The Missing Father Movies

August 2018: I’m considering catching up with my birth father sometime in the next year. I haven’t seen him for more than 20 years, so it’s probably time. I also occasionally wonder about my adoptive father, and I happened to watch a two movies this week that jogged such sentiments. I teared up briefly watching both of them which I am embarrassed about as they aren't even good movies!
 'A Wrinkle In Time' was really pretty bad so perhaps my tears were due to peri-menopause? Howdy paws? Take a pause? 

Perspective from atop the hill of life.

"Weeeee love youuuuu"

The first was the Netflix offering ‘Like Father’. The story line goes [spoiler ahead]:

Successful, beautiful, workaholic, phone-obsessed blonde reconnects with her runaway father after she is left at the altar. 

She gets drunk with her father and they end up on her honeymoon cruise together. She eventually softens towards him through the power of water slides, drinking and karaoke, and yay, she has a dad now!

What I want to know is -

       Was he paying child maintenance despite not being involved with his child since she was 5?

       Why isn’t his character gay? It would have made more sense for the story-line as he confesses that his ‘business partner’ was his only friend. You could almost understand why a man of that era might be afraid to show who he was. My tendency is to search for a ‘good enough’ reason for someone to leave.

        The mother is dead. Why didn’t the fucker go to the funeral? He showed up at his daughter’s  wedding, but didn’t bother to support her when her mum died?

I also wondered why a man (played by Kelsey Grammar) who is erudite and charming, would be so late to the game. There’s a hint of alcoholism in the air, but this is used as a comedic foil rather than a serious comment on how much addiction messes people up. I would have been more impressed if he’d admitted that he was an alcoholic and that’s how he hid from his responsibilities in life. Maybe we are supposed to deduct that from their actions rather than having it spelled out.

The other ‘missing father’ story line is the children’s movie ‘A Wrinkle In Time’. This is much better as it’s a great metaphor for drug abuse. Replace ‘daddy is a scientist’ with ‘daddy is an addict’.

{Spoilers ahead}

In ‘A Wrinkle In Time’, a cute girl’s Scientist father travels to the outer ribbons of space and time and gets trapped there. Cute girl also travels to this world supported by her little brother, a sweet boy she likes from school, and three women in amazing Drag Queen ensembles. Break out the glitter babies - I seriously think they should have had real Drag Queens as the women just weren’t camp enough. Reese Witherspoon plays bitchy ‘Miss Whatsit’ but couldn’t hold a candle to even the most amateur drag artist in Auckland. Her Reese-ness kept getting through. Oprah wasn’t too bad, her glitter lips were amazing. The other one was a bit boring and had to quote other people all the time.

Anyway, through the power of love the cute girl ends up rescuing daddy (awesome for all the co-dependents among us). The drug metaphors abounded … and in the end the incredibly hot dad says “I wanted to shake hands with the Universe - but I should have been holding yours (dramatic pause, whispery delivery) I love you so much”.

Bear in mind that he’s been missing for four years and for him it feels like only a short time. He’s been off his face in space for years! When I heard that line, I had to pause the movie and start writing this. How wonderful it would be if we could see our missing fathers/mothers/family members as being trapped in the Universe, trying euphorically to shake its hand and therefore failing to reach out and touch us? Maybe that’s the key. Maybe that’s the real story.

Both of my fathers longed to ‘shake the hand of the Universe’. That sounds a lot better than ‘abandonment’ don’t you think? So here’s to that Universe, the one we all try to reach through various means. 

Choose the means that keeps your feet planted on the ground if you can, especially if you have children in your care. If, like me, you have a parent who was more into the ‘Universe’ than being a father/mother, then watch that movie and every time they say ‘Scientist’ replace it with ‘Addict’. Makes it a lot more relevant! You could even turn it into a drinking game (ok, I’m being facetious now).

The power in re-writing the narrative is incredibly up-lifting and of course has an impact on how we react or act in current relationships. I am drawn to people who long to ‘shake hands with the Universe’ in a variety of ways – and a lot of these ways are incredibly healthy and beautiful. Possibly meeting up with my birth father again means putting aside all fantasies and truly accepting what is. There is no Kelsey Grammar in sight, and that’s okay, because this isn’t a Netflix movie.

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