baserinstincts

On Daddies

I blogged about my mom the day after mother’s day so it’s only fair I do the same for dear ol’ dad.

Daddy - My First Love

He was my first love.

I was crazy about my daddy when I was younger; in love with him beyond belief. He was my hero, larger than life to me.

He was my favorite.

I liked him much more than I liked my mother.

He taught me how to fight, made me eat healthy, pushed me to get straight A’s.

We were the best of friends for eight long, happy years.

In essence, a father really is his daughter’s first lover. We learn much of what we come to understand about love from watching him. He sets an example for our future lovers and inevitably, we repeat and emulate the relationships we have with our fathers, good or bad, consciously or unconsciously, for years.

When my dad dumped my mom, in essence he dumped me too.

As it much as it hurts and as long as it take to get over a lost love, so it is when a girl is dumped by her father. This plays out of course in the myriad of fucked up relations with men that have taken place over my life (my ex fiancee was just like him. Freud would certainly have a field day with that).

The years I spent chasing and trying to get men that were unavailable or just didn’t want me was of course my way of trying to recapture my father.

If there are any father’s reading this, DO NOT let your daughter ever become used to not having you around. When you decide you want her back, it just may be too late

Hey Mom. Happy Father’s Day.

When my mom and dad split, my dad wrote and called in the beginning but over the years it kinda dropped off.

He wasn’t as bad as other dad’s I hear about in countless stories. He didn’t beat me or abuse me.

He ignored me.

He was simply not present. Physically or emotionally. And he was present financially only because he was forced by the courts. I learned not to count on his presence. I learned not to count on him for anything. To do so would only bring bitter disappointment.

What makes a father?

If you think of it solely in terms of biology, a portion of sperm, well then we all have one.

But I refuse to believe that’s all it takes.

It’s about being there for your children. My father wasn’t. I doubt he even really knows me as a person or anything about the woman I’ve become. Maybe he doesn’t want to know because I became this woman largely without him.

He couldn’t tell you my favorite color, what I like to eat, what I do for a living. I haven’t even laid eyes on him in several years. The last time I spoke to him, he was asking me for money.

It sucks. How do you go from being best friends to painfully obligatory phonecalls on father’s day, birthdays, and major holidays?  We should have a better relationship. I want us to. But there’s miles and miles and years and years of bullshit between us that we can’t seem to cut through.

It’s tiring.

And so I keep my distance.

And I’m certainly not going to try harder than he is.

Maybe one day we’ll make things right.

In the meantime, mommy and grandma are the ones who get the cards on Father’s Day.

Mommy Issues

“Well one thing’s for sure,” he said chuckling through his tears. “You certainly inherited the battle axe gene”.

I laughed too and with that we made up again.

It was probably our biggest fight ever.

I threatened to leave him.

Again.

I changed my mind in the end.

Again.

I really laid into him that night. I don’t ever remember screaming so loud and so long at a person ever before in my life.

It was official.

I’d turned into my mother.

Turning into my mother was something I swore I wouldn’t do since as long as I can remember. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mommy. I love her like cooked food. But, after careful observation of her less desireable traits and her track record when it comes to relationships I felt it would behoove me to try not to be like her.

But in spite of that very concious effort, I ended up with more of her traits than I care to admit.

For instance, I pride myself on being a cool and collected person. One whose feathers are not so easily ruffled. One who gets her point across without yelling (I really hate to be yelled at) and arguing (and I hate to argue). One who does not resort to physicality to express her frustration. One who communicates her anger in a constructive way. And for the most part I am all of these things.

But catch me on the wrong day (the wrong day is usually a day where I am experiencing the dangerous combination of fatigue and prolonged stress mixed with hormonal fluctuations) and mommy dearest rears her ugly heard.

My sister and I have joked that both our mother and grandmother are “battle axes”. I made that observation to my (now ex) boyfriend a couple of times, and according to him the apple doesn’t fall far.

I yell. Especially when I’m frustated and feel like I’m not being listened to (which really makes no sense because it’s a surefire way to not get yourself heard). I sometimes use sarcasm to say what I want to say instead of just saying it. I employ the silent treatment. I sit on my feeligs way too long until they build up into something bigger and more volatile than they need to be. And although I pretty much never start arguments, I don’t always wave the white flag either.

Oh, and ocsasionally I hit (hey, find me a Caribbean woman who doesn’t). More out of frustration than out of an actual desire to inflict pain.

These are all the things I observed about my mother that I swore would not end up as part of my personality. But I guess you can’t really help it much.

The battle axe gene certainly seems to be a dominant one.

Daddy Issues

So I’m reading Best Sex Writing 2008 edited by the fab Rachel Kramer Bussel (awesome book by the way, check out the blog here).

I was reading the piece entitled “Double Your Panic” in which the narrator (Kevin Keck) is anxious about the impending arrival of his twin girls given the obsession he harbored for twins in his youth.

The piece had me laughing out loud at times but the real priceless bit was at the end when his wife tries to reassure him saying “It’s usually the girls with daddy issues who turn out a little slutty.”

Eureka!

That explains a whole hell of a lot!

Now I’m not saying I’m a slut, you understand.

I’m just saying that there are any number of mistakes events in my sexual history that probably wouldn’t exist had my father stuck around longer (it would certainly help to explain why for years I insisted on chasing men who obviously didn’t want me).

I feel like calling him up and yelling “THANKS A LOT DAD!” into the receiver.