xtcian

9/8/02 This will be a

9/8/02

This will be a short respite, a day off from shooting the film and travelling, and I spent it playing absolutely hideous basketball in Astoria, and then walking around Park Slope with Scott and Diane. It felt really nice to do absolutely nothing, and even though I know talking about sleep is about the most boring writing available, I'll let it slip that I took a 3-hour nap in the afternoon something I haven't done since about 1972 with a pint of chocolate milk and a Curious George Goes to the Hospital book.

This was also Dad's 63rd birthday, so I tracked him down on his cell phone. He was on the way to Carmel, CA to screw around for a while and most likely get away from the meltdown some of Carole's kids are having. One of them is getting the kind of divorce that ends up being put into novels, so ugly and mean-spirited and downright criminal that it makes me happy to lie next to Tessa, who possesses none of those genes.

I think Tessa and I got along better in 1987 - on the day we met better than my parents did in 23 years of marriage. It's strange to me how people make decisions, but you can never put yourself in their skins, and you can never judge. I'm sure both Dad and Mom had their reasons to go on a second date in 1962, I'm just not exactly sure what it was.

Thank god they did, though, for at least 3 of us in the family. Steve and Kent had already made the galactic cut by 1958, but a lot of stuff had to happen for me, Sean and Michelle to snuggle on our mortal coils. My affection for my mom is well-documented (and if that isn't enough, I'm sure I'll have more about her later), but I have also come to understand how important my Dad is to me as well. He had been easy to vilify, and I'm sure at least 5mg of my Celexa is dedicated to him, but the fact is, I think he made an incredible adjustment in the middle of his life, and is an inexorably better person for it. He has been nothing if not stunningly supportive of my career, in all its phases, since I was 22. Given the kind of fathering he had, it's amazing he's not in prison, and the fact is this: most men don't change, and he did.

Even if he changed only a little. Almost all men, especially those born in his generation and before, see no point in even the tiniest modification of behavior. They know they can basically get away with whatever they want forever, and set forth to do it. He was well on his way to this kind of life (and he still has his peccadilloes that sometimes drive me bonkers). But he is different than he was growing up, he engenders dialogue, he is much freer with his emotions, and he doesnt scare me at all anymore.

In the past, some of my family thought I was full of shit on this one, and that's their prerogative; everyone has a different relationship with their dad. But even if I am full of shit, who cares? I decided on November 23, 1986 when he said he was leaving the family – that I was going to have a good relationship with both of my parents and would do pretty much anything to make it work. Like they say in AA, "you fake it 'til you make it" and now I feel like both of my parental relationships are good and second-nature, even though they are very, very different.

Either way, this goes out to my dad, born in 1939 this day in Compton, California to a real asshole. I take the same oath that my dad did, that I will not be locked in father/son loathing, imagining an old man inside a casket with his middle finger still extended. I actually love my dad, and he actually loves me, and even if that's all it is, it's a revolutionary step forward from the last generation.

dad conducting circa 1982