I guess one could say I had a strange relationship with my dad. It wasn't your typical father/daughter relationship. I wasn't daddy's princess. My dad loved me. I know that. But for the most part I think I was a disappointment to him.
Dad was brought up in a different time. A time where if you had nothing nice to say, you didn't say anything at all. A time where fathers didn't discuss certain topics with their daughters because it wasn't proper. My dad wouldn't even tell me a dirty joke or anywhere around where I might hear it. That's just the way he was. It wasn't proper.
Dad was old fashioned. He didn't want my mom to work outside the home. She wanted to be home with us kids, so it worked for them. Dad went to war when he was just nineteen. He witnessed things no human should ever have to see. It changed him. He came back different. He never really talked about it but you could tell it was always there, bubbling just below the surface. You had to be careful how you woke him up from sleep. He always came up swinging.
I'm fairly certain my dad expected me to remain a virgin until my wedding night and in a perfect world maybe I would have. But as things worked out, I was not only not a virgin anymore, but I ended up pregnant right after high school. When I broke the news to my parents, my dad didn't speak to me for three solid months. I took that to mean he had nothing nice to say. I got pregnant again two years later, and still wasn't married. At least the second time I wasn't still living at home so I didn't have to see the disappointment on his face everyday. He hated that I had two kids and still wasn't married. He hated that I had to go to work to support those kids instead of being home with them where I belonged. Truthfully I think he hated everything about my life choices.
My dad and I joked around about trivial stuff but I can't ever remember having a serious conversation until I was in my early thirties. We play fought, bickered and joked around but all the serious stuff I took to Mom. The first time I can actually remember my dad telling me he was proud of me was the day I got married the first time. Proud of me? For what? Finally landing a husband?
Dad never let Mom fight her own battles. Don't get me wrong, I respect a man who stands up for his wife but I always thought Dad took it too far. Dad's philosophy was Mom may not always be right but she's Mom, therefore, she's always right. If Mom and I got into any sort of argument and she got upset, I could count on the obligatory phone call from Dad admonishing me for upsetting her and telling me it was time to apologize. This practice continued until my mid-thirties, until my present husband answered the phone and refused to let him speak to me. He got the point.
It wasn't until after my mom had passed away that my dad and I started to cultivate a more serious, grown up relationship. I cherished it. It was something I had always dreamed of. We started talking about adult things. He still wouldn't tell dirty jokes around me but I could deal with that. I had the father I had always dreamed of. A father I could talk to, relate to. Too bad it didn't last. We started to drift apart when he moved away and we talked less and less after that. In person he would talk to me for hours but Dad always hated talking on the phone. Even talking to me was no exception so our conversations, when we had them, were only for about twenty minutes at a time. Not much time to really talk about anything. Then he got sick and started to forget things, like where he left his phone, or the password to his laptop. Months would pass and I wouldn't hear from him, until finally I heard from him that he had cancer. More months passed, I heard from him again, he would be gone by Christmas. Two months later my brother called.
Dad was gone.
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