My father is a reactionary man. I don’t mean that politically – he’s quite unpolitical really, except that he’s obnoxiously cynical. I mean Dad is always expending his energy reacting to something; he never initiates a process or steps back and makes a plan for himself.

His wife, my cracker stepmother, is not really more high maintenance than anyone else. She’s transplanted so she doesn’t have the network of local friends and family that would take some domestic pressure off her spouse, but really, when I think of it amid unground axes, she’s no more demanding than most wives. The thing is that Dad can’t shine her on, won’t ignore her, always tries to do what she asks and even some of what she doesn’t ask, and I’m realizing as I say this that his curmudgeonly attitude can actually be ascribed to the sort of bitterness that accompanies a complaint about ingratitude. I wonder could his worldview be this infantile: I’m nice to you so you better be nice to me or else I’m going to pout and take my ball home?

Mom says Dad has a hole in his soul, and he tries to plug it with a mate. Any mate. Keeping the mate is the most important thing. And I have to admit his vital stats support that view. Dad is apparently very, very motivated to be married.

Maybe Mom and I are hitting at the same thing. He stays mated by being nice to his mate. This approach looks like a kindergarten survival strategy. When his mate is less than perfectly grateful, as has to occur, his resentment and bitterness begin.

What we seem to have here is a failure, on my father’s part, of imagination. He’s in his mid-50s. Clearly his old survival strategy could use a review.

(The odd thing in all this is my mother’s irrational belief that someday, somehow, Dad will get back on track and rediscover the creative path to self-fulfillment. She holds this romantic notion in spite of her fairly wide observation of half a century on this planet. She cherishes this idea even though she watched my paternal grandfather shuffle off his mortal coil without ever really speaking his mind…)

I visited a gigantic flea market last week and I went a little wild with purchases. Filled my trunk with old LPs and crammed the back seat with adornments and appliances that I just couldn’t resist. Most will go into found-object sculptures and collages, and I can use some for the interactive curtains I’m designing for my study, but there’s one little statuette I bought to keep intact.

It’s an ivory-colored resin object, plastic made to look like marble. It’s the blocky figure of a man, and the placard sloping against his lower legs says “World’s Greatest Dad.” The man is short but solid, a prototypical father-block of warm-looking protection. Mom says the style is of the type known as a “nebbish” in the late 50s/early 60s.

When I put down my $2, I thought I was buying an early Christmas gift. But I realized when I got home that I can’t give this thing to my father. It wouldn’t even be funny.

It’s a sturdy little block of resin. Built like a father. I can’t give it to mine. He’s not substantial enough. Too unhappy. I guess I can only hope. Not like my mother: I have no illusions that my dad will see the light and come around. I guess I hope I’ll do a good enough job selecting that, someday, my kid will want to give this little statue to hers.