Daddy

Fathers day is approaching. It's a holiday in which I always purchase a card for my mother. She has done a damn good job of being both parents- all of my life, which is why I find it nessicary to celebrate her on mothers day and fathers day, along with most other days.

I have very few memories of my father. Even fewer which are good. I do recall being very young, at the cabbin upnorth. Every time we went snowmobiling, I would fall asleep. I remember waking up wondering how long we had been out there. I remember him owning an auto parts store. I remember this giant pink elephant at the party store next to his store. I remember rarely seeing him. I remember not wanting to go.I remember going to my sixth grade daddy-daughter dance with my neighbors dad. I remember so many things, I wish I could forget. Most of all I remember wish for him to be all the things I saw other peoples daddys be. I wanted what they had. I wanted a father. I wanted to admire him. I wanted to know what it was like to be daddys little girl, and to have him light up with joy when he saw me. Instead I got nothing.

When someone mentions my father, most times I remember him throwing a picture frame across the living room of our home. I remember it shattering at my feet, and the fear I felt. I must of been about four. I remember him screaming and yelling, I have no idea what about. I remember my mother calling the cops, and him franticlly cleaning up the glass. I remember standing on a chair in the kitchen scaerd to death I'd slice my foot open on glass and die. I was a dramatic little girl. I remember him telling the cops there was no problem, and that he didn't know what they were called for. I remember my father being taken off to jail, and my grandmother taking my sister and I home with her.

When someone mentions my father, I feel hate. I feel anger. I feel pain. I feel abandoned, and left. Most of all I feel nothing for him. All my life people have told me that our time on earth is too short, and that I should make amends with him. They tell me I will regret the lack of relationship, once he is gone. Gone? He has always been GONE. I'm angry that people put this responsibility on me.Where has he been?

My mother remarried when I was six or seven. To a man I do not think fondly of. It was another relationship filled with hate and anger. Another man who hurt her...hurt us. I remember calling the cops on him more then once. I remember his name calling, his anger, his rage, his obsessive ways. I remember my father never being there to save me, to protect me, to love me. I think most of all I hate my father for never caring that this man too was hurting us. They were more alike then I'd like to remember. Both yelled a lot, both were angry, and loud. Both men treated my mother poorly. For that they were nothing to me.

After my mothers second divorce, I was left wondering what a marriage was supposed to be? What was a real father? Would I have one? Would I ever know what to expect? I have never, and will never blame my mother for the choices that she made, the men she married, or the bullshit she delt with. I know that love is a powerful thing, and sometimes people turn into someone you never expected they could be. Instead I admire my mom. She always had the strength to see a way out, and to continue pushing on for us kids.

I have very few memories of my father. And from the few things I remember, most of all I remember how much I disliked him. A major part of him not being in my life had to do with the choices he made, and the way he made his children a convience. But I too can take some of the blame. I never wanted to be around him. I never wanted to see him. I would refuse visits the seldom times he offered. He was very strict. His stern voice put fear in my veins. He was always angry, and he always spoke poorly of my mother. I think that is what I hated most. Every time we got into the car to go with him, conversations started with things like "Your mother this..your mother that..." In the first little while following his divorce, I recall him always telling us that our mother chose this...that it was her fault he wasn't around all the time...that we weren't a family. When my mother remarried, I remember him badgering us about the new man. Did we call him dad? What was he like? I recall once slipping up and calling the other man "dad" to my father. Hell had nothing on the words and anger that filled his truck that day. I remember questioning how he could be so angry over this? He was never around. He rarely called. Everything in his life at this time revolved around passing girlfriends, his business and hunting. We were merely baggage to him, and he hated to take his baggage anywhere.

My father is not in my life, and for the most part, I have come to accept what has been a fatherless childhood. I know that it has changed me, and shaped me into who I am today. But I also know that because he has never loved me, never been there for me, never cared, I am constantly trying to fill a void that will never be filled. There is this tiny piece of my heart that wishes I could get back the years he carelessly threw away. I know that it has stopped bleeding and scabbed over. I know that one day that whole will be a scar. I am okay with that. I think that scars are just reminders of where we have been and what we have conqured.

As fathers day approaches, I want to send a huge shout out to all the amazing fathers in this world. To often we hear of children who never see their dads, Of fathers who just left and never looked back, of men who forget their children exist. I admire the fathers in the world who do their damndest to be around, and be a positive, supportive influance on their children. Every little girl deserves to have that example of what an amazing man is like, and every little boy needs his daddy to show him what being a man is all about. So if your a father, never forget that what you do today shapes who your children are tomorrow, and never let a single day go by without knowing that you are needed, and loved.

Happy Fathers Day in advance to all you amazing daddys and to all the mothers who play the role of both parents.


    AA