Where do I belong?
There’s no better place to read a good book than in front of a fireplace. That might be the only place in the world where I feel like I belong.
That notion hit me recently as I finished reading Wright Thompson’s parallel paths essay about Julien Van Winkle, the caretaker of one of the most sought-after bourbon brands on the planet. Pappyland was touching for me since the story really revolved around fathers — both the author and Van Winkle’s insatiable desire to protect the legacy of their’s, respectively.
As the story wound down, thoughts of my father tapped my shoulder. Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer just two months ago. It’s an aggressive form and I’m trying to come to terms with the idea it might take him, perhaps soon. The chemotherapy has turned him pale and weak, his voice cracking as if its death’s warning shot across the bow. He reports to be optimistic and seems in good spirits about it all, in as much as one can be when ingesting something akin to battery acid for three hours every three weeks.
But I can tell he’s scared. I am, too.
The thoughts wove in and out of the final chapters I read, shuffling flash cards in my minds eye. Julien’s four children running around the old Lawrenceburg distillery as he tried to pull a bourbon brand back from the brink of death. Wright missing his father, taken early by cancer, as his first child was coming into the world. Me standing in a cemetery, alone, missing Dad. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Jacob Marley was walking me through this ghosts of fatherhood past, present and future, newsreel in my mind.
I looked up from the pages, into the fire, and felt warm again. I belonged here, in my leather recliner with my favorite childhood quilt thrown over my legs, watching blocks of cedar glow as the flame tops peeked through the narrow space between the BuckStove top and brick. This place felt right, reminding me that no other place really did.
My life seems to have been a series of desperate attempts to find belonging. Long before my father was dying, he killed the normalcy of my childhood by running out on me and Mom. I was three. Mom was a single-parent, abandoned by her husband, in a Bible Belt town where divorce surely meant something was wrong with you. We didn’t belong there anymore.
Our new town was no different in social stigmas, but Mom didn’t grow up there, so she traded hypocritical judgement for polite sympathy and started anew. Damaged from thinking I had done something to make Dad want to leave, I spent the next 15 years of my life desperately trying to make people love me. You know that kid you grew up with who always had to be the center of attention? He didn’t want the spotlight. He just wanted to belong.
There, in that small-minded town, I learned that to be loved you had to be rich. The acceptable people lived in the right neighborhoods with the right cars and wore the right clothes. You belonged to the country club and the big church and a time-share in Hilton Head.
The only thing I belonged to was the Atlanta Braves Peter Pan Peanut Butter Kid’s Fan Club. All I got was a stupid T-shirt. I didn’t even like the Braves. They were just on WTBS more than the Cubs were on WGN.
Even buying into the notion that everyone belongs in God’s house didn’t last. My mother and grandmothers taught me to think for myself and question everything. The first time I asked someone why we all believed in some Barry Gibb look-alike no one could prove ever existed, I didn’t feel welcome at Youth Group anymore.
Mom remarried and shortly after had twins. The only person who had never failed me now had more important things to do. She didn’t neglect me, but for a fragile ego, moving from the apple of your mother’s eye to the fourth person in line she pays attention to, is demoralizing.
All those years of trying desperately to fit in ironically pushed anyone I wanted to fit in with away. By the time I was a teenager, I’d resorted to silent cries for help. I stole $70 from a girl’s purse in chemistry class my junior year. I don’t know why other than perhaps as a subconscious ploy to get someone to pay attention to me. Caught and embarrassed, I spent the next day at school alone, relegated to the single lunch table no one used.
My best friend at the time, who lived just down the street, even walked to the next bus stop that morning to avoid being seen with the thief.
So much for that approach.
The therapy my mom and step-dad then insisted upon started a long, slow period of self-discovery. Like any teenager, I resisted full participation at first. But Dr. Freer listened to me. I didn’t care for his questions. Why did anyone need to know how often I masturbated? But when I answered, he not only listened, but took notes. I felt like I had an audience. It wasn’t belonging, but it was acknowledgement, which was close. I continued to see one counselor after another, on and off, until my early 40s. I only stopped because the marriage counselor my wife and I saw seemed to blame me for everything. We divorced not long after I decided to stop being the punching bag.
I turn 48 years old Monday. That damaged three-year-old psyche is still around, trying to be the center of attention. He made me navigate a professional career that included overachieving all along the way, being a radio announcer, speaking at conferences, building a “personal brand” as a thought leader, not because I know anything more than the next guy, but because I can’t stand to not be in front of the room.
Only midlife drops in testosterone and mindful meditation allows me to keep my seat now and then. I’ve even taken to deferring to others at work and playing a support role, even though my ego says I shouldn’t.
It seems a bit of irony that just when I start to see signs of feeling comfortable in my own skin — of finding a place to belong — even if it is sitting alone with a book in front of my fireplace, that the person who shoved the first domino over is dying.
My father’s choices in life contributed to me never feeling like I belonged anywhere. Or to anyone. If I wasn’t good enough for him to stay and love, to make a normal life of belonging for, then I certainly couldn’t be good enough for anyone else. But my choices in life haven’t helped. If you swat a dog with a newspaper every time he barks at a passing car, he eventually stops worrying about the traffic. I’ve never stopped barking. And even came to enjoy the newspaper, I suppose.
The last flame has disappeared and the final log’s embers glow in the fireplace. I put down my book and call Dad to see how he’s feeling.
I’ll come back to my chair tomorrow night and light another fire. My son will bar himself in his room and pay X-box. My daughter will put on headphones and watch YouTube videos on her bed. I’ll stare into the flames wondering how I can be surrounded by people I love and feel so alone, like I’m in another place I don’t belong.
Then I’ll ponder what it will be like when Dad is gone.
Photo by Hayden Scott on Unsplash
