The truth is, though my close friends will already know this, I have very little in common with my father. He and my mother divorced when I was very young, my mother remarried, and I have basically been raised by my step-father, who I consider to be as legitimately titled as father as my "real" (my childhood term) dad. As a child, I spent weekends with him, as is the case in many divorced families, but as I got older and had more and more things going on, I saw less and less of my father. We are, therefore, very different in many ways.
But this never stopped me from idolizing my father any less than all sons do. So I was always impressed with my dad, the police officer, as a young boy. I was impressed with the uniform, with watching him work on his patrol car so he could go to work, and with the relatively mild stories he would bring home. I was in fact so impressed that I began "arresting" neighborhood kids. My dad tells a story about hearing a loud commotion in front of the house once, and coming outside to find that I had a row of young Hispanic kids "jacked up" against his take home car. It might not be surprise then that I would grow up to become an officer myself (the fact that my step-father is a firefighter also meant that I had my choice of hero jobs to follow. . .I chose the one I thought looked more fun).
Nearly eight years after becoming an officer myself, I sat with my father today on Father's Day, eating grilled brats and talking about the job. Of course, I've "talked shop" with my dad countless times since joining the department, but not until today did it occur to me how interesting an unique these conversations were.
I came to this today because my in-laws were over as well and, in the middle of my conversation with my father, I grew suddenly aware and concerned that they were totally left out of the conversation. I don't know if they felt that they were, and I'm sure that they must have found some of our stories at least entertaining. But the fact is, educated and open as my in-laws are, they could never be anything more than entertained outsiders in our conversation. Indeed, I forgot they were there entirely, and wasn't even thinking of them as an audience. I was too busy talking about the family business.
This made made me realize what a unique type of shared family experience these stories represent. Yet, as strange as this family dynamic must seem, it is one of the most often written about aspects of police families. Edward Conlon (a third-generation cop) writes about his conversations with his father, an FBI agent in his book, Blue Blood. Brian McDonald, author of My Father's Gun recounts watching his brother (also third generation) share stories with his father. The History Channel mini-series based on and named for his book references these conversations as well.
In the police family, all family gatherings become business lunches, group therapy sessions, water cooler talks, or any number of other things. Ultimately, though, these conversations represent an extraordinary and unique form of bonding. There are not very many sets of fathers and sons that work under the same incompetent structure, deal with the same types of "customers," and ultimately stare into the same abyss.
The police family is a rare type of family where father and son are also brothers--members of the same tight-knit fraternity. For me, my shared experiences with my father have given me much to talk about with a man who is otherwise hard to talk to, and with whom I might not have much to talk about. We've experienced the same kinds of fights, lonely midnight shifts, frustrations with a sometimes apathetic, sometimes critical public, we've experienced the same fears, and seen many of the same horrors.
This gives us a bond unique even among fathers and sons. Perhaps this bond, as well as the pride the job brings, is why so often police work becomes a family affair.
