My Daughter's Gift to Me

Uncle Don was my father's only sibling. When I was growing up, he was a shadowy figure, shrouded in legend. Don was the one who told off my bitter, miserable grandparents, left his wife and son, and ran away to Mississippi. He remarried, fathered a couple of other kids, divorced again, and moved to Orlando. I met him years later, when I was in my early teens. He looked like Kenny Rogers, with a grizzled beard and eyes that were constantly laughing. In his relaxed, laconic style, there was nothing of the grim restraint that characterized my Long Island family. In fact, the only similarity between my grandparents and my uncle was that he was a (mostly) functional alcoholic.

Once Don came back into our lives, we started to see him every couple of years. He and my father could never truly be friends--my grandparents had hardwired hatred and competition into their sons from birth--but the two brothers also understood each other, and there was a genuine love that underlay the fist fights and drunken insults. For me, it was incredibly sad: even as a kid, I saw that, if they could ever get past their compulsive need to attack each other, the two men would be an unstoppable force. I also knew that this would never happen. The Watson boys would always be the best of enemies.

When my father died, Don came to visit. My sisters were convinced that he was sniffing around in search of whatever money he could scam off us. This might be true; he disappeared pretty soon after the funeral. I still like to give him the benefit of the doubt, though. He had his own life and family in Cincinnati and he needed to get back to work. Regardless, he did me a pretty big favor. Shortly after my dad died, I found myself completely overwhelmed. I had to arrange to have Dad's body shipped from the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville to the Everly Funeral Home in Fairfax while I was also planning for his funeral, dealing with visiting relatives, trying to get a job to support my family, writing an obituary, and making sure my sisters were doing well in school. In the middle of all of this, the well pump broke, and we found ourselves without water. Realizing that I was a hair's breadth away from a total meltdown, Don put his wife Trish in charge of the well and took me out for a beer. One beer turned into many, and I found myself unable to feel my toes. For the first, and only, time in my life, I had gotten wasted in a mall bar.

As we were draining pitchers, Don got me talking. We discussed all the responsibilities that I had to face, and my plans for the future. In the process, we got on to his relationship with Dad and the fact that they'd never been able to move beyond the hatred that their parents had so carefully cultivated. In the middle of all of this, Don said something really amazing. He told me that I'd completely changed my father. According to Don, Dad had always been taciturn and agressive as a child, and had never really been able to tone down his brutal, cruel intelligence far enough to deal with mere mortals. After I was born, Don told me, my father had finally allowed his humor to emerge, and had become a really funny, lovable person.

All my life, I had enjoyed my father's wicked, keen wit and incredible personal warmth. It had never occurred to me that these were not permanent parts of his personality, much less that I had had anything to do with them. Of course, I realize that Don might have been buttering me up, but I don't think he was. I think he was simply acknowledging a part of my father that he couldn't help loving.

Years later, I came across an interview with my mother's father, Maurice Kramer. Maurice was a health fanatic. He worked out a few days a week, swam constantly, and only ate "natural" food. What's really bizarre is that he followed this regimen in the 1940's, when "healthy lifestyle" could be roughly translated as "only smoking three packs of Luckys a day." At any rate, Maurice stated that he had performed his first handstand in his forties. I had always thought that Maurice was born in a gym, and it floored me to realize that he began working out only after the birth of his first few children. I began to glimpse how much fatherhood had changed even that unchangeable man.

I found out that my wife was pregnant in January 2005. Since then, I quit smoking, gained 20 pounds, began working out three times a week, started doing cardio exercises every day, watched my diet, and dropped 35 pounds. I got a tattoo. I started writing a blog. I began preparations for moving my family to New York. Within the next few months, I will leave Southwest Virginia and teaching and will begin a new life and a new profession in a new city. I have dropped friendships that stressed me out and cultivated relationships that make my life more meaningful. I have, in a very real way, tried to become the person that I always wanted to be. On the other hand, I have also been worrying more and laughing less. I find myself desperately trying to preserve my own sense of humor, even as my sense of self completely changes.

I have not gotten on this self-improvement kick for shits and giggles. Unlike my parents, I want to live to see my children graduate from college. Like my parents, I want to show my daughter what it is to be successful and self-actualized. I want my legacy to be one of joy and fulfillment, not bitterness and disappointment. I want to give George the best of my childhood, and demonstrate the best of my adulthood.

Thinking about my father and my grandfather, I wonder if this is something that every parent goes through. I have heard people whine about how having children forced them to give up their dreams, or cramped their lifestyles. It seems to me that George is making me pursue my dreams, and is forcing me to expand my lifestyle. Because of my daughter, I'm becoming the adult that I always wanted to look up to.

I can't help but think that our children are, at least to some extent, put here to remind us that our dreams are still attainable.