Learning to love my father

A journey of 35 years

I recently learned that my father was great at two things: drinking and fighting. 

I’ve learned more about my father from family members I rarely see than from him directly. He’s still alive but his Alzheimer’s gets worse by the day.

But even when he was healthier, we never really talked. He is a man more likely to speak with his fists than with words.

He had his best days in mandatory military service and never really learned how to assimilate into normal society.

When my father met my mother, they had nothing in common other than they were both single and from Korea. But since no one else was really available, they got married.

It was always my father’s dream to have a business. He tried a few different things, including having a shoe store downtown. But the fact that he didn’t speak English and had an eighth-grade education from another country was a huge roadblock to his success.

Finally, he spent too much of my mother’s hard-earned money on his business ventures. So she gave him one last shot — she would fund his education and equipment to run a gardening business from home. 

He learned how to mow lawns and fix sprinklers. The job didn’t require complex communication skills, so he learned just enough English to understand his customers and enough Spanish to relay those instructions to his helpers.

But he was never happy.

After turning to alcohol for many years he suddenly quit smoking and drinking after a 3-day religious event. He became a symbol at the church and was showcased as an example of God’s power even though he wasn’t really a believer.

Though he gave up nicotine and alcohol, he still took out his rage on himself. He gave himself diabetes despite my pleas for him to stop damaging his health. 

Conflict seemed to follow him and he fought with most of his peers. He fell out of his relationships with most of his friends and increasingly became more isolated with age.

As an old man, he’s lonely. He still has my mom but not much of her respect.

Growing up, I hated my father.

I was told by the eyes of family members that he was useless, violent, and not good enough. Although unspoken, I knew it was my job to make up for all the things he wasn’t.

Yet hating someone for a lifetime can burn you alive. 

As a teenager and young adult, I hated all the parts of me that reminded me of him. I was afraid to start a business because he had failed at his. My mother saw my reluctance to follow the academic path and warned me that I might end up like my father.

But as I moved through life I began to understand that my father’s story wasn’t uncommon. Against my conditioning, I started to empathize with his circumstances.

Learning to love my father released me from a lifetime of hate.

It also removed a number of mental blocks that were holding me back.

When I rejected my father, I refused to accept any part of me that could have come from him. I didn’t want to admit that I had inherited any of his qualities. But that actually left a lot of skills on the table that I could have turned into something useful.

You see, I inherited his dogged tenacity — the thuggish determination to face challenges no matter how stupid the odds. I learned how to take some big metaphorical punches and still want to stay in the fight.

My father’s stubborn pride got him in a lot of trouble. But from that pride, I learned how to be my own person. He taught me that rules can be broken. He showed me that societal standards don’t need to be accepted just because everyone around you is following along.

He’s a tough old shit. And we still fight almost every time we talk.

But today, I love my father very much.

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I wrote this on Father’s Day 2023 after seeing a number of posts on social media about my friends’ kind and loving fathers. It made me wonder about the friends who said nothing.

There are a lot of people out there with wonderful relationships with their fathers, but there are just as many people who have unusual and complex ones. 

These are often not talked about and difficult to emotionally navigate.

It took me at least 35 years to go from hating to loving my father.

I’m glad I made the switch.