"It's a Really Nice Jail, Isn't It, Dad?"

I made peace with who my father had been.

By Neil Solomon · 2 min read

My father came to Mexico with a broken leg and a list of opinions.

My wife asked him one afternoon, "Dad, what do you think of Mexico?"

"It's full of Mexicans," he said.

That is true. It is full of Mexicans. He had lived his whole life in one corner of the United States and had hardly traveled. Now he was in a country where he did not know the language or the food.

A few days later my wife tried again. The house was very nice, much nicer than where he had lived. "Dad, don't you enjoy being here?" she asked.

"This is a jail," he said.

My wife said, "But it's a really nice jail, isn't it, Dad?"

He grumbled and said nothing. I took that as a yes.

That was the man I came to know in his last years. He was stubborn and set in his ways, and he was funny without meaning to be.

I had not connected with my father like that since I was a child. After my parents divorced I saw him on weekends. Now I sat across from him at breakfast, every day, and I heard the same stories. At first I felt impatient. Then I started to listen.

I made peace with who my father had been. I did not do it by deciding to. It happened a little at a time over those mornings. I stopped waiting for him to be someone else. Once he told me that for years he had believed I was doing something illegal. I laughed and told him I wasn't. I think that was as close as he could come to saying he was proud of me, and I took it.

Was it easy? No. It was not a huge burden either.

I think taking care of a parent can be a blessing, because someone may take care of me one day. That is how I looked at it, and it made the work lighter.