A Father/Son Story

Flashlight…What a Feeling​

My father is a fifty-five-year-old criminal defense attorney who collects flashlights; in his mind, I am an eighteen-year-old college freshman who collects problems. Over the last few years I have alternated between expensive car accidents and adolescent emotional breakdowns on a fairly regular basis; insurance companies have dropped my family just as my family has dropped my therapist. In fact, I often felt that I was the ball in a schoolyard game my father never really enjoyed playing, and I always just assumed that, when I left for college, he would drop me, too. As it turns out, I guess parenting is more like Monopoly, a game one never stops playing no matter how old one gets. I'll never forget the ten minutes when my dad proved to me not only the kind of father he is but also the kind of son I am.

Two or three days before I left home, my room and my life were in perfect order. I had spent weeks clearing shelves and packing boxes, and I had spent months preparing every imaginable slice of paperwork and sorting out every imaginable punch of emotion – I was as ready as I was ever going to be for college. But, like they say, father knows best. I was missing something. He didn't tell me what it was right away, so I was mildly surprised when he called me into his office, with his trademark rigid formality, on one of my very last afternoons.

His office had once been my nursery. The bottles and rattles had long since been replaced with tax files and flashlights. Sitting in an executive chair as I stood in the doorway, my father spoke to me as he always spoke to everyone, client and son alike: deliberately and eloquently, with impeccable grammar and with precise purpose. I had many long fights in high school with my dad, and, forceful and hurtful and bitter though they were, I never once felt as though he was wasting my time. The only thing worse than splitting an infinitive in my house is making small-talk, so whenever my father started speaking, I knew he had something to say.

That afternoon, he chose to talk to me about his flashlights. While other men and other fathers fall victim to midlife crises of all shapes and sins, my dad seemed to deem that kind of behavior irresponsible and fiscally unwise; he decided to collect flashlights instead. Dozens of them were neatly arrayed on the two desks surrounding him, a small legion infallibly protecting their emperor from barbaric darkness. My father selected one of his personal favorites, so he told me, from among the ranks, and he explained in meticulous detail this particular flashlight's finest features: long-lasting, a mere two inches in length, equipped with three brightness settings as well as a strobe light, and, for its size, the most powerful flashlight in the world. He concluded his description on that final note.

My high school years sprained, strained, and even broke my relationship with my father on a daily basis. Even as we battled over our differences and suffered through the silences, I never forgot two things: my father loved me, and I had no idea how I knew that. My mother and the back of my brain told me so, but it was much harder to see it or hear it in the steady stoicism of my dad.

When he gave me that flashlight, one of his personal favorites, on that afternoon, more was said between us than a thousand flashlights might have illuminated in the murky jungle of the previous four years. None of it took form in words, an ironic occurrence in a house where the English language is taken more seriously than religion. My father turned over to me one of his most prized, battery-operated discoveries, and I know exactly what he was saying to me with that flashlight: he loved me, and he would always be here for me, holding a flashlight and telling me to watch out for sharp rocks. Often when we'd fight, my father would remind me that we can't choose our parents – I'm so glad we can't, because I could never have chosen anyone better suited to be my dad.

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None of it took form in words, an ironic occurrence in a house where the English language is taken more seriously than religion.

Click to expand...