My dad still has not met my son, now 10+ months old, and it's become an awkward subject - with other people. Maybe we'll be talking about Mr. J's parenting skills, or Mr-Papa's unexpected and completely adorable fascination with the Bear, and someone - to use the most recent examples, my college roommate and my doctor - will say something innocuous like "How about your dad, what's he like as a grandfather?" And I have to say, "Well, he hasn't met the Bear yet."
There are two reactions to this. From people I don't know as well (like the doctor), I get the RCA-dog expression: head tilted, brow furrowed, trying to process what I just said. For the first ... oh, I don't know, six to eight months, I tried to make excuses for him. I would jump in with something about how he lives in North Carolina, and he has a teenager, and they are very busy, blah blah blah. Now I just say gently, "My dad kind of sucks." They nod, and we move on.
From people I do know well, many of whom also know my dad, like the college roommate, I get a tirade. All I can do is nod along while they say things like, "What do you mean he hasn't met him yet? The kid is 10 months old! What is he waiting for, a driver's license? I don't care how busy he is! This is his grandson!" ... then they pause and say, "Wait, this isn't even his first grandson. How old are your sister's kids?" And I say, "Well, the older one is two years older than the Bear, and no, he hasn't met them either," and the rant resumes.
I can sort of excuse my dad for not having met Young-Sis's kids, because they have a pretty fraught relationship. I don't know that Young-Sis has ever invited him to come up and meet his grandkids, and given that she didn't invite him to her wedding (or even tell him about it personally) I can see that he might not feel welcome to come without an invitation. That said, I think he would have gone a million miles towards repairing their relationship if, upon news of her child-bearing, he had not only sent the lovely and expensive gift he did send but also told her that he would really like to come up and meet his grandson whenever she found it convenient. He wouldn't even have had to make the trip, the offer alone would have done him a world of good.
But he gets no free pass from me. While our relationship has not been ideal for the past fifteen years or so (it's never fully sprung back from the year he spent not speaking to me because I decided to move back to Louisville), we do still have a relationship that he would probably call good and that I would characterize as "decent under the circumstances" (the circumstances being that he kind of sucks).
I have been inviting him to come up since the Bear was born. I have started to get a little pushy about it. Maybe if Bear's baptism had been less of a last-minute scheduling emergency to squeeze in before his godfather's deployment, they would have made the trip for that. But it was very short notice and right at the holidays, so I didn't take it amiss that they couldn't get here. What about the subsequent eight months? Sure, Kid-Sis is a busy teenager, but they managed to spend Labor Day weekend on Kiawah. I didn't get a phone call asking if they could come here.
I am starting to wonder if maybe he just doesn't realize this is a thing. Maybe dynamics were different back in the 70s when he had kids the first time - and the only time he had a new baby while living more than an easy drive from his parents and in-laws. Maybe back in the day, people didn't make the trek like they do now. I wonder if I just need to sit him down and say, "Listen, Dad. There are certain things that you, as a [nominally] Good Parent, are supposed to do when your child adds a child of her own to your family tree. You sent a nice present, and that was lovely, but it's not sufficient. You have to come up and meet the baby: you travel to the baby, not the other way around, and you do it in fairly short order. This is a rule and everyone knows it but you. It's getting embarrassing, and I am tired of making excuses for you."
Not sure if that would hurt or help.
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