The Ghost of My Father by Scott Berkun

Author:Scott Berkun [Berkun, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Publisher: Berkun Media
Published: 2014-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

FOUR

LEGACY

The Old Testament says nothing about what Adam thought of Cain, or Cain of Adam. Adam and Eve are silent when Cain kills their younger son Abel. The only pain we hear is from the voice of God. But of course, it’s God’s unexplained rejection of Cain’s offering of fruit that angers Cain in the first place. Silence is the evil in those passages. It’s what’s unsaid that leads to suffering. The feelings that must have been in everyone’s hearts are never spoken or recorded. If Cain knew other means to express his anger, perhaps he’d have talked to his father figures, God or Adam, instead of expressing himself through violence. Some interpretations of Genesis extend God’s curse of Cain to his offspring, making future generations pay the price for what Cain did.

We are all like Cain, and his children, in a way. Springsteen wrote a song called “Adam Raised a Cain” that asks questions of unavoidable legacy. “You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames” is a line from the song that, despite how many times I’d heard it, I’d never applied to my life until this past year. As much as I hated my father’s ways, it was impossible not to be like him. No matter how I try to be more open, more self-aware, more joyous about life, I will always only have one father. The sound of my laugh, the proportions of my hands, and the sharpness of my eyes all come from him, aspects of myself I can’t escape. I can compensate, I can grow, I can learn, but at the end of it all, I still resemble him. No matter how much therapy I do or tough choices I make, deep inside me are elements of my father that I don’t notice anymore, and realizing that scared me. I knew I wasn’t like him in many ways, but what a convenient thing this was to believe.

I decided thinking about these things, which I did often, changed little. It was my habits for how I handled my feelings that needed work. I worked with a therapist and discovered the power of being honest with a stranger, a person who’d advised many other strangers about their inner lives. I recognized how many other father figures I’d had in my life that helped me and that I’d never told them the difference they made.

I started of course with my brother Todd, thanking him for how many things he’d done that shaped who I became. I wrote to Rob Elkins, my basketball coach at the Samuel Field Y. I found Adam Smith, one of my favorite summer camp counselors, on Facebook. I contacted Alan Stein, my high school history teacher, who showed me a more honest way to debate than the one I’d learned from my father. I contacted Menachem Bazian, my Hebrew tutor, who gave me one of the best pep talks of my young life on the day of my Bar Mitzvah. There were so many

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