Daddy Issues

Like everyone, my dad has good and bad points. Unfortunately, the bad, combined with the bad points of his second wife, necessitated my distancing myself from him over 10 years ago. What people who have never had to do this don't understand is that I love my dad and admire his good points. Everyone wants everything to be black and white, but it's not like that. Even though I don't talk to him anymore, I'm proud to be his daughter. On the other hand, there were a lot of hard times. In my life, I have tried to keep the good and discard the bad. Here are a few things my dad taught me:

If you take a soda out of the fridge, put one back in.

Wash the dishes with the least grease on them first.

Take your time when you buy something. Research. Get exactly what you want. My dad was an airline pilot. Oftentimes he would buy our birthday and Christmas presents in airport gift shops. It fascinates me how he would see something during a trip, just flying through, and make sure he went back to get it the next time he was there, weeks or months later. And this was all still done in advance.

Write thank you letters.

When you write thank you letters, make sure you include your stepmom. Or else.

Guilt your children. Everything is their fault. Preferably, cry in front of them about how miserable they are making you and rant a lot.

Drama means love.

Follow fashion until you become neurotic.

Don't wear pink if you are a boy. Also if you're a boy and you're too short, do something about it. Both of these really happened to my brother. My dad actually took him to the doctor to see if something could be done about his height. This doesn't cause any type of complex...not at all...

If somebody gives you something, you'd better fucking wear it and/or display it in your house.

Make your sandwiches like Elvis. My dad was a big Elvis fan (partially because it was trendy to be so when he was a young man), and he also looks like Elvis - the handsome Elvis. There is a photo of him and my mom together in an officer's club during the Vietnam War and they both look like movie stars. Many a time my dad and I would make sandwiches together in the style of Elvis: peanut butter and slices of banana. Or, as an alternative, peanut butter and marshmallow creme. Many of my childhood happy memories revolve around peanut butter. My grandmother, who did not cook, also used to feed us a tasty peanut butter-inspired treat: a bowl filled with peanut butter and honey, a piece of bread, and a knife. Was I overweight as a child? Yes. Was that even more painful given my father's predilection for criticism, judgement and perfection? Yes. I was the one that ate too much while my brother ate too little. It took me a painfully long time to wean myself of these culinary temptations and I wouldn't say I'll ever be done so much as recovering in the same way alcoholics are recovering.

Post Edit: I didn't realize until after I published this that today is my dad's birthday.

I really try to get it but then you don't get it

I'm reading a book in a genre that's been cropping up lately: advice to white people. I love it. I'm all for it. I make part of my living supporting people of color. And have been of that mindset basically since I was old enough to have coherent thought. I've always been a full-on advocate of diversity and cultural competence and my life is a testament to that. So it comes as such a let-down to me when as much as I wish to play with others, they don't wish to play with me. My greatest dream is of unity, not separation. Always has been. But there are a lot of groups out there that just want white people to get them, and do not care about white people at all. Ok, I get it. There has been a lot of suffering. And justice has still not been done. The solution, though, surely cannot be charting a course that still leads to divisiveness and exclusivity versus inclusivity (which I think is a word I just made up).

So I'm reading this book, and I'm on board with every word, until about 75% of the way through I get to this sentence, which I paraphrase here: "White people don't know anything about having a single parent."

WHAT.THE.FUCK.

And this is where I'm done. I put the book down. I did not finish it. Really? You don't care about me at all. You couldn't conceive to make one simple change to that sentence which would illustrate that you do not generalize white people the way you are tired of white people generalizing YOU. All you had to do was add the word "some." Because how could you really think that a white person knows nothing about the trauma and hardship of having a single parent? It's just such a ridiculously unfair statement and with it you alienated what could be a hugely supportive portion of the population. It was, in fact, a very hostile statement. And I do not argue with your right to feel hostile - but don't be ignorant.

I'm a white person with a single parent. My childhood sucked. We were on welfare. My whole life has been at a disadvantage because I started it below the poverty line. How dare you say I don't get it. You don't get ME. And yet you expect me to go along with you.

So tired. So so tired.

The New Backlash

It's been long enough since the Me Too Movement started that the backlash is in full force. This backlash is often found in conjunction with the backlash against diversity, and comes primarily from white males. They are figuring out, for instance, that we white females do not like to be associated with them. There are some comedians out there, and I will not name them, that are not doing women any favors. And in this politically incorrect climate, it has become okay (again? still?) to do such things as laugh about rape and complain about the attention women's issues are getting, thereby dismissing them as hyped up and irrelevant. How far we have NOT come.

This same angry bunch -- that is angry about us being angry -- usually combine their complaints with gripes about liberals, as you might expect. Recently, I heard this comment, which I paraphrase here: "I've never met an ageing hippie that wasn't stingy."

I've been chewing on this. Sure, I've run into some annoying ageing hippies. But I think I AM ONE. And here's what I think. Maybe someone else's "stingy" is my "poor." And maybe someone else's "stingy" is my "distrustful" and "disenchanted" because I've been disappointed so damn many times.

"There was a patient look on the old man's face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom to speak his own language or find companionship." ~ The Country of Pointed Firs. How it sometimes feels to be single! Then you find a person with whom you can speak. One may ask: Is it a lover? A friend? Someone of the same gender? The opposite? Someone close to your age or far older or younger? Perhaps you find this person and you speak the same language. Or perhaps you end up again with a feeling of isolation and inability to communicate - yet now you have someone with you while you are alone. It is a cycle which I would guess we all wish to end by the discovery of true companionship or total ease with oneself.

"In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit or recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong." - Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of Pointed Firs

Illustration from 1919 publication.

Title page of 1910 edition.

"There's more women likes to be loved than there is of those that loves." 

Mrs. Todd. The Country of Pointed Firs.

Illustration from the 1919 publication.

"...she had the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves and their houses belong entirely to a guest's pleasure - that charming surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one's own life that can never be forgotten. Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading...Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart." ~ The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett