Amongst my favourite lines from poetry are these from T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
As a father it speaks to me of the times when I lapse from being a good father. The times when I lose it. The times when I am the Shadow that falls between the emotion and the response. One thing I know is that as a father I am far from being as perfect as Cliff Huxtable. I tend more towards Ben Harper.
It is in the times after the yelling that I need to step up and assure My son that he is awesome, that I am so impressed with his progress and that even though Dad loses his temper, that he is loved. And then putting guilt aside, I need to move on.
I am fortunate that I am an alcoholic in recovery. It has taught me that we “should not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.” To shut the door on it, is to forget it, which leads to repetition of behaviour. Memory is an injuction not to engage in actions which are harmful to oneself or to others. Regret leads to a morass of self-recrimination which is counter-productive. I screwed up, live with it and learn. Damn, I learn too slowly at times. The past is not just the distant past of an alcoholic haze, it is also the minute that has just disappeared and from each period past, lessons can be learned. But AA has a manual called the Big Book; fatherhood has no real manual.
But knowing there are shadows in me, is the best path to dealing with them and that I would write in any manual.