I love my father. He is my protector. He is smarter and stronger and braver than any other daddy in the world and I worship him.
I remember being a little girl, playing with other kids in a lush back yard, surrounded by fir and pine. Looking back, I can see that I'm young enough that they don't really want to play with me, so they tell me that we're going to play house. I'm the baby. They have me lay down on a plastic webbed lounge chair, near the empty swingset that they're playing on. The swingset is one of those old metal ones, with the legs like two triangles at either end. There are supposed to be swings and a teeter totter on the set, but they've been removed.
The children clamber over the set, which hasn't been anchored into the ground, several of them perched on the top cross bar. As they move around the swingset moves with them, swaying from side to side, increasingly unsteady.
I'm watching them, content to be the baby, vaguely aware that I've been pawned off, but too young to be anything but pleased with whatever crumbs of interaction they'll give me. Suddenly, the set begins to sway even more, then to tip over. The children start to jump off, making the tip worse.
One of the children, the one who told me to play I was the baby, yells at me, "Run, baby, run!" I think it's part of the game, so I wave my arms and legs like a baby would, and make gurgling noises. I'm very proud of myself for playing so well, as I watch the swingset fall toward me.
The next thing I remember is sitting in the car with my parents. My father is upset, driving very fast and talking to my mother in an angry tone of voice, although I can tell he isn't angry with her. Mommy is holding something warm and wet to my head. I'm curious and want to see what it is, so I try to pull her hand down. She resists, telling me to leave it alone. Peeved, I wait until she's focused on my father again, forgetting to pay attention to me. I pull her hand down quickly, before she can react.
It's a washcloth, and there's blood on it, my blood. The sight panics me. I begin to fight and cry.
There's another blank spot there, then I'm in a room with strangers. I'm lying on my back, unable to move. There is a bright light shining directly over me, hurting my eyes. I'm terrified, fighting and screaming as hard as I can. I want my father. If he was only here everything would be OK.
And then, he is there. He comes to the head of the table I'm lying on, and cradles my head in his arms. I immediately relax. Daddy is here. I'm safe. Everything is all right.
I heard the story from my parent's point of view many years later. Yes, the set did hit me, splitting open my scalp. They drove me to the hospital, where it was determined I needed stitches. They were barred from the room where I was being treated, but could hear me screaming. Dad pushed his way into the room, telling the nurse who tried to stop him, "That's my daughter in there. Get out of my way." The doctor just smiled, and gestured to everyone to let Dad in. I was in a child's strait jacket. As soon as I saw Dad, though, I calmed down. They were able to stitch me up with no further trouble.
I knew, if Daddy was there, I was safe.
*****************************
I hate my father. He is the bogieman standing beside my bed in the middle of the night, screaming at me. He is a monster who terrifies me, destroying everything I love.
I remember being a little girl, huddled on our living room couch. There is a wide archway to my left. It leads to our kitchen, warm and yellow. Daddy is angry. My brother and I cling to each other in a corner of the couch, both too afraid to move. My parents are in the kitchen. Daddy is yelling at Mommy. He has his hand wrapped around her hair, and he is dragging her around the brightly painted kitchen. She's hunched over, both her hands clutching at her hair in a vain attempt to keep it from hurting so much. She's crying, pleading with him to stop hurting her.
Grandma gave me a pretty little salt and pepper shaker set a little while before. They're tiny pitchers, china, painted with roses and gold edging. I love them, because they came from Grandma and represent the cleanliness and peace of her house. I already know I want my house when I grow up to be nice and peaceful like Grandma's. Daddy picks them up, and hurls them at the wall. I sit on the sofa and cry silently, too afraid to make any noise.
Later I try to pick up the pieces, hoping I can glue them back together. I'm already familiar with the need to fix broken things. Mommy tries to help me. She gives me an envelope to put the pieces in. I place them in there, even though I know that the pieces are too small to put back together. The china shattered, and thin slivers are buried in the gaps between the floor and the baseboard, out of reach of even my tiny fingers. I pretend that I still think they can be fixed, though, and tell Mommy that it's OK.
*****************************
"There was a little girl and she had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid."
My father is bipolar. He is intelligent, literate, cultured. He taught me to appreciate fine art and great music. He is a great outdoorsman, taking us on hikes and camping trips. I learned to love the beauty of the natural world from him.
He is also, during his frequent bad times, dangerous, erratic, moody and unpredictable. Through fear of him I learned to be hypervigilant, to let no-one behind me, to fear men.
All I ever really wanted was for the bad daddy to go away, and the good daddy to stay. I never could learn how to make that happen. I tried for years to make him love me, to be good enough to finally please him. In my mid-twenties I finally gave up and spent years mourning the relationship I'd never have with him.
And then I found out he was in the hospital for emergency open-heart surgery.
*****************************
My brother calls late one afternoon. Dad is in the hospital. He's been feeling sick to his stomach and dizzy while out walking. He finally went to a doctor about it. The initial tests were inconclusive, so they did more tests, also ambiguous. The doctor decided to refer Dad to the local hospital's heart center for a final decision. The doctors there did another test, looked at the results, and immediately admitted him. Now he's scheduled to have a sextuple bypass tomorrow.
I'm in shock. I don't know how I feel or what to think.
So many things are swirling through my head. I could lose my father. Probably not. This isn't exactly experimental surgery, they've been doing it for decades. It's still major surgery, though. Stuff happens; in spite of everything people still die sometimes.
I can call Dad tomorrow after his surgery.
Maybe I'll know what to say to him by then.
I've got good genetics. All of my grandparents were in their late 80's when they died. Dad's always sworn he was going to live to be 100. I never seriously considered he might not.
It's several hours before the shock starts to wear off. Late that evening I start crying, just a little; I sit at the computer, staring at somebody's blog, sniffling slightly while a trickle of tears runs down my cheeks.
Luckily, I'm married to a man who's very good at emotions. He invites me to sit beside him on the couch and snuggle a bit. I wind up sobbing onto his chest until he's soaked.
Some feeling is growing in my chest, welling up from where I'd buried it decades ago. Every tear gives it further strength and definition, until I can haul it into the light and identify it.
"I only ever wanted him to love me," I sob to my husband, and it's like iron bands around my heart breaking. I draw a breath and it's like walking out of an overly humid room into a dry and brisk spring day.
In the morning I get another call from my brother. Dad's surgery has been delayed another day. Things are looking good, though. His doctors consider him an excellent candidate.
Another day. My brother calls during dinner. Dad is out of surgery and in ICU, hopefully not for long. Everything went very well. He's good for at least another 20 years, the doctors say.
Over the last few years I've been consciously working on forgiving Dad. I don't want to say, "That's OK, it doesn't matter, everything's hunky-dory again!" I do, however, want to let go of the anger, see him as just a person and not the bogieman from my childhood. I want to be free of the fear, free of the hate.
Later that evening I call the number my brother gave me. I'm not afraid or stressed. I actually feel affection for my father as we talk, and when he starts complaining about the dangers involved in my youngest sister driving across the country to live with me I even laugh.
"I don't like this," he tells me, his voice more gruff than usual. "She's going to wind up dead in a ditch, raped, with her throat cut. That car of hers isn't up to the trip. It's going to break down halfway there and she's going to have to fly back home and she'll have to borrow money that she won't be able to pay back because she won't have a job."
Usually I'd be upset, angry that he has so little faith in the judgment of his children. When I decided to go back to college he told me I wasn't smart enough. The first year of my marriage he would ask me, every time he called, if my husband was beating me yet. He's done that to all of us, and it's hurt and angered every one of us. But right now, hearing his concerns, the illogic suddenly seems hilariously funny.
I laugh so long and hard I can almost hear him bristling in offense. "Dad," I tell him lovingly, "that is so you. You find the worst possible scenario and go right to worrying about that."
He gruffs at me, then goes back to discussing all the horrific dangers presented to a young and foolish girl traveling cross-country.
It's the first time I haven't seen this sort of thing as an attack on us, as just one more spoonful heaped on his pile of reasons stating why we're essentially unlovable.
It's one thing to know with my head that my father loves us, even if he's not capable of showing that in any normal way; it's another thing to convince my heart of that. Somehow, though, his illness has broken through my fear and that lonely child inside me has stopped feeling guilty.
I can finally see him as what he is; flawed, ill, but trying. Sorry for his past actions. Working to control his illness. My dad, without the burden of my expectations and pain. Human, like me.
I can forgive him. I can let go of the past.
I can love him again.
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