Father's Day

I must admit, Father's Day is sort of a tricky time for me. It's not exactly hard, it not exactly easy, but it's rather confusing at times.

So, whew, here's a bit of transparency. Growing up, my dad, was sort of in my life, sort of out of my life. Out of respect for him and our history, I will not disclose the details. But I will say this, I really enjoyed my childhood but I craved the desire to experience what being a "daddy's girl" felt like. I did not have that. I can't explain my dad's side of the story because I don't know it, he never told me. But I was an observant and intuitive child, so I "saw" a lot and as I continued to get older, I started putting together the pieces of the puzzle. 

I want to fast forward for the sake of word count and say, I was 21 when I made a conscious decision not to be angry. At the time, I was dating my now husband and intuitively, I think I knew that being angry with my dad would not help my relationship with my husband. I never really planned to have children but I knew if I were to have any, I would like them to know my dad but not in the way I knew him. I wanted to foster a "new" relationship for them, a relationship void of baggage.

I always refrained from sharing a lot about my past with my dad because I did not want to portray him in a negative light. Also, the era in which he is from, "sweeping things under the rug", I hate to say, was a common practice. But today, yes, my dad and I have conversations on the phone, we've taken each other out to eat, we laugh together, he has a relationship with my husband and my children, and we definitely see each other on holidays and birthdays. I can appreciate more now as an adult what my dad deposited into me which is my love of writing, incense and art. I know classical as well as contemporary jazz and can name drop with the best of them because of him. Since that day that I made a conscious decision not to be angry with him, these are the things that I choose to focus on. 

But every time I walk in a store and I try to pick out a Father's Day card because I know my dad likes to keep those, I struggle because nothing applies. He never taught me how to ride a bike, or attend assemblies at my school, or talk with me about boys or teach me how to fix a flat tire. I promise I don't say this to bash him, I just struggle sometimes because that was not our history. And those are the times I wish they made cards for us in between kind of folks who never experienced that stuff. Some years I can just roll with it and other times, it just hurts. I wish I could have made this a warm and fuzzy blog entry, but it's just not. These are my honest feelings. Sometimes, I feel like my love for my dad is even deeper than I thought because it's the constant work I am doing on myself to understand our relationship.  

This Father's Day was just one of those days... thanks for baring with me.