the awkward and detached father

On wednesday, Professor Baldwin showed us a picture of a father very awkwardly and you could say un-lovingly holding what we're assuming is his child. I've had a couple of days to think about this picture, and it's honestly just made me think how similar my father was although i don't have that kind of kodak moment to capture it. My mother always told me my father "loved me in his own way" but i have to say that until this year, i never really understood what that meant or why i was the only one of my friends whose father seemed like such an uncaring lunatic. i specifically remember one incident when i was about 7 or 8 and my father picked me up from gymnastics. he took me home, and promptly forgot about me for the rest of the day. My mother and my nanny were out doing errands and other things, so i was left home alone with him. doesn't seen so bad right? well on this day, i did not eat a single thing till my mother came home around 8pm. I know it doesn't seem like such a long time, but he did pick me up at 11:30 am, and i was only 7 or 8. That's an eternity to a kid. I couldn't make a meal for myself, and my lessons of not going into the pantry without asking my nanny or mom permission were well learned. So i played and slept and cried and waited. When my mother did come home, she was horrified to learn i had been neglected all day. I remember the horrible fight, because i was forced by my nanny into to my room to watch discovery channel with her, i can still picture the guy's voice narrating the lions on the african plains. It's odd that even one fight would stand out to be honest, since their screaming was a kind of soundtrack to my childhood. The problem still to this day is, i know my father didn't intentionally ignore me. Like the man in the photograph, he simply didn't know what to do with this tiny human being. He's like the old school guys, having his dinner made for him, his clothing laid out, his house cleaned, only going to work every day. My mother was a modern woman having a career, so all these duties fell to our live-in nanny. He had no motivation to learn how to be a father other than to pass me in the hallway and tease me, pay for my food and clothing, and basically exist in the same house. He does sometimes try to connect, by taking me to the zoo or shopping on the now twice a year visits when i see him. I guess this picture brought back a lot of old memories. When i saw that photo i didn't think of the guy as a bad guy, just a clueless one. In his time and age especially, men didn't know what to do with a child- it wasn't in their sphere of influence. Just like my father wasn't purposely neglectful, he simply was unaware of his responsibilities and lack of human connection. To this day I honestly don't know what to make of my tangled family, but I do know that the stiff guy smoking a cigar while holding his child like a cold pizza was just as unemotionally connected and confused as my dad.