In the end I hope I have left you with more good memories than bad, with more love than shame.

More than once, the pandemic has made me wonder what final lessons I’d want to teach you.  What were the things I wish I’d figured out ten or twenty years sooner?  What do I wish I’d done differently? What do I have to apologize for?

This is what I understand about myself, and about us.

I spent too much of my life settling, convinced I wasn’t good enough to have the things that I wanted. It goes way back.  I wanted to be a comic book artist.  I didn’t think that I had the talent.  Then one day I’d look at a cover and realize that Ako was tracing a Robin model that I’d made.  I’d see Mikel Janin achieve superstar status when he spent the start of his career tracing my work.  I’m there with a good deal of Mike Deodato Jr too.  None of them were better than me.  I could have traced myself just as well as they did.  What you need to know is that at the end of the day talent isn’t the defining factor.  It’s about who’s brave enough to actually chase their dreams. I don’t regret the years I spent teaching, the work I did there mattered.  Still I wish I’d been bolder.

Except, and I really apologize that this is the great advice that I have to leave for you. Don’t chase after anyone. From twelve to twenty two I was in love with one unobtainable object after another.  Listening to less obsessive music might have been a good start.  Still, all the movies tell you that if you chase someone long enough you can catch them.  That’s crap. No one wants a loser who debases themselves in their pursuit. Best you’ll ever be is someone to turn to when their self esteem needs a boost.  But they’ll never want you the way you want them.  Don’t demean yourself by trying to change their mind.  Amy Shumer explains it well in her “M’lady” sketch.  There’s even a good Ninja Turtle episode about it with Donatello and Yeti.  These are things I wish I had the sense to learn earlier than I did. More broadly, the world doesn’t work like the stories we tell ourselves about it.  

I do not hate this pandemic.  It gave me so much time with you.  I watched you come so far so quickly. It gave me a chance to be brave and follow my passions.  The pandemic gave me an excuse to finally be an artist, and I did it.  In the first year I made more than I ever did as a teacher.  I was brave and I did not fail. 

When you were quite small you stuck a booger in my mouth and I flicked you in the head with my finger, with only the pressure that could be achieved between index and thumb.  The tears and betrayal you felt were enormous. For years after the most harsh gesture you could think of when you were angry was to flick at us in the air.  In early talks about what to do if someone was trying to abduct you, you offered up the idea of flicking them. For a long time, to you, this is what it meant to be hit by a parent. This was the epitome  violence.

More recently I smacked your wrist when you were giving yourself a hickey and didn’t respond to a verbal request to stop.  You were quite incensed that I would dare to do so. I flinched every time I saw my father raise his hands. I feared the sound of his footsteps.

Those are the two times I slipped up.

You knew enough about the way the world should be that you knew I’d done something wrong.

I have controlled my hands but I have not controlled my tongue. I am sorry I have not been more patient or more kind. I cut at you like my mother cut at me, a never ending font of criticism and correction. Nearly all the memories of my own parents are negative.  I remember my mother throwing plates at me on my sleepover birthday while my father hid from the responsibilities of co-hosting in the garage. I remember her belittling a boy from a good home, like she might berate me, until he broke down into tears, simply for the way that he chewed.  Much later, I remember my father smacking me around and calling me fag.  I remember the hole he punched into my bedroom wall that wasn’t patched until they needed to sell the house.  I wanted to do so much better than I have done, but I was not strong enough. I am sorry. 

I don’t fully know what experiences shaped my parents.  I have some inkling of how my mother resented her mother’s weakness and dependency and her fathers control.  It’s why she pursued her own career as she did. I know for years my father’s father wasn’t allowed in our house based on the way he treated my fathers mother when she was dying.  Hard as it is for me to accept, they treated me better than they were treated.

Control your tongue son and give your own child the father you should have had. You will hear the shadow of my voice in your head, it might sound like yours, but it’s me, and my mother before me,  pushing you to say the kinds of things I’ve said to you.  

Don’t.  

Then it’s over.

As much as each of us has failed over the generations, we've also each closed half of the remaining distance. You can finish the journey.