Dad's Bike Ride

Father's day was two weekends ago and while my father crossed my mind on that day, he did not linger. Taking after him, I was self-absorbed with no slight too small. Instead, I found myself thinking about him today while I was on one of my long solitary Sunday afternoon walks.

On today's walk, I found myself trying looking for a through line connecting my son Aidan, 17, to me at 17, to my dad when I was 17, and then back to me now.

When I was 17 my dad was 56, or essentially the same age as I am to my son. He was recently retired while I am wanting to be retired. He would seldom have friends over the house. I seldom have friends over the house since most of my friends have left Beijing and I'm hard to get close to. I believe the latter applied to him as well. He did have his golf and his golf friends. At the course. On the course. I have twitter. When I got home from school, I'd find him in the TV room watching the Newlywed Game. I watch Hulu or Amazon Prime or YouTube. I'd sit and watch an episode with him and sometimes massage his forehead although that may have been when I was younger. Father/Son tensions tend to ratchet up by 17, precluding the head massage. My expression of tension was avoidance. We had a connection with sports and golf but I didn't feel he understood sports they way I did. He was an outstanding golfer and at 17 I was just a beginner having joined the high school golf team. He was too embarrassed or was it to principled to play with me at the course he played with his friends. He'd take me and my younger brother to play the Fleming nine hole course. He was unsure of how to teach us but did arrange for a lesson. Or two. Once we had a level of competency he would play with us on occasion. I never felt good enough. Because I wasn't. An eternal beginner.

I have a connection with Aidan. At times I wish it could be deeper. I know he he holds part of himself back from me. I do the same as I do with  everyone.  He wants to please me and he's a bit afraid of me. This leads to skimming over some conversations where there's an opportunity to go deeper. For the past few months, about 2-3 times a week, we take our dog Kobe on a two mile "river" walk. We talk sports. We talk how he's doing in school. He's shifted from blaming his teachers when he gets a poor mark to taking some responsibility. He vapes. He tells me what goes on in the China internet, something I can't read without translation. He gives me his interpretation. He's finding pattens, trying to make sense of the world. I want to tell him it never makes sense, except for fleeting moments. He's started reading philosophy this past week. Ordered books on Plato, Hegel, Marx. Good luck with that. He says Plato had a lot of things figured out. I try to steer the conversation to what's important to him.

I don't really remember the details of what I talked to my dad about when I was 17. I remember he used to go on these long solitary bike rides. That at one point he was able to make it up Guadalupe Canyon without stopping. A place I visited after he died at 90. I don't know why he took those bike rides. Exercise? Solitude? Loneliness? Diversions?

My Sunday afternoons and often Saturdays find me with nothing to do. No tweets to read, no work I want to do, no TV shows to watch. So I listen to podcasts and walk. I enjoy the solitude. I enjoy the diversions of the podcasts and other walkers. Sometimes I just do it because I need to do something. Doing nothing connects me with my loneliness and I actively avoid that.

In my dad's last years I would sit in the TV room with him while he watched golf with the sound off. The phone would ring. A telemarketer. The kind I am genetically conditioned to lash at. Genetics from my father. I wait for my dad to say something rudely clever and hang up. Yet he talks, engages the telemarketer. He's lonely. Maybe confused. This repeats on many calls.

I think my dad's bike was Italian. He was quite proud of it. He would say people who knew something about bikes knew this was a good frame. I have bike. It's built like a tank. Tomorrow morning I'll get on it and ride and hour to work and in the evening an hour home. Beijing is about to enter its hot, humid, and wet part of summer.