Chapter 17 15. The problem of father and son

Our house in People's Square is a big room with a large cabinet in the middle, which divides the room into two rooms.In a certain compartment of the big cabinet was my father's book, and I often climbed to the edge of the cabinet to look through it.Once, I turned to one of my father's notebooks and read it curiously.One of the pages caught my attention. It was the criticisms my father had recorded about him and his own self-criticism, mainly about short temper and rough attitude.This is of course not uncommon.However, at that time, I felt like a thunderbolt.Before that, I had always admired my father and thought that everyone else was like me.It never occurred to me that he would have to admit that he was bad to someone who would say he was bad.This incident shattered my childish paternalism at once, and made me realize that his authority was only valid over his children, and that he was a mere mortal in the eyes of everyone else.For many days after that, my mood was gloomy and complicated. On the one hand, I deeply sympathized with him, thinking that I understood his secret distress, and on the other hand, I felt ashamed and uneasy because I had glimpsed his mortal face.

When I was in elementary school, my father was only thirty years old, and he still had a lot of fun in life.Every year during the Lantern Festival, he would make an exquisite revolving lantern with his own hands, paint different watercolors on each side of the paper screen, and hang it in the house.As soon as the light came on, the paper screen rotated, which surprised me.He also likes to keep little white mice. We call them foreign mice, and he also makes a mouse box by himself. There are stairs, springboards, wheels, etc. inside, just like a small playground.One side of the mouse box is glass, and the children gather in front to watch the mice play and laugh constantly.I secretly admired my father in my heart, and I really felt that his pair of skillful hands were omnipotent.However, when I was in junior high school, I noticed that his temperament had changed a lot.I also fell in love with crafts in those days, and made many works, including an officer's hat made of cardboard.I was afraid that my little brother would damage my works, so I hid them on the top of the big cabinet.When I was playing military games with my buddies, I had to use that officer's cap, and I had to climb up and down the sides of the cabinet a lot.My father got so impatient with this that he finally had a fit, snatched my officer's cap and threw it on the floor, crushing it with his foot.I was stunned and couldn't believe it was real.From making toys for children with my own hands to destroying toys made by children with my own hands, this change is really too big.

When my father was middle-aged, his temper became quite violent.It's rare for him to be in a good mood. He doesn't play by himself and doesn't take us to play. He is busy with work from morning till night.Because of the tiredness of work, we had to take a nap every day. At that time, we lost all freedom at home. We would be reprimanded by him if we whispered a word, coughed, or made a little noise.He never misses the opportunity to remind us that he has worked so hard to raise us.The way he spoke made me feel as if I were already an ungrateful person.Since he has served as a grassroots leader for a long time, his tone of voice has a taste of admonishing subordinates, which also makes me feel uncomfortable.Sometimes he beat the children, my two younger brothers were often beaten, one for being naughty and one for what he thought was stupid.I don't remember him hitting me, but I don't forgive him for that.For a while I felt rather hostile towards him, and when I saw him come home I immediately hid myself elsewhere to read.

When I was young, my father doted on me very much, and always liked to take me with me when visiting relatives and friends.By the time he was middle-aged and I was a teenager, a delicate tension developed between father and son.We didn't have a violent conflict, but we still couldn't communicate.Out of the selfishness and conceit of a teenager, I can't understand his irritability caused by the pressure of life.Likewise, he was completely unaware of his son's inner sensibilities.Like many families in China, there has never been a heart-to-heart talk between us.This gap forced me to go to my heart, and I had to face all the problems of adolescence alone.He may not be unable to detect the estrangement between us, but he just doesn't know what to do.Not long after, I went to high school and lived on campus, went to university and left Shanghai. This was a kind of liberation for me, and I believe he also breathed a sigh of relief.When I first entered college, I wrote him a long letter, launching a comprehensive criticism of his education methods, focusing on the analysis of the characteristics of each child in the family and his improper handling.It is said that after he read it, he smiled lightly at his younger siblings and said, "Your brother is a theorist." In fact, after passing through the midlife crisis and getting older, his father's temper became more and more easy-going.As I grow older, I can naturally appreciate the hardships of his life.

I mention this now to show that the relationship between the Father and the Son is a common problem.This difficulty is especially acute if the son is a person with strong spiritual tendencies, as Kafka's famous letter reveals profoundly.Generally speaking, the father is the son's first idol, and the son's growth will almost inevitably experience the collapse of the idol, which is a painful process for both parties.The father suffers more by comparison, because his authority is based only on the laws of nature, which ultimately work against him.He is easily tormented by a kind of contradictory psychology. On the one hand, he hopes that his son will become a success, hoping that his son will be more promising than himself, and on the other hand, he has secret vigilance and panic, fearing that his son will despise him because of this.Because of his low self-esteem, he became more self-willed and self-defense with offense. The usual weapon is to repeatedly state the kindness of parenting, forcing his son to be grateful to him for everything he has today and in the future.In fact, this is exactly where he is pitiful, but Kafka seems to ignore this and exaggerate the image of his father as a tyrant.Kafka rightly points out, however, that neither father nor son is responsible for the father-son problem.This is a common problem that needs to be faced together. Father and son should be cooperative partners.It is a critical stage for a son to enter adolescence. Fathers should carefully adjust their relationship so that it gradually becomes a friendship-like relationship, but most fathers in China do not have this awareness.The most successful father-son relationships are those that become friends, and when they don't, estrangements perpetuate in different ways.

I felt this kind of estrangement. Once I was alone with my father, I would inevitably feel awkward having nothing to say.In fact, it is not that there is nothing to say, but that the words have not yet started to be said, as long as the words are started, it is never too late.After the children are older, the initiative of communication is transferred from the hands of the parents to the hands of the children.In the long years, why didn't I try to have an in-depth conversation with my father to learn more about the joys and sorrows of his life and let him know more about me?My father died suddenly of myocardial infarction 14 years ago. On the day of the funeral, seeing the corpse that looked fake because there was no sign of life, heart-piercing wailing broke out from my body.I suddenly realized how little I knew about the soul that had left this body, the life that made mine possible.The death of my father took away a person's ordinary life, and also took away the last hope of communication between us.