We all need help to grow up.

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This story was published in Illumination, a Medium Publication.

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The Dream

I’m in the back seat of a car. The light blue vinyl seat is ripped. Outside the window, the sea is visible and rough.

My father is in the driver’s seat, his hands clasped around the steering wheel and looking ahead. All of a sudden, he turns the car toward the water.

I watch as it catapults into a crashing wave. The water seeps into the vehicle through the rusted-out holes at my feet.

In the next scene, I’m in the driver’s seat, and my father is in the rear looking out the window.

I’ve had a version of this dream many times, starting around the age of forty. I’m now 74.

Isn’t it a phenomenal dream?

I wonder if my dad ever had a dream like this.

I’m guessing he did because you can only get out of your son’s way if you’ve become a mature, loving adult.

Who then helps his son move out into the world to become a mature, loving adult.

That’s what the dream means to me.

My Father

You’ve already met my father, Paul Sr.

This was my favorite photo of him. My mother, Dody, snapped it at a Farmer’s Market in the spring of 1984, a few months before he would be diagnosed. Back then, for any above the neck cancer, they extracted teeth before radiation treatment. Though he would live for nine years, radiation and chemo would dramatically change his appearance.

That’s his weekend jacket. Even when he wore a suit every weekday, on Saturdays, when it was nip in the air, he threw on a mid-weight coat as I, the privileged firstborn, followed him out the door on the way to donuts.

My father was a chemical engineer who retired in 1980, set up a bakery in the basement, and began developing a line of bread products. My mom served as his senior financial advisor, as she had done throughout their 45-year marriage. All three sons had left the nest but served as taste testers over the three years it took him to refine his skills and product.

My favorite PJ Gardner’s Fine Bread Product was his breadstick, a perfect blend of crisp and soft.

But my favorite image of my father is sitting across a table and conversing with me. Sometimes, we’d get a little heated, like in 1971, around the family room table, sitting in those orange chairs, and arguing about Vietnam.

But, I just knew, he was listening and taking me seriously.

That’s a precious gift from father to son.

“It all starts from there.”

I’ve been listening to Yusuf Islam’s (Cat Stevens) 1971 song Father and Son. Below, I’ve linked you to the lyrics and an interview.

About the song, Yusuf says

Father and Son is as much about my relations with my father as my relations with society. It’s always been that way…That’s what I want to explain in the song. I talk about a father and a son because in fact it all starts from there.

It’s not easy to become a mature adult. We all need a lot of help to get to the point where we take responsibility for our lives. That’s what my car dream meant to me — being in the driver’s seat translates to this is my life and not someone else’s.

There are two voices in Father and Son: a father who talks to the son and the son who soliloquizes. In the second stanza, the son declares:

How can I try to explain?

When I do, he turns away again

It’s always been the same

Same old story

From the moment I could talk

I was ordered to listen

In the language of my dream, the son is stuck in the back seat. He hasn’t broken free to become the author of his life.

Even when my father and I argued — especially when we argued — he always listened. We need someone to hear us, take us seriously, and give us the heft to stand alone.

Or sit alone, in the driver’s seat.

It’s only when we can do that that we can, in turn, encourage others to become themselves.

“It all starts from there.”

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Interview with Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) and lyrics to Father and Son can be found here.