to hear him talk.
He never did get around to it, and eventually I stopped caring about Star Wars.
When Dad moved out of the house, and then to the other coast, it left a hole where he was supposed to be. We missed having him there for the daily churn. The drives home from practice, the math tests, the trips to the orthodontist—life plays out on these stages. Relationships are built on their rhythms.
I’ve always sensed that some part of him hoped he could fill the void by buying us stuff. It’s a woefully hollow approach when you stop and say it out loud, but lots of parents do it. To their credit, I think they’re trying to draw from a well of goodness. Gift giving is a basic act of showing love, after all.
It’s just that if your head is far enough into the sand, the sacred can become profane in a hurry. The right tool applied to the wrong job is the wrong tool.
That’s really a key theme when I look back on the whole thing: delusion.
North America is a very wide place. Richmond to Seattle is just under 3,000 miles no matter which route you take. It was a fantasy for him to think that his moving out there wouldn’t have dire consequences for our family.
Just like it’s a fantasy for any of us to believe that what our hearts need
is available for purchase at Wal-Mart.
If you enjoy my writing, please consider signing up for a paid subscription or leaving a tip via Venmo (@Jonathan-Neeley-2) or PayPal (neeley87@gmail.com).
In more ways than one, your support makes telling this story possible.
Zooming out
How do I love a person who has hurt me?
How do I avoid making the same mistake my father made?
What does it mean to be at peace?
I don’t claim to have all the answers to those questions, but what I’ve learned thus far is that the truth is rooted in compassion, which is born out of understanding, which begins with awareness. Next week, I'll share another installment of my pursuit of all three.
Here are some others I’ve written along these lines:
This is another one that about about my dad, his relationship with money, and the matter of trying to use stuff to cover up emotional holes.
That question I asked above, “what does it mean to be at peace?” I ask because throughout much of my youth, I was not. This is an example of what I mean.
One one hand, this is a portrait of a low point between my dad and me. On another, it’s the beginning of something really great.
This is an account of how I started to wake up to the notion that there is a story inside of me— one that I must first hear, and then tell.
Finally, this isn’t my own writing, but I wanted to link to it anyway. It’s an old favorite about how frequent, spontaneous encounters— the kind that happen when you live near someone— are what’s behind most strong bonds. It came to mind as I was drafting this newsletter and thinking about the impact that geographic distance can have.
Thank you for reading. Please consider leaving a comment with a thought or question that any of my writing brings up for you. I think a lot of us are hungry to move beyond small talk, and I’d love for this to be a place where that happens.
Be well,
Jonathan
"It’s just that if your head is far enough into the sand, the sacred can become profane in a hurry. The right tool applied to the wrong job is the wrong tool. " I love this. You're so right and I'm sorry that you had to learn this way in such a personal way. Your writing so tenderly reveals the ache of a child who just wants their parent's love. Keep writing, please. It's a kindness to your readers that you allow us this glimpse into your life.
Dad's can do some stupid stuff to their kids and not even realize its hurting. Just today, in the ongoing battle to get my son to get ready for school in a timely fashion, I managed to scare him and freak him out to the point that he thinks I don't care about him. It will take a day of hugs and reassuring and explaining to help him understand my intentions were founded in my love and care for him, that I am trying to teach him how to operate in a world with other people. He still doesn't get how his actions affect the world around him. Sometimes dads do the same thing. My dad was a dumbass too, but I'm lucky that he's mostly figured it out and is still around at this point.
Here's to us new(er) dads trying to do better and learn from the generations before us so the generations after us can be even better! 🥂
Also, when we screw up, lets own it and learn from that too.