A Father's Amends

By Todd Matson

A Father’s Amends

I am sorry for contributing the usual 23 chromosomes to make you genetically complete and whole instead of shortchanging you with only 21 or 22 so that you could have had the developmentally enriching experience of a team of doctors, therapists, EC teachers and caregivers to make you feel more special through the years of your childhood and adolescent development.

I apologize for patting you and talking and singing to you when you were in mommy’s tummy as I realize that I may have at times startled you, awakened you from your sweet fetal sleep in amniotic bliss or at the very least irritated and annoyed you before you were even born.

I am sorry for cutting your umbilical cord after you were born as I may have inadvertently prematurely severed a valued attachment from mommy as I gave into pressure from the doctor and nurses that it was time to cut the cord.

I apologize for picking you up from your basinet and crib when you awakened and cried, for feeding you when you were hungry, for changing your diapers when you were wet or soiled, for holding you, talking to you, singing to you, for reading to you, playing with you, for hugging and kissing you and thereby depriving you of a valuable cross-cultural experience of feeling what it is like to live in poverty and isolation and die of failure to thrive.

I am sorry for meeting your needs as a growing child for food, clothing and shelter, love and affection, empathy and compassion, nurturing and discipline, as well as for seizing every opportunity that life could afford to give you an enriching childhood and thereby cheating you out of the exciting opportunity to go feral as a child raised by wolves in the wild.

I apologize for getting up in the middle of the night to reduce a skyrocketing fever, to help you rehydrate after you vomited your bodily fluids on me and thereby depriving you from the adventure of seizures and loss of brain cells which could have otherwise given you a very different perspective on life.

I am sorry for so quickly giving you the heimlich when you were choking on a grape and thoughtlessly preventing you from having a near death experience which could have allowed you to see the light where your deceased ancestors could have demonstrated to you what love truly is.

I apologize for giving you so many gifts each year for your birthday and Christmas as I most certainly neglected to meet your deeper need for experiencing what it is like to be neglected, rendered invisible, as that would have most certainly given you a better chance of developing a positive self-image and personal sense of worth of your own making instead of some hand-me-down sense of worth in the eyes of those who love you.

I am sorry for taking you on all of those beach vacations, for opportunities to body surf and collect sea shells, for the time I chartered a boat to take you shark fishing for all those 3-foot-long bonnethead sharks we pulled in, for taking you whitewater rafting, for taking you to Disneyworld, for taking you to swim with dolphins, for taking you to the mountains and to museums, for hiring a paleontologist in Wyoming to take you out on a dinosaur dig to excavate dinosaur bones from the Jurassic period, and for otherwise enriching you with a wide variety of cultural experiences and fun under the sun, for in so doing I must have robbed you of time to be alone in your room on You Tube and Instagram.

I apologize for buying you your first car and thereby saddling you with the burdens of car ownership while condemning you to freedom to drive yourself places and essentially depriving you of opportunities to be chauffeured by your parents or hitching rides with friends as you were approaching adulthood.

I am sorry for helping you with the cost of college because I likely unwittingly pauperized you and made you feel financially dependent or indebted to me at a time in your life when you may have wanted to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps to be self-made so that you would have no one to thank but yourself.

I apologize for continuing to call and text you at times as I know that you are very busy, have things to do and people to see and do not need any unnecessary interruptions from a father who perhaps unnecessarily worries about the well-being of his adult children.

I apologize from the bottom of my heart for all the years that I tried to meet your needs as a developing child and adolescent, for remaining interested and available to you as the amazing young adult you have become, for otherwise not giving you sufficient opportunities to go without, to develop more frustration tolerance, to experience more disappointment, without which psychological and emotional development can be stunted. For all this I am eternally sorry. Please forgive me. I loved you before you were born. I have loved you all your life. I will love you for the rest of mine. When I am finally uploaded into the cloud, I will love you still.