Biological Fathers & Intellectual Sons
Sixty years after his death, I have unqualified respect for
my father’s innate brilliance, his fearlessness, the uncanny ease with which he demonstrated
his talents and mastery of practical
skills in carpentry, masonry, and electricity needed to transform his father’s
rundown house into a decent home for my mother and me in the 1950s. A licensed
pharmacist who took pride in his knowledge of Latin and medicine, a gifted
photographer, a fine tailor, and an above average farmer, my father had so many
talents that all his relatives admired him as a genius. I too knew him to be a genius. That fact was a source of despair during my
childhood, because some men of genius can be cruel and ruthless in the
expectations they have for their children. Although I inherited many of his
traits, I never fully measured up to his expectations. My father expressed his
disappointment bluntly. Even today, the
sting of his profound criticism wounds me. I feel paralyzed as I write about
him. I have honored my father to ensure
that my days will be long, but my gratitude is not love. I have made peace with
the horror of being incapable of loving my father. If there is divine peace and
justice in whatever dimension my father’s spirit inhabits, I shall only love
him when I become a spirit and join him there.
Walking the dark paths of his destiny, my father injured many
people psychologically, and he certainly authored some of his own misery by not
channeling his remarkable talents wisely. He could alternate between being
surprisingly kind and generous and being decidedly mean-spirited. He was not bipolar. He was conscious of his actions, but he could
be as insensitive as a death-dispensing drone.
During the six decades I have speculated about his life, I have tried to
coordinate what I know from having lived with him for fourteen years with the
bits of fact and fiction that circulate in our family. There is much about my father that I still do
not know.
I do know that I made a vow not to follow his example. I chose not to marry, not to be responsible
for some patient woman’s having a bittersweet life, not to be the co-partner in
giving life to children whom I might resent. As an only child, I am the final
chapter in the saga of one branch of my family.
My male cousins have been heroic in being biological fathers, begetting
new generations with or without benefit of clergy to continue the family’s
story. I chose not to be a symbolic mirror-image of my father. I have used my existential entitlement not to
be a biological father but to assume responsibility for the young males and
females I have chosen to be my intellectual sons and daughters. Selectivity makes it possible for all of my
intellectual children to exceed my expectations because they have no obligations
to meet them. Fathering minds brings a
sense of fulfillment comparable to fathering bodies.
I shall die a very happy man. My intellectual children,
especially my sons, have demonstrated through their creative and scholarly works
how purposeful my interventions in their lives have been and continue to be.
Jerry W. Ward,
Jr. June 8, 2014
Blog for BK Nation
