Oh, boo hoo hoo. How many of my bloggy friends will post about how their dads deserve dog turds on Father’s Day? Well, I’m one of them, too. Here it is, looming over me like a pooey storm cloud.
I sent him a text message the other day, which is not an unusual thing for me to do. I said C’s girlfriend called and threatened me.
My dad still hasn’t replied to me about this, which is pretty indicative of his absenteeism.
A little walk down memory lane:
I have very few memories of him. I remember sobbing at the window, as he dragged my old piano out of the garage and hacked it to pieces with an ax. I have a Polaroid somewhere of me playing that dear old piano. I was 4.
I remember sitting on his lap, and him letting me steer his tow truck down the road, the hazard lights all turned on. I remember seeing his gun in the glovebox. He drove me to school a few times in that tow truck. In the winter, he would attach a big snowplow to it. Our last name was painted on the side of it in big curly-cue letters and his phone number. It was awesome arriving in that truck.
He likes to come into my life in waves now. Phone calls pick up frequency around his birthday, Christmas, Father’s Day. I’ll hear from him weekly, then it’ll slowly wane to a bi-monthly trickle, punctuated by passive-aggressive emails that I don’t call him enough.
I don’t. I just can’t. I’m sorry.
He is never there for me. And when I mean never, it’s never.
Although my parents were still married when I was young, he would come home only a few times a week. He would shower, pass out drunk and mumbling on the couch, pants in a heap on the floor. In the morning, he would step back info his pants, and disappear.
There was always a screaming match going on between mom and dad. I don’t blame him completely– it takes two to fight. It was always my mother who would fly down the stairs to confront my drunk, absent father. I would be awakened in the middle of the night to things crashing and loud voices. I would hide under the covers and shiver. I wanted my brother to comfort me, but I somehow knew that would be a bad idea. A few times, my mother would pack me (us?) into her car, drive me across town in pajamas, drop me off with my grandmother, then return to our home to continue the fight. I would go to school the next day, tired, with none of my work, missing books, weird mismatched outfit from my grandma’s house, and get yelled at by my teachers for being unprepared.
There were fights where things were thrown and broken. He would often throw handfuls of money at my mother, and she would scramble on her hands and knees to catch it, both of them screaming. It was horrible.
My mom would take me to the bar and send me in alone, looking for my dad. She would also have me call him at work. If she called, his workers must’ve been told not to put the call through. But when it was me, they would transfer the call. Then I would have to give the phone back over to mom. So they could scream at each other some more.
I was a pawn.
That went on until I was 11. One day I came home from school, and he was throwing his things in garbage bags in his truck. Divorce. I’m leaving.
He left with a new girlfriend. He never told me about her. When I asked him why some lady kept answering his phone, he lied and said it was a neighbor doing her laundry there, because her washing machine was broken. Perpetually broken. I believed him. Then I was introduced to her and they told me they were moving 2,000 miles away, to one of those states people retire to. I remember it so well, sitting at a Bennigan’s restaurant, pushing my fork around a bad teriyaki stir-fry. He had only left our house a few months before that. I was stunned. He was gone.
In the divorce agreement, I had to visit him once a year. It was awkward. I didn’t know this “dad” very well. I didn’t know his girlfriend at all. She made zero attempts to get to know me. Sometimes she would just clear our for the week, while I was there. “Visiting her family in Chicago.”
Anytime I needed something special– money for new shoes, marching band fees, braces for my teeth– it was up to me to ask my dad. My mother would sit on one side of me, while I was on the phone, hissing at what I should say or do. It was never right. I always made both of them mad.
Preparing for college was the worst. I had plenty of scholarships and financial aid, but both of them bickered over the shortfall, and nothing would get accomplished. I was 17 when I started college, and there was disagreement over whether I was entitled to any child support anymore. He has since gleefully shared with me how he got a nice refund from the Friend of the Court for overpayment. Again, I am just this stupid pawn in their lives.
I had to take on a huge amount of loans to go to school. Not because either of them were unable to kick in some money, it was because neither one of them could negotiate peacefully with each other. I am still paying the loans off, 15 years later. It wasn’t that I expected to be treated like a princess, but I was just this worthless pawn in their bitter hatred. He is quite wealthy in his retirement– several luxury cars, two (or more?) properties, land, boat, frivolous purchases. He flaunts it in front of my struggling face. And it hurts to have him brag in front of us. I think it sort of belittles us.
He chose to not have a relationship with his daughter. I remember the day I graduated from high school, he came into town and thought it would be a good time to tell me that he had gotten married…four years prior! I guess I wasn’t invited to the wedding…
Now it makes me uncomfortable that his wife wants my kids to call her “Grandma.” If she wanted to be a grandmother, maybe she should’ve embraced me as her step-daughter.
I told my dad all about the abuse when I was 18. He said nothing; the topic was swept under the rug. The next time he came to visit us in our hometown, however, he saw my brother and I separately for the first time. He continued to do that for years. It was his only way he could acknowledge that he believed me– he spared me from my abuser’s company.
I wanted to talk about it in my 20′s. Nothing.
I wanted to talk about it in my 30′s. This time, he said that I was “a stronger woman because of it.” I’m stronger because of the abuse I suffered?!
He came to visit when I had my second child. He held the baby once for a photo opp. But he wants to be called, “Grandpa.”
I told him about my concerns with the girlfriend’s children, when he came to visit. He promised to get involved. He didn’t. He agreed that the safety of the children was important, and he would sit down with my brother on his next visit to hometown…nine months away. He just doesn’t get it.
And here’s the thing:
He truly expects phone calls, visits, gifts. He expects me to call him “Daddy.” Yep, when he calls me, he gives me this big sing-song voice, “Hiiiiii, it’s yourrrr Daaaaaaa-dyyyyy!!” He expects to have my kids crawl all over him and know who he is, even though he’s only seen them twice. It breaks my heart– my five year old tells me he wants grandparents. He makes up stories about his extended family…that doesn’t exist…
My dad expects these loving, familial things, but he is incapable of having a healthy relationship.
Had he been a Daddy, he would be at the forefront of my healing, then and now. The-buck-stops-here, Commander-in-Chief. Instead, he brushes my pain and the present danger under the rug.
He has heard all of these things from me. He does nothing. There is no point in wasting my breath anymore.
Had he been a Daddy, I would have had more of a place in his life. He was a completely absent father. Then he left permanently. It was a choice to distance himself geographically– not a work obligation, or anything like that– he just “felt” like leaving. He told me, “My doctor said I shouldn’t be under so much stress, so I needed to leave. I needed to start over with a new life.” He chose that. I wasn’t important enough for him to stay close, or even get involved.
Had he been a Daddy, he would chosen to come home to his family at night, instead of going to the bar every night.
Had he been a Daddy, he would have had a place in my heart. I would have been able to trust him, and tell him, “Daddy, my brother is hurting me.”
Had he been a Daddy, he would have knit together a family from the start, one that had trust and respect. Where a big brother would never beat and rape his sister.
Had he been a Daddy, I wouldn’t feel so empty on Father’s Day. I would be able to honor him, and more importantly, my husband. Hank is an amazing Dad to our kids. Hank also struggles with Father’s Day. Seeing my kids bond with him and their love is so wonderfully bittersweet. He’s the hero today.
