Allow me to explain.
I turned 50 on December 27th. It was a great birthday -- probably my favorite -- and has left me feeling all sorts of positive emotions in its wake. One aspect of it did, however, send me on a particularly deep emotional journey, one which I've oddly found to be quite healing.
Where to begin? I've been thinking about this a lot, and don't really know the best way to frame it, or how to begin describing it, so... here we go.
One such occasion occurred in the aforementioned time period of either 1986 or 1987. It was sometime during the warmer months, as I remember the weather being nice. I asked my dad if he'd do something for me. He said he would, and then it was pretty much all downhill from there.
Regular readers of this blog, and those who know me in real life, are aware that the British sci-fi show Doctor Who is one of my favorite television series (at least its run from 1963-1989). I discovered it around 1983 or 1984, went to a convention for it here in my hometown, talked about it on the playground with my friend Xian, collected and read the novelizations of the TV show and, for several years, watched it on our local PBS station weeknights at 10:00pm, and on Saturday evenings from 6-7:00pm. Ah, those were the days.
For the uninitiated, the title character of Doctor Who travels through time and space in a machine known as the TARDIS. It's an acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions In Space. The title role has had many actors, my favorites being Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker and, from the newer version (2005 - present), Matt Smith. But while the lead actor (and his companions) may have changed several times over the years, the one constant has been the TARDIS. It technically has the ability to change its exterior into any form, but its chameleon circuit failed so, for the run of the TV series, it has always looked like a blue Police Public Call Box.
As an aside, in our previous house (which I lived in from birth to age 10), I was little and had a pretty active imagination, so when my parents bought a new refrigerator, I asked them if we could keep the box so I could make it my TARDIS. I'm able to remember the looks on mom and dad's faces as they didn't really seem to 'get it,' but they were like, 'Sure, why not?' Those who know me know that a favorite pastime has been to write stories. This was true back then, as well, but I also liked to draw. A lot. You could often find me in my bedroom making all sort of pictures, and then later comic books. I had a writing desk and, upon my childlike dictatorial instructions, my parents cut the bottom out of the refrigerator box and then lowered the box over my writing desk, so that it was completely inside the box TARDIS. They cut a door that opened and closed into one side of the box TARDIS, and so I could open it to go inside, and close it once I'd entered. There, I was in my own little world, my imagination convincing myself that I was being creative inside of a time machine.
Ah, to be a kid again.
Anyhow, back to the main story. The Doctor Who Technical Manual was published in 1983. My mom bought me a copy of it (from my elementary school's autumn book fair, of all places) and it was of course something I avidly perused. Contained in its pages were specs for the TARDIS, including a guide of how to make your own. Now, to be clear, this was intended to be a (very) small, paper-made version. There were instructions, and visual details to be included on the finished product, but it was a small-scale paper kind of thing.
Kid Matt had grander notions. I went to my mom one evening when dad wasn't at home (Lewis worked construction jobs all across the state, and so was often gone during the week. He would come home for the weekends). I told mom of my idea, to have dad actually build me a TARDIS. The first thing my mom said was that it couldn't be a full-sized TARDIS, because that would be too big. I told her I understood that, and was thinking maybe something half-size, or a tad smaller? I couldn't get in it, of course, but my imagination was still at the point where I could still have adventures with it.
My dad and his brothers (my uncles) were very good with their hands. As previously mentioned, dad worked construction for a living. He knew how to build things. Here in my hometown, he worked on constructing the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. My uncle Jim made my grandmother a beautiful wall clock out of wood. Dad and Jim were two of twelve siblings. So, each hour of the clock were the names of my aunts & uncles, expertly carved into the wood (that's how I learned that my uncle "Bud" was really named Lenwood). It was a fully functional clock, ornate and made out of some elegant type of wood.
So yeah, I had no doubt that my dad could probably make a smaller version of the TARDIS. Mom said to go ahead and ask him, and I did so when he got home that weekend. I remember him saying "yes" without much hesitation, though also not with a great deal of enthusiasm. I showed him the TARDIS plans in the technical manual, he reviewed them, and then went to the hardware store and bought the necessary pieces of wood. A weekend or two later, dad a couple of work stands set up in the driveway, his tools laid out, and was ready to begin construction. That's when things broke badly.
It should be noted, dear reader, that I did not inherit my dad and uncles' craftsman genes. I just.... nope. Not a part of my wheelhouse. Once dad got working on the project, mom nudged me and said, "Why don't you go out there and see if you can help your dad?" Looking back, it was obvious she'd hoped it would serve as a bonding experience for the two of us. We were father & son, but weren't what I would call 'close.' In fact, I was often frightened of him. That said, the excitement for the TARDIS project knew no bounds, so outside I went. I approached dad and explained that I was there to help. He grunted and said that I could hand him his tools when he needed them.
Remember how I didn't inherit the craftsman genes? Well, that meant that my knowledge of tools was next-to-nothing. You can probably see where this is going. I noticed dad was humming to himself whilst he was working. Once the request for tools started, is when the misery began. He would ask for this or that implement, and I'd no clue what he was referring to. I looked around frantically at the tools that were laid out, but each time had to ask him which one he'd meant. He would point at whichever one it was, and I'd subsequently hand it to him. Finally, after maybe the fourth or fifth time of this happening, dad whirled around, his eyes bulging angrily, and he shouted, "You're fucking useless! Go back in the house! Go on! Just go back inside!" I quickly scurried away, tears starting to form.
Mom had heard the commotion and, once I was in the house, she asked what had happened. I was upset, but told her the best I could. She looked sad and asked, "Was he humming?" I responded that, yes, dad had been humming while he was working. Mom remarked that he often hummed when he was upset. Mom shook her head and apologized for sending me out there. I don't remember a lot of the details about what happened next, just that dad would kind of half-heartedly work on the project over the next couple of weekends. I was anxious about the progress but, after the tools incident, stayed well clear of him and knew better than to ask how things were going.
Finally, after maybe three weekends, dad approached me and said flatly that he wasn't going to build the TARDIS. "You can have what I've done," he said. I nodded and told him thank you. What dad had managed to do in three weeks was a quarter -- maybe a third? -- of the total project. It was a base, a corner, and a few other pieces of glued and nailed pieces of wood. Un-sanded, rough, and looking nothing like a TARDIS. I mean, it kind of did, if you knew what it was supposed to end up being, and if you had a good imagination. Luckily, I both knew what it was supposed to have been and I was a kid with a good imagination. So, I took the collection of wood pieces and brought them downstairs to the basement. Half of the basement was finished, but I didn't put it there. I put it in the unfinished side, where it seemed to fit in better, and where I wouldn't have to see it every time I went downstairs.
Occasionally, I would go into the unfinished part of the basement and try playing with what dad had made. I would gingerly pick it and try and whoosh it around, but my half-heartedness in playing around with it mirrored the half-hearted attempt at which it had been constructed. Still, the main thing that I felt about it -- at least on a surface level -- was guilt. I felt bad for having asked dad to build it in the first place. 'Maybe he isn't as good at construction as I thought?' I wondered internally. 'And then he found out he couldn't make it?' That made me feel bad. It made me feel guilty for possibly making him feel bad.
One day, a friend was over, and I took him to the basement and showed him my one-third-constructed TARDIS. I actually felt kind of proud, like 'Look what my dad made for me.' I opened the door to the unfinished side of the basement, and beamed as I told my friend what it was, and that my dad had made it for me. The friend stood there for a moment, then burst out laughing. My face fell as he said through the laughter that he didn't know what it was he was looking at, but it wasn't a TARDIS. He pointed derisively at it and said, "I mean, look at it!"
That's when my feelings about the project changed. Or rather, the things I'd been feeling under the surface but wouldn't acknowledge came to the fore. I felt some hurt and mild irritation with my friend. He could have been much more tactful. But hey, we're talking kids barely into their double digits -- manners don't always come easy. But what I really felt was anger. Not at my friend, but at my dad. It was anger that I'd been feeling ever since he'd told me matter-of-factly that he wasn't going to finish the project, and handed me some sad, bare pieces of wood that had been glued and nailed together, and called it a TARDIS.
What dawned on my little brain then, and that I more fully understood as I got older, is that I was looking for from my dad was for him to show that he loved me. And the TARDIS project was -- even though I didn't consciously realize it -- a way to ask for that. Now, to be clear, my dad was a good provider. He worked hard, put a roof over our heads, good food on the table, etc. He performed his breadwinning responsibilities admirably. But one could argue that that's the bare minimum. Not to sound ungrateful but, if you're a married man who has a kid with your spouse, you've brought a life into this world and that life is now your responsibility. You're supposed to put a roof over their head and food on the table. Granted, there are some (many?) fathers who don't do those things, but then I don't think its good to use that low bar for our expectations.
I'm going to share something that I've only shared with very few people, but it goes to illustrate what I'm trying to get at here. About two to three years before the TARDIS project fiasco, I'd been drawing another bit of artwork. I don't remember what it was, but I'd used several different colors, and was proud of it, so I trotted out of my bedroom and into the living room where my dad was relaxing on the recliner. He was reading a TV Guide. I eagerly showed him my artwork, but made the mistake of placing it in front of the TV Guide. Dad promptly took the paper containing my artwork, crumpled it up into a ball, and tossed it on the floor. I stood there stunned and, in the ensuing silence, dad took the opportunity to look at me sternly and remark how I was to never stick something in front of whatever he was reading. He said that it was rude.
The stunned silence soon gave way to me busting into tears. Dad angrily told me to go to my room, and so I grabbed the crumpled-up artwork and complied. I closed the door too my bedroom and sat cowering in a corner, doing that type of crying where you start trying to catch your breath. A few minutes later my mom entered the room with an iron. I didn't know what was happening, but she stood there and solemnly said, "Give me the paper." I shakily handed her the crumpled up ball of artwork, she took it, and then straightened it out on the floor and started ironing-out the wrinkles as best she could. Suddenly, dad burst into my bedroom and shouted at mom: "What are you doing? Don't baby him!" I'll never forget the look on mom's face. It was a look of someone who wanted to say something, but stifled it. She bowed her head, stood up with the iron, and followed my dad out of the room, shutting the door behind her. The artwork was still on the floor, the paper looking slightly better than it had before, but still with lots of wrinkled parts. Didn't matter. It was, in my eyes, ruined. I threw it in the trash. Nothing more was said about it.
So this is what I'm getting at: It doesn't matter how nice a roof you put over someone's head, or how much good food you can afford to put on their plates, that's simply not enough to make someone feel loved. Not when you destroy their artwork, or call them "useless," or do a whole host of other negative things I won't get into here. You do all of those things, and a child will question if you love them. I say all of this as someone who isn't a parent. With that, I am someone who was once a child. And I know how it feels to be a kid, and what feels like love and what feels like hatred. I often felt like my dad hated me. Maybe he didn't, but actions say a lot. If you think that you love your kid but treat them like shit, then that makes the assertion of love out to be dubious at best.
So, there I stood in the basement of our house on John St., my friend laughing at how crappy my "TARDIS" was, and I it brought out those feelings of inadequacy. It reinforced what I'd felt, but couldn't acknowledge -- that my dad didn't love me. Or, at the very least, he didn't seem to care about me too much. I was a burden, a chore, a responsibility to be fed, clothed, and housed, but not worth much more than that. I stood there trembling with anger, understanding that he wouldn't even complete a project for me. I thought of the times he'd taken mom and I to his job sites after hours and proudly shown us all the stuff he and his crew were working on building. I stood there thinking, 'He'll do it to get paid, but he won't do it for his son. Why did I even think that he would?'
Of course, I never voiced any of this to Lewis. I knew better than to cross him, and suffer the consequences.
I rarely thought about that TARDIS project over the years. It isn't exactly something one wants to dwell on very much. But it came to mind again a couple of weeks ago.
I have friend, Kelvin. I consider him to be my best friend. Granted, such terminology can sound a bit high schoolish, but I don't know any other way to describe him. For my 50th birthday last month, he'd built me a TARDIS.
So, to explain: There are these things called Little Free Libraries. They're typically made out wood, and are placed in people's front yards, near the sidewalk or the street. The homeowner will put books inside of the structure, and then people who walk by are free to take a book with them to read at their leisure Sometimes, folks will put a book back in the Little Free Library. It just depends on the kumbaya-ness of the neighborhood, I suppose. The subject of Little Free Libraries had come up briefly in the past with Kelvin, most notably how some of them were made to look like a TARDIS. Fast forward to last month and, on my birthday, my very own Little Free Library TARDIS is unveiled, handmade by none other than Kelvin, himself.
And, let's be clear.. he didn't mess around. He worked on this thing for months, and it shows. I want you to go and click on the 'made to look like a TARDIS' hyperlink I included in the previous paragraph. Scroll through the pictures of people's Little Free Library TARDISes. They're... cute. And most of them are the kind that I'd seen over the years, either in-person or online. The one Kelvin made for me is on another level. The attention to detail is out of this world. The color matching to what the official TARDIS prop used in the show is on point. The way the windows look, the detailed levels of the roof -- all of it.... outstanding. And, when you open the doors, the interior is illuminated, and there's a sound effect of the TARDIS materialization/dematerialization. It's just... amazing.
On its own, as hand-crafted birthday present of a Little Free Library in TARDIS form, this thing is top notch. The thoughtfulness, the work and effort that went into it, the attention to detail, and the little extra touches hit me on a deep level. But then, a few days later (and I'm not sure why it took a few days, but there we are), the memory of my dad's abandoned TARDIS project came back to me. It was as I was laying in a hotel room bed the night before flying out to Las Vegas. I had some pre-flight jitters, so was having trouble nodding off. And then I remembered the incident from 40 years ago. I didn't cry or weep thinking about it, but then I did quietly weep when I thought about the TARDIS Kelvin made for me. But they were happy tears. I thought, 'He did something that my own dad wouldn't do for me.'
And that's where I come back to the first paragraph of this (overly-long) blog post, where I brought up those over-used pop-psycho-babble buzzwords of "trauma" and "closure." The events surrounding my dad's abandoned project of building me a small(er) TARDIS were definitely traumatic. But, dear reader, receiving Kelvin's gift felt like closure.
There are so many instances of negative interactions with my dad. None of them were ever resolved. They just happened, and my mom and I had to deal with them the best we could. In later years, her and I would sometimes talk about those times, sort of our own two-person support group that helped each other deal with the trauma of our past shared experiences from a man who was long-dead. It's one of the reasons I miss my mom. Since she died in 2023, no one else is around who shares those memories. There's no one to talk with them about. No one who went through them and can, like me, feel stronger for having been through them and still managed to thrive.
But it's not good to dwell too much on the past. We live in the present and, if my 50th birthday did anything, it reminded me that I live in a pretty awesome present, with good people who love me. And a best friend who built me a TARDIS, and I didn't even ask him to do it. It is too beautiful to be put outside. I'm sorry, but I simply can't have it exposed to cold Illinois winters and hot Illinois summers, to be exposed to rain, hail, or strong winds. It's staying inside the house, and has its own prominent place where it resides. Those Doctor Who novelizations I mentioned earlier? They now sit stored inside of it, nicely tucked away for future re-reading.
Kid Matt doesn't exist any more. At least, not physically. He resides only in my mind. And it is there, in my mind over the last two weeks, that Adult Matt has been able to tell him that, hey, you know that time dad fizzled out on you and just bailed on that TARDIS project? Remember how he went off on you and made you cry? Remember how he wouldn't take his best skillset and use it make something for you? Remember how your friend later laughed at the measly thing your dad left for you -- a half-hearted, unfinished project that seemed to reflect how he really felt about you? Remember all of that? Well, Kid Matt, it's been put right now. You have a happy ending to that chapter.
And the tears you cry can now be happy ones.
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