I did my best to explain my relationship with you and your half-brother and sister in my first letter on the subject, but you find many faults with my attempt (“Sad Irony: From a Letter to My No. 1 Son,” May 9, 2014). And you focus on the first paragraph of my explanation, which has to do with fatherhood as such. First you dispute that I have indeed done my best to be a good father to the three of you, and then you question my thoughts about the American model of fatherhood. To wit, you find nothing wrong with it. Although you make many related points in your letter, this is the gist of your reply. I have failed you as a father, and this has to do with my perspective on life in general. Even though you do not mention the term, my behavior has to do with my character.

Let me begin by saying that my behavior toward my children undoubtedly has something to do with my character. While we were together, I was loving but tough. I loved to hug and kiss you, but I did not enjoy the childish shenanigans. In your case, I enjoyed most the period between your first year in school and your puberty. This is when we were very close. Puberty pulled us apart, as is only natural. I am sorry that I did not have the chance to have the same experience with your half-brother and sister, though. Their mother and I split up too early for that. Returning to you, I have felt ever closer to you since the end of your puberty. We have become more like friends than son and father, and this has been quite to my liking.

How does this relate to my character? Simply put, I do not see children as the center of my life. They play an important part of it, as do my parents, but my life is squarely centered on myself. This will sound horrendous to anyone close to the American model of fatherhood, to be sure. In my mind, it is the only way through life. The whole world, including the children, is in my mind. It is inseparable from it regardless of the fact that I am fully aware of the fact that the whole world exists outside of me. My death will not obliterate it, that is. In terms of my consciousness, everything is between my ears. And everything is the word. This is why I have to put myself at the center of everything because it cannot make any sense to me without myself at its center. Mind you, this has nothing to do with egoism in any of its forms. It has to do with the nature of the mind, at least as I see it.

Having said all this, much of what you say about me as a father has to do not with my character, but with circumstances I have faced. Most important, I moved across the Atlantic so many times. Each intercontinental move brought in its wake tectonic shifts in my relationship with my children. This is where my ruminations about extended family or clan a century ago make some sense. The way my ancestors lived in Istria and the neighboring islands for centuries precluded such tectonic shifts. For better or worse, everyone was close together. This was not always such a great thing, but there were few choices. Returning to you and your half-brother and sister, much of the misery between us has to do with crossing the Atlantic one more time. In your case, I wanted you with me, but your mother did not agree. In the case of your half-brother and sister, such a possibility did not exist from the start. Their mother crossed the Atlantic, and that was that.

To conclude, both character and circumstance should be taken into account when you think of fatherhood. And circumstance is pretty important in this context. By comparison with my ancestors, I have been tossed about all over the place for much of my life. For better or worse, this was not the case with them. If they moved, this was across a narrow stretch of the Adriatic. The other side was always within sight. On my father’s side, his great-grandfather and great-grandmother were from the island of Cres, his grandfather and grandmother from Istria, his father from the island of Krk and his mother from Istria. You could connect all these places by a few hours on the smallest of boats. And the trip cost next to nothing. Keeping my character constant, the circumstance back then would surely make me a very different father in the eyes of my children.