Okay, OUCH. Just got done mowing the back forty and I have to say that was TEH SUXXORZ! Thigh high mutant ninja grass from hell, gigantic mole/gopher hills and corresponding holes and a liberal sprinkling o’dogshit that was not possible to spot and remove ahead of time. GACK. My yard blows chunks this year, I haven’t had time/money for a garden, it’s been raining way too much and Himself didn’t do the mowing he said he would. :rolleyes: At least the exercise felt kinda good–I was going to do a house clean but can’t seem to get up the gumption, especially since I’d have to box up a bunch of Himself’s stuff to do it right and I don’t wanna run the risk of being accused of messing with his belongings. Double :rolleyes: :rolleyes: I have way too much blackberry out there too, didn’t realize it was THAT bad. Dammit. I need a goat! Or three.
Paging beebs! Don’t make us go find you, young man!
Well. As to the OP. It would probably not be a gigantic surprise were I to disclose that I don’t really have a relationship with my dad. I’m the oldest of three girls and only my middle sister really has any contact with him and that’s just for the benefit of her kids. My father was a poster child for early '60’s style detached dads–his mom died when he was young and between then and when his dad remarried a widow with her own kids they had a housekeeper who would regularly fabricate bad behavior on my dad’s part such that he basically got a major beating most days of the week. This made him not only pretty free with his own hands but gave him an abiding distrust of women in general. My mom says he really only knows how to relate to women sexually and I think that’s a fair assessment. He started being serially unfaithful to my mom when I was about six or so, which totally broke her heart. The older we got and the more independent and the more we turned into women the further he withdrew and only interacted with us in a disciplinarian manner.
It hit me really hard when this happened, because as the oldest (with a three year gap between me and the next kid) I had been his favorite, especially since I was a total tomboy. He went from helping me build go-karts and rope swings to basically never speaking to me except to criticize. He also did way more hitting than I think is appropriate–eventually I called a halt to that by going berk when he came after me and kicking the shit out of him. We called it a draw at that point–I guess I was about fourteen or so. When I got pregnant he threw me out of the house at sixteen because he didn’t think it befitted his station in life to have a pregnant daughter, in spite of a classmate of mine whose father worked for the same company–when she ended up in the same condition they kept her with them, she had the baby and grandma babysat until she got through college and could manage on her own, just a big happy family. Me, I married my first husband in a hurry up wedding with a drunk JP officiating. Soon after my parents and sisters moved to the Bay Area so I’ve been pretty much on my own with no or minimal support system since then.
I made a promise to my dad a long time ago that any communication with me he initiated personally (he has this tendency to use his wife as a social secretary) I would answer–I’ve only had to respond maybe five times total in the last thirty years. I have to say that the moment when my indifference to my dad became outright antipathy came during a visit I and my second husband paid him and my step mom while they were living in Paris. My dad really likes the sauce but believes he’s not an alcoholic because he only drinks good wine–just three or more bottles a day. O–kay! Anyway, he drank a fair amount at lunch and refused to let anyone else drive back, and during the drive he merged over a lane straight into a motorcyclist. The guy was right next to my window and I screamed at my Dad to stop merging but he didn’t listen and next thing I knew the motorcyclist was bouncing off the road divider at about seventy miles an hour–and dad refused to stop. Because the French authorities weren’t kind to Americans drunk driving and hitting people, y’see, which would be inconvenient. I never did find out whether the motorcyclist died or not. When we got back to Paris my dad tried to get us to write up affidavits saying it wasn’t his fault in case somebody reported his license number. We left a day later and he never did get caught, which in his mind probably means he didn’t do it. :rolleyes:
Seriously, I would never have known what a real father was had my mom not finally dumped dad and subsequently took up with my stepfather when I was about eighteen. He was the sweetest, kindest, funniest, most loving person I think I’ve ever known. He and my mom were together for over twenty years and she swears they never had a single fight–and I totally believe that. He had a heart as big as all outdoors and he took us all in and loved us as though he’d fathered every one of us. He gave me away at my second wedding, not my bio-dad, who was the only one who didn’t understand why that was. He died of a brain tumor in October of 1998 and there hasn’t been a single day since that I haven’t thought of him and missed him. My mom has never recovered from his death, although a year or so ago she finally moved from the house they shared and finally started sleeping in a real bed again–she wouldn’t sleep in their mutual bed after he died and spent almost ten years sleeping on the couch.
So this Father’s Day, as always, it’s all about him–and man, do I wish I could talk to him right now… I’ve always felt he keeps an eye on us from the Summerland, where he’s just waiting for my mom to join him. Rest easy, Kent, we love you!
) We weren’t close growing up, mainly because I was the model for Calvin. It’s gotten better since I started acting like an adult. I tend to take after him, I kinda like that.
