Tonight, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy with my wife. There were a few real tearjerker scenes in the film, but the one that got me the most was (spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie) when Quill made the energy ball and finally got to play catch with his “dad.”
I had the same sort of relationship with my father. To my mom, he was this amazing guy who things just happened to go wrong for. He was always sort of a hero to her, and she always thought he’d come around in the end.
To me, he was the guy who had me for one day a week and usually either took me on his menial errands (like to shop at Big Lots) or who used me to pick up women and then locked me in a room at his place with a crate of comic books.
All I wanted as a kid was for that dude to care about me the way stories tell us fathers care about kids.
I wanted that so bad that when my mom remarried, I ended up learning to play basketball (and got pretty good at it) just to try to get close to my step-dad. But even when he was my basketball coach, he was more enamored with the more athletic kids on the team than with me (though I was actually the best shooter and defender on the team at the time, but I digress). I destroyed my knee trying to prove myself good enough at basketball. Just because I wanted that fatherly love.
I also attached to several failed role models, one of which was my high school art teacher. When I was applying to colleges (I wanted to go to art school), he told me that I shouldn’t, that I was better at other things. I went on a scholarship interview for a week and he replaced me as the captain of the academic team I’d been competing on for four years.
Part of me never got over that. I left one of my dreams in that art classroom to wither and die because of what felt like a betrayal. I think it was just his way of understanding that I was leaving. He had to move on, too, I guess. It wasn’t all about me. He thought he was giving me good advice and making it easier for me to depart. He tried.
Part of me never stopped wanting my father to care.
Part of me still wants to excel at basketball just to stick it in the face of a long gone stepfather who wouldn’t know me if he saw me on the street. To be worthy.
But ultimately the lesson Quill had to learn in the film is the one I had to learn in my life; you don’t get that storybook thing. And it doesn’t mean life is awful. Life can still be pretty awesome.
But I never knew my dad. Not really. I carried his legacy like an unbearable load for many years in my hometown, but that didn’t bring me closer to him. My mother’s romanticized stories didn’t bring my closer to him. Seeing him fade away didn’t bring me closer to him. I couldn’t have written his eulogy, though I am by trade a writer.
And you know what? I’m okay. I still tear up when people reminisce about their fathers, or when a story shows the dear old dad making good trope.
But the second I fucking gave up on that is the second I became a real person.
I still cry for the idealistic child inside me, but I see clearly now. People are what they are.
And I don’t mean that in a dismissive or even overly angry way. I don’t hate my father. You have to know a person to hate them. I will honor his memory in as much as that’s what I was raised–by my single mother– to do. I would wish him well were he still around.
What I mean is that the power of stories can be harnessed against us just as quickly as it can be used to uplift us. I will always tear up when I think about how badly I wanted my father’s love and attention. That will never ever change. And I know that. But I also understand that my father was a man. He had flaws. He made choices, choices I imagine he thought were all good, even if some of them looked horrible from the outside. That’s what people are. We do our best and hope to not ultimately screw everything up in the time we have.
We live in a world where everyone should try harder to understand that.
Today a bunch of power-hungry white dudes in Congress did something horrible. Maybe if they realized that they were no better than the people they stood in judgment of this country would be a better place. But they seem incapable of that. And I will grant them their flaws, respect their right to exist. But they are fools.
We live in a society where we’d all be better if, like Peter Quill, we could see the chance at immortality and power only to give it up just for the chance to be the best person we could possibly be.
We should all be as noble as a Star Lord and as humble as Drax.
Also, 8 stars out of 5 for Guardians volume 2. Go see it instead of reading my ramblings. 😛