The perfect father

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

And now he comes to the dacha, without warning, - they haven't seen him for half a year and would not have seen him yet, - surprisingly sober, handsome, neighbor girls freeze on their sun loungers, - oh, this manly tan, spreading shoulders, white-toothed, freshly washed jeans. - Hello, baby. - Hello, dad, - the child answers politely. - What kind of shit are you reading? - This is the Yellow Book of Faye, Dad. - Your mother should be deprived of parental rights, - he habitually remarks, - at your age you should read the Tales of Tolstoy Leo Nikolaich, do you know there is such a writer? - I know, dad, - the child nods resignedly - and, closing his eyes with longing, backs away somewhere, behind the greenhouse, behind the shed, - oh, no, he is not afraid of his father, he just learned it by heart in five years of his life: every line, every gesture. The worst thing about dad is his complete predictability. Now he will say: My grandfather, Academician D, always said that children should be beaten! - and takes out a bottle and a newspaper "MK" or "Sport Express" from the bag, no options. “My grandfather, academician D., argued that mothers who abandon their husbands develop moral monsters,” he says this time, getting the same thing, “especially in Jewish families.

And the child raises his face to the mother and asks:"

Where did you look? … There is only one answer: I looked at the ceiling 2. 5 m - I saw the sky in diamonds. Youth is in principle unmistakable: “right” or “wrong” does not participate in it. One can predict in a boy - a husband, but not in a husband - a father. It's like calculating the weather nine months from now using archived weather reports.

Everyone knows, everyone understands: a good person can be a disgusting father, and a bastard can be plowed by a hardened human weighing three five hundred - for the better, naturally. The attitude towards your child quite often does not coincide with the attitude towards humanity, and the reverent parental humanism may well be combined with Bratkov's morality and fan fingers. Everyone understands that between a “good husband” and a “good man” there is a kind of vague, dividing space, which, perhaps, is the essence of a person. Either it is a character, or a personality, or what is called “persona” in Western humanistic psychology is the spiritual component of a person, an indicator of his moral consistency.

How not to miss? But in no way. Only many years of experience in studying a neighbor, only knowledge by heart, only absolute trust, suffered through suffering, beaten by life.

But by the time the first child is conceived, very, very few have such experience …

And only the most virtuoso women can knock out a guaranteed tails, but this, however, is somewhere in the field of professional abilities.

… Feuilleton-classic plumber Fyodor Sergeich - overalls, vest, bristle, sour fumes, golden hands that mercilessly cut off the water supply of tight-fisted residents, but for three rubles worked wonders with pipe rust - went in the evenings to the city dance floor, called the "cage". He put on a white shirt and green crimplen jacket and hid behind a tree, smoking into his fist. Sometimes old girls from the park drove up to him, let him go to the white dance; Fyodor answered mysteriously: "and figlee?" - and turned away with polite contempt.

He had a different goal: to protect Lilka, his stepdaughter and my classmate, who, according to him, “froze from an early age,” that is, entered the phase of unsafe drives, centripetal puberty and size five bras. Fedor knew the beautiful imported word "libido". I heard about the difficulties of adolescence and the spirit of adolescent contradiction. And he recognized for the young organism the right to “want before the wedding”, while reserving the right to “prevent” all these wants.

Lilkina's mother had long lived in the oil-bearing North with her sixth or seventh husband, and Fyodor Sergeich raised the girl from the age of six. All potential wives who entered the apartment were immediately expelled for lack of respect for the child and “stupidity in child psychology,” in which F. S. House of Political Education.

Invisible, like a KGB man from films about the heirs of Dzerzhinsky, and inevitable, like a Schwarzian shadow, he followed Lilka on his heels. The shadow knew its place: it endured the squelching of kisses, forgave peaceful embraces, but as soon as the reckless mare was threatened by male reflexes, it instantly jumped out with a Jamesbond hook. Our quarter recalled for a long time the cry of a careless construction battalion: "Man, for what?" - and Fedor's haughty answer: "For my blood!" In this case, Lilka immediately wilted and, drooping her shoulders, walked home with her dad by the hand, where he silently fed her dinner and read aloud program works, “War and Peace” or “Beyond the Distance”, he was generally concerned about her education and spiritual, so to speak, development.

Having gone mad, Lilka graduated from the Polytechnic Institute, got married, gave birth to three and now lives does not grieve, Fedor Sergeich with her, mastered the computer to help her grandchildren in various shooters and strategies. A year ago, Lilka, at the instigation of my brother, read Lolita, and her indignation knew no bounds. This, she told me, was "cynical slander" of the stepfather-stepdaughter relationship. Because their relationship was not just chaste, but “highly spiritual,” as she put it.

And this, I think, is the pure truth.

… An imperfect person Fyodor Sergeich - a complete redneck in life - was, perhaps, an ideal father (not a stepfather!) - a shadow, a hand, a talisman, a bodyguard, a householder, a confidant. He knew how to STAND BACK - not in front of and not on the side, and only because of this he managed to GROW to his child, without imposing his life strategies and values on him and without coming into conflict with his desires.