My report card

I squirm in my seat. My boss sits across from me stern-faced. I try to cut the tension by asking about his weekend, but he ignores my question and immediately gets down to business. We’re meeting to review my performance for the past year. He has a legal pad in front of him and he says he’s going to walk through my wins and my losses. It may be a dream, but my face starts to feel numb, my hands get clammy, and my heart starts to pound.

My boss starts by throwing me a bone: yes, I showed up everyday. It feels like a trivial win, something you might throw out to anyone. I think I notice a smirk on his face, but it’s gone before I can say anything. The performance review quickly turns south and he dives into the time when I was demanding and pushed my team too hard to meet a deadline.

I try to think of a defense. I want to stand up for myself, but I feel like I’m running in sand and I’m five steps behind him. Everything is a blur. I’m trying my best to keep up, but finally I interrupt and he frowns at me. “You see this is your problem Brian, you don’t listen.”

His comment stings. I’m hurt. I frankly want to cry. He tells me that he wants to get through the review first and then he’ll give me a chance to comment. I’m lost and I’m not even sure how to catch up. He dives into another time when I failed to offer a bit of grace and kindness to one of my team members. He says I stepped in and didn’t trust my team member’s decision-making skills and made them feel like they were five-years-old. I’m wracking my brain trying to remember the incident.

Uh-oh, what has happened?

I’m horrified to see where the conversation has gone, I feel like my hard work has been for naught. When I look back up again, instead of my boss’ stone face in front of me, my three grown kids stare back at me. They’re all looking at me with questions in their eyes. The review, of course, as I’m realizing in the moment is not for my work performance, but my performance as a father.

Let that one set in: my performance as a father.

The bile really starts to grow in the back of my throat. This is always the point in the dream where I wake up from my sleep. The scene feels real, but when I open my eyes, I see my darkened bedroom, pitch black except for a sliver of light coming in the window. My wife sleeps calmly next to me.

The ghosts come at night

When Father’s Day comes around each year in the U.S. as it does this Sunday, I think of my father, who passed away years ago, but I find that I also think about the job that I’ve done with my three adult kids. A few days before the actual day, I’ll inevitably dream about how my performance might look in front of a very tough grader during an annual performance review. I’ll think about all the times when the kids were young and impressionable and I wasn’t at my best, when I may not have lived up to the high standards I have for myself.

I imagine the reviewer checking off my slights and urging me to do better. Oh, I’ll remember the good times in my dreams too. I’ll remember my kid’s achievements and graduations, but I tend to credit those events to having a kind, loving wife, who’s a wonderful mother and instinctively knows what’s best; great kids, who seemed sometimes to parent themselves; and finally to fate and good fortune.

I’ll credit little to my own doing. I don’t write that for some type of reverse psychology self pity or self congratulations, it’s just how I feel. In some ways, I’m glad that I naturally feel that way, because it keeps me on my toes and keeps pushing me to be a better father.

While I could do without the scary dream, I’m glad that it is just that — a dream. I’ll inevitably wake from my dream, a kind of warped It’s A Wonderful Life George Bailey dream, and on Father’s Day I’ll read my kid’s texts or see them in person wishing me a Happy Father’s Day and I’ll tell them how important they are to me, how much I miss and love them. We’ll smile, laugh, and hug.

Oh yes, now that is a great feeling to have: the love of a child.