When he was the age I am right now, my dad was screwing around on my mom.
Look. I know we weren’t the most awesome of kids. It was just me and my sister, and god knows how much she would drive me up the wall. Two girls who didn’t enjoy roughhousing. And then there’s my mom, a strong woman with a strong attitude, who actually expected my dad to work and then come home to be a respectable father.
That’s a lot to put on the plate of a 27 year old.
Looking at my life right now, in fact, I certainly don’t think I could handle being in the midst of raising two daughters. Hell, at this point, child number three (a boy) would be on the way and delivered in just a couple of weeks, if we’re following proper timelines. Married at age 20, and seven years later, three kids. I know that I shudder at the thought. But then again, I kept my legs closed.
Oh Daddy please,
take me with you
where you going
Oh Daddy please,
come find the time,
come watch us growing
Oh Daddy please,
don’t leave there’s so
much that we want to
know before you go
I’m in need of someone
to tie my shoe,
or take hold of my hand
when I become afraid
And whose footsteps
will I follow into,
Daddy please,
don’t run away
Really, unlike a lot of people out there who have issues with their deadbeat fathers, I don’t take it so hard. My parents divorced when I was eight and my dad began a new life on the east coast by the time I turned ten. My father’s personality never sparkled, and so I didn’t really miss it. In fact, even at that young age, he had a way of pissing me off to the point that I kept my emotional distance. Somehow, I knew he wasn’t into being a dad. So instead, my mom became both mother and father to us kids. She succeeded.
I don’t know for certain that I ever wanted for an interactive dad in my life. I knew that I didn’t want my dad in particular to be interactive in my life; he was a drinker and mild drug user, had never been around for any of my accomplishments, and couldn’t even comprehend that I was a growing woman instead of some blind, daddy-worshipping child. It worked out for the best that he only came to visit once a year. My mom only let out minimal information about the negative things she knew about him. We pretty much filled in the rest of the blanks ourselves.
One day, it hit me that I had actually missed out on something. I had been raised to be independent and strong-willed, never looking for someone to lean on or to hold my hand. Yet when a co-worker made a comment once: “I don’t understand why people carry on and on about not having their dad in their lives. I mean, get over it,” I suddenly took this very personally. Perhaps it was because her parents were still married and because she had a very strong family unit of her own. Maybe it’s because I felt it belittled the effort that my mom had flushed to churn out three kids who were well-adjusted, all by herself. Or maybe I really did have some sort of pent-up anger about having to go through my life without a dad.
Father of mine
Tell me where did you go
You had the world inside your hand
But you did not seem to know
Father of mine
Tell me what do you see
When you look back at your wasted life
And you don’t see me
I was ten years old
Doing all that I could
It wasn’t easy for me
To be a scared white boy
In a black neighborhood
Sometimes you would send me a birthday card
With a five dollar bill
I never understood you then
And I guess I never will
Daddy gave me a name
My dad he gave me a name
Then he walked away
I realize now that it’s more than that; I have a father who visits me twice a year, pretends to be daddy, and then leaves for fifty more weeks of not having to deal with the burden of us kids. I would hear these songs on the radio, on CDs that I purchased, and while I hadn’t been angry about it before, I was certainly becoming angry about it now. I didn’t even realize how much I had missed out on. I looked at other people’s bitterness and realized that I, too, had a right to be bitter. For crying out loud, I had a dad whose telephone conversations consisted of all the goings-on in his life; when it came our turns to talk about ourselves, his responses had nothing to do with what we were saying. It was all a farce, a dance, so that he could come off smelling like a rose by playing dad every so often.
But while I got very angry about these things and vented most of my emotions by flooding them with like-minded music, I never did anything about them. When my dad came to visit, I coddled him for the two weeks. I never once said a word about how his absence affected me. He was never confronted and as far as he’s concerned, he’s loved and his efforts were appreciated. I haven’t said “I love you” to him in well over ten years, and it’s clear that he noticed that at one point and stopped saying it to me. Beyond that, we have never had a serious discussion about our relationship. For never bringing it up, he’s far more intelligent than I ever gave him credit.
Now I’m 27. I went for years without anger. I spent a few more years discovering what I felt I had missed, and I was riled and grieved accordingly. Nowadays, however, it all seems to have faded. Perhaps it’s because I see what it’s like to be this age and I understand why things didn’t turn out for the dream picture of our family. While I do feel that’s most definitely a cop-out and likely not true at all, I think the real reason why I softened is because I had a dad: my mom. I didn’t miss out on anything, at least nothing that my mom didn’t do her damndest to provide.
And after spending more time with my dad’s siblings, I also know a lot more about his upbringing.
Maybe someday
When I look back I’ll be able to say
You didn’t mean to be cruel
Somebody hurt you too
Perhaps my former co-worker was right and he just needed to “get over” all of that.
Go ahead and psychoanalyze that,
–gloomchen
