Daddy Issues (Published Happily Here with the Blessing of my Dad)

When I watched my Dad walk someone else’s daughter partway down the aisle at her wedding,  it felt a bit like all of the scoops of ice cream from my childhood had fallen onto the dusty ground with an unceremonious splat.  Suddenly I was filled with a completely surprising emotion: jealousy.   Someone else was holding my single scoop of mint chocolate chip, and I was nine years old again, sitting amongst the congregants, holding an empty cone and feeling completely, unexpectedly bereft. This sadness sneaked up on me when I saw another young bride, not me, with her arm through my Dad’s arm on her wedding day, and this image crystallized how much my Dad and I both missed out on.

I feel compelled to say that I harbor absolutely no ill feelings toward my step sisters.  They are both incredibly lovely people.   It is a simple fact of circumstance that they both probably know my Dad better than I do.  They have both spent much more time with him.  He has greeted their prom dates at the door with intimidating, stoic handshakes.  He was there when they got their drivers licenses and received their acceptance letters from universities.  He should be part of their marriage celebrations, but he was not a part of mine. 

When my husband and I were married almost twelve years ago, I did not ask my father to participate in any way.  It did not seem appropriate at the time since back then he seemed like little more than an acquaintance to me.  (As a very young child, I refused to call him ‘Dad’.  I referred to him instead as “the boy with the beard.”  My grandmother laughed as if it were hilarious and cute, but it was neither.)  My mother’s name was on our wedding invitation, and I wanted her to walk me down the aisle.  (In the end her father did the honors, and that felt completely right and true to both of us.)

I didn’t give much thought to my father’s feelings twelve years ago.  There may have even been a small part of me that wanted to punish him for being absent during a lot of my childhood.  Thinking about it now, I expect that watching someone else walk his only daughter down the aisle must have felt a bit like having a sandbag dropped in his lap rendering him powerless; filling him with grief.  We didn’t get things right when I was a kid.  It is too late for me to build childhood memories with my Daddy, but it is not too late for me to love and be loved by my Dad.

Of course you know that I am a big girl.  I am completely fine.  But on rare occasions these emotions just ambush me and catch me completely by surprise.  This morning I was driving my youngest daughter to preschool when I realized that I was weeping irrepressibly.  I noticed ironically, as tears streamed determinedly down my face, that Christina Aguilera was crooning “Who-oh-oh!  I just want to feel this moment…” on my car’s speakers.  And there I sat, with a chirpy, happy three year old in the backseat, feeling the moment like nobody’s business.

I know that my Dad has regrets too, and we do not speak about our feelings aloud to each other because we don’t know what to say.  The words are swollen and sticky.  Some of them have sharp edges, and we are afraid they may hurt coming out.  We are afraid that we might not be able to pick up the broken pieces of ourselves after such a conversation.  We know that neither of us can change what has already been.

I have forgiven my Dad.  I have also forgiven his Dad, who was domineering and emotionally abusive to his sons and to my grandmother.  As I got older, I often wondered if my Dad assumed I’d be better off with an absent father than with an ever present and oppressive father like the one he had. (For the record my Dad is nothing like his father in that regard as far as I can tell.)  Still I have forgiven them both.  And I cannot turn back time.   I do not wish to turn back time or to try to erase the sadness.  In fact when the sadness visited me today, I invited it in.  And I sat with it.  The sadness used my hand to grab a pen and a small notebook, and we didn’t stop writing until the well ran dry.

My pen scribbled furiously across the pages of the little notebook I keep in my purse.  The pen scribbled and my eyes shed eager tears.  I felt full of grief and oh so alive all at once.  My other step sister is getting married next month.  Undoubtedly this impending occasion has brought my emotions to the surface, but it feels good to acknowledge that those feelings are there.  It feels good to acknowledge that I care, and that it is okay to not be completely fine.

Do you know what combats the sadness?

Feeling it intensely, and then letting it go.  Ignoring the sadness; keeping it tucked away, only allows it to bubble and ferment and permeate the happy places.  When it is tucked away, the sadness, disguised as anger, frustration, and fear, pokes its head up at nonsensical moments, and your kids may look at you and say, “What the heck, Mom?!”.  Sadness simply needs to be felt and then set free.  Simple things are often shockingly difficult, but today it all happened effortlessly for me.  I felt grieved and ecstatic all at once as I scribbled and cried and figuratively waved goodbye to my previously trapped sorrow.  Sometimes the sadness is hidden so deeply, you don’t even realize that it is there.  Your sadness will eventually capture your attention.  You may be driving or sitting at the Community Center waiting for your Zumba class to begin.  You may be vacuuming or thumping melons at the grocery store.  And you may be terrified, but you have to stop and feel it.  The world will not stop turning.

Do you know what brings healing and happiness between two people?

Finding common ground. 

It feels rapturous when my Dad and I discover the things we have in common.  It is true that we do not have a common history of sitting at the breakfast table telling knock knock jokes over bowls of cereal, but we do have shared stories and memories about my grandparents/his parents.  We were both slathered with love by my grandmother.  We were both aggravated and amused by my headstrong grandfather, and neither of us has to offer any background information when we launch into a story about the time when Papa loudly mispronounced the word ‘fajita’ when attempting to order lunch in mixed company or about all of the times my sweet grandmother grumbled under her breath when her husband showed his ass (figuratively, of course).  My Dad and I also have the same nose, the same exact taste in foods, and the same slightly fanatical appreciation for Elvis Presley.  We have newer memories birthed over glasses of wine and Pictionary challenges, and unabashed bird calls yelled at the top of our lungs on Sunset Beach.  My kids also have a Grandaddy, and a baggage-free relationship with the man who is my Dad, and that is the best thing about forgiveness and letting go.

I know that my Dad loves me and always has, but now I also know that I love him too, and saying it doesn’t feel awkward or false. 

My children gave me new eyes and new reasons to begin cultivating a new, grown up relationship with my Dad.  He was one of the only people on this earth who received a midnight call when my first daughter came ripping into the world, and when my new little family of three visited him and his family a few months later, a new book was opened.  All of us were united by our complete and utter infatuation with my little flat-headed, dimple-cheeked young’un.  Since then we have slowly been building.

Today I remembered that we are building atop tender soil, but we are building.

Keep building, and keep feeling.

And, in the words of Steve Perry: Don't Stop Believin'.

 

Love,

Meredith