I'd write more about playing the part of dad with my own kids, but there's no good way for me to do that without talking about their other mother. Perhaps by next year, I'll have figured out a way to tell those stories effectively, while still deliberately leaving so much out. The anecdote above doesn't require context. But if I string enough of them together, they'll open up conversations that I can't have, because I've resolved to do my best to speak as little as possible about their other mother publicly.
So instead, I'm going to just sort of ramble about growing up with my dad. I'm a self-motivated, unpaid blogger, so I think this will be okay, the rambliness. Like, I'm not going to upset any advertisers. I certainly won't feel like I've ripped anyone off. If you've ever wondered what child-me was like, wonder no more. These are my memories of my father, who is still alive, last I checked. We interact sometimes on Facebook, but we're not Friends, which I think is appropriate, since we're not friends, either. My niece set up a private group for blood relatives, and we're both in it. In the last ten years, we've probably had fewer than ten minutes of interaction of any kind.
When I was maybe seven years old or so, my dad and I went on a road trip. I don't remember much about it at all. I don't know why my mom or my older brother weren't there. I think we were probably in Wisconsin, but I'm not sure. I know we were in my dad's Chevy Cavalier station wagon. It was sort of light blue. I made him put the seats down in the back so I could lie down on them like it was a bed, just two front seats and a bed, flying down the highway. It was winter, and the landscape was bleak and sleepy.
I had a cassette with Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" on it, and I didn't want to listen to anything else. I made that poor man listen to this song and nothing else for six or eight hours while I warbled along, not knowing most of the words. I don't know how he felt about it at the time, or if he even remembers it now.
That's the only purely happy memory I have with my dad. It's happy because he permitted me to be myself for a few hours, a few hours in which my mom was not around to criticize either of us. Maybe he enjoyed seeing me be free, I don't know. Maybe he couldn't wait to get back to my mom, who would never have permitted me to listen to any song I liked while I laid on my back in a beat-up station wagon and sang along. Not for five minutes, never mind five or more hours.
From what I understand now, today, my dad is basically playing along with the fact of my gender. Family of mine that are around him more have said that they think he doesn't actually believe I'm a girl, but that I'm just doing all this for attention; that that's the way he is behaving. Which makes sense, since his media diet is just about entirely Fox News, I'm told. I wonder if he worries I'm a danger to anyone. I wonder whether he worries about the danger I'm in; I mean, I really wonder, because I don't think he does. What a tremendously sad thought.
I've read and heard elsewhere that long-term depression can have severe impact on memory. I can't remember where I've read or heard that, though, which I think is hilarious. Anyway, the point is that I'm not exaggerating when I say I remember almost nothing from before I was about 15. Instead of an endless stream of human joys and sorrows to pull from and reflect upon, I have something more like an edited 90-second reel, a trailer that barely makes sense. Some kind of art film that leaves viewers with a sense of disconnected sadness, but no real idea what was happening.
I have a not-purely-happy memory of going somewhere else alone with my dad, on a family vacation to the American Southwest. I was probably about 12. We'd gone to Four Corners and the Grand Canyon and such. One morning, my mom wanted us to all get up before dawn to watch the sunrise before breakfast. It was important to her, so it must therefore be important to us. But what was important to me was sleeping in, and reading more God Emperor of Dune when I woke up. She threatened that I'd get nothing to eat until dinner if I didn't get up, and I refused, so they all left and I stayed in bed. Eventually, I woke up, and I laid there reading until they returned. I felt a little bit grown up, but mostly I felt like a kid who'd finally gotten her way about something, anything. I read more of Hwi Noree's tale, and lost myself in her life, so preferable to mine, even with all the danger and intrigue hers had.
They returned eventually, and my mom went on and on about how I'd really missed out. My dad wanted to go see Pikes Peak, and I was bored of sitting in the hotel room by then, so I asked if I could go with him. My mom and my brother didn't want to go, so they stayed behind, but my mom warned my dad not to buy me anything to eat, and this is probably how I came best to understand the concept of foreshadowing.
We drove up to the summit, and went into the gift shop. I pointed out all the things I wanted or thought were interesting. He bought me a small stuffed animal ram with comically large horns made of corduroy. Just the horns; the rest was ordinary plush. He bought me a little bit of fudge that they made on-site. Thinking I was a terribly clever kid, I named my ram Horny; a joke I was barely old enough to get. I wanted my parents to roll their eyes and laugh about how smart I was to make such a grown-up pun. We drove back to the hotel, and I carried a happiness with me whose fragility I did not understand.
Once my mom learned that my dad had not only allowed me to eat, but had facilitated it, the rest of the day, at least, was ruined. Maybe it was the next several days, I don't know, I don't remember. I remember my mom screaming bloody murder at him for what he'd done. I remember him mumbling, looking at the floor, shuffling his feet. I remember being yelled at for naming my stuffed animal Horny. My clever joke was offensive, but what I didn't understand at the time was that it was really only offensive because my mom was mad that my dad hadn't obeyed her.
When I was in high school, my dad walked through the kitchen early one weekday morning. He was in briefs, and nothing else, which was just how he was in the mornings. He saw me sitting there on a stool at the island (it was more of a peninsula, actually), wrapped in heavy blankets, eating cereal, barely awake. He patted me on the head, and said, "you're kinda weird." Then he went to take his shower and get ready for work.
Much later, during the first block of eight or so years in which I did not speak to my parents, I was back in Michigan for a friend's wedding. My wife at the time, Dimple, sought a rapprochement between my parents and me. The nearest I could bring myself was to drive past their house, my childhood home. I saw my dad riding the lawnmower, staring vacantly into space as he ponderously whirlpooled around the yard. He'd come to some central point about three hours after he started, I estimated. Just like I used to. I missed cutting the grass, that chore I used to hate. He didn't see me. And I never stopped.
