I’ve spent some time understanding the second thing through the lens of the first. My father taught history, which is the discipline of understanding decisions in context. He spent thirty-two years helping teenagers understand why people made choices that look obvious in retrospect but were complicated in the moment. You’d think that would make him more equipped to examine his own choices.
But that’s not how it works. The things we teach don’t necessarily make us immune to the things they describe. He was a parent, under financial pressure, with a son who needed more help than expected, and he made the easier choice and then made another easier choice when the story needed to be told. He taught critical analysis and also did the thing that critical analysis would identify as avoidance.
That’s not hypocrisy. That’s being human.
What I asked of him, at the family meeting and in the phone call that followed, was not to become a different person. It was to say what happened instead of what was easier to say. He did that. In his compact, specific, not-quite-easy way, he said it.
“I helped make the decision and I let the explanation stand,” he told me on the phone. “I should have done differently.”
I believed him that it cost him something to say.
I also believe that cost does not undo the thing. It just acknowledges it, which is what I needed, which is what he eventually gave me.
My father and I have never had the kind of relationship where we talk about feelings at length. We talk about things: current events, things he’s read, things I’ve worked on. He asks about my job with genuine interest and actually remembers what I’ve told him about it, which is more than I can say for most people.