Unlovable

You must be taught to be unlovable
And we have mastered the lesson.
Our fathers, former students, have become the teachers,
Through unintended lesson plans with the “I’s” of illigitimacy and insecurity dotted.

We are very intimate with childish games.
They jump in and out of our lives like a game of Double Dutch
And we are unable to dodge the sting of Their absence.
Our birthdays share the relevance of Wednesdays.
We ingest our sadness like cake and ice cream
And allow it to eat us from the inside out.
We bring our insecurity blanket for show-and-tell that keeps us warm,
Far into adulthood
and becomes a hand-me-down for our children.
Shame is our second-skin.
We wear it to graduations, football games, and dances.

We must be taught to be unlovable
and we have mastered the lesson
That 2+1 does not always equal 3 when a child is born.
That sometimes we grow up to feel like 1/2 a man
And a fraction of a woman.
We multiply,
Carry the remainder into every relationship
Without factoring our division into the equation.
We then become the teachers
Because we have mastered the lesson so well.

Watching Your Parents Argue

I was alone but sounds and words swirled inside of my room, as if they were aromas from our neighbor’s cooking. Iraq and Iran had converged between the pinkness of my walls. I had become accustomed to bullets disguised as voices shooting through the key hole and underneath my door. The mixture of my parents’ high pitched screams and baritone shouts created a cacophony that grabbed your breath and spirit, making it impossible to focus.

Being seven in a warring household, was like being in the middle of a terrible storm. I knew it would end, I just didn’t know when to expect the thunder and lightning, or how much damage would be left behind. There was no place to hide where the collision of insults and screams could not find me. My volume button on my television was no match for them. Pillows on my ears were as useless as earmuffs at a heavy metal concert. All you could do was wait….until you heard a door slam and suddenly there was peace amid the friction that hung heavy in the dark corners of the hallways, and festered in the dust on the window sills.

Staying For the Kids

Wake up. Go to Work. Come Home. Repeat
The kids didn’t fit in his schedule.
Wake up. Go to Work. Come Home. Repeat
You left. You went back. Repeat.
You stayed.
How much of it was because a broken home would make you feel
broken?

Pride

Can you think back to a moment when you were the most proud of your father?

“I think it was more the combination of stories and what I observed. When I would look at the picture of he and I standing at the University of Maryland where he finished when I was three years-old and then think about the fact that at that same time when he was finishing school, he was working three jobs. He was working at the National Institutes of Health, he was working at the Giant, and he was the manager of the apartment complex. So if somebody had a leaky faucet or he had to throw coal in the furnace. That was his job at 2 am. That was the hard work ethic and the attitude of I am going to do what it takes.”

What are you most proud of?

Cancer

There’s no pretending you didn’t hear the word. It makes itself known. It doesn’t wait for you to introduce it to friends and family. It takes the lead. It lures dreams of grandchildren to the edge of the plank, and pushes them off with no remorse. It shatters spirits and terrorizes stability. It crouches like a tiger, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Last week, I watched the syllables drip out of my father’s mouth. They did not evaporate into thin air. They lingered like the smell of burnt popcorn. And I am left to brush elbows with a six-letter word, an unwelcome mistress in my father’s life.

Unconditional Love

My childhood has been steeped in my mother’s adages. In the fourth grade, I sat with my mother in our huge grey plymouth. On our way to the grocery store, she looked at me and said, “Never think you can change a man. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

When I was a freshmen in high school, my cousin had came over for a visit. We had just finished a conversation about dating and marriage and she was on her way home. My father walked her to the door and I followed directly behind him. My cousin walked out first, stepping down onto our front porch. My dad, using his hand to open the screen door, stopped with one foot on the porch and turned around. He looked at me, his brow wrinkled and furled, his eyes almost tearing into me, “Don’t you ever bring somebody in this house that doesn’t look like you! Do you hear me?” To this day, I can still remember the look in my father’s eyes and the tone of his voice.

Five years ago, I sat next to my father on the sofa. He was working his daily crossword, I was flipping through channels. Staring at the television, I asked him, “Dad, what would you say if I brought a man home from another race?” My dad turned and looked at me. His eyes were soft and there was no evidence of the permanent wrinkle between his eyes.

“All I care about is that you are happy. If you brought that man home, I would know that he was kind and generous and that he treated you like a million dollars. Just make sure that the two of you are compatible and that he makes you happy. That’s all I care about.”

And with that, he turned back around and continued his crossword puzzle, as if the conversation had never existed. I sat there, smiling, and with my own personal lesson about a father’s unconditional love. That old man learned a new trick, even if it took him close to sixty years to do it.

Mass

I spent the night with my parents, something I haven’t done in years, despite living in the same city. I showed up, unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon. My mom, peaking through the picture window, had the front door open before I even cut my car off.

After some trouble swallowing even the softest of foods, she called me last week to tell me about the “abnormal mass” in his throat.

I walked in to see an older version of my dad. In just a few weeks, his body had shrunk to a 40 year-old version of his former self…twenty-five pounds lighter. His voice and sense of humor…exactly the same.

In between laughs, scrabble, dinner, and breakfast, we discussed my parents’ funeral wishes, in case that time ever creeps up on me. My laugh, my smile…did not match the sadness and agony I experienced during a conversation characterized by hymns, caskets, burial plots, ashes, and obituaries.

I returned home to a text from my dad, an incredible feat for a sixty-five year-old man:

“Thanks for your help, both yesterday and today. I love you. Let’s do it again some other time.”

The Tie Of Absence

He was so focused on the screen of his laptop that he didn’t even notice me in the doorway until he heard me laughing. Dressed in his slacks and dress shirt, he turned around with his tie in his hands and laughed with me.

“I know you are not watching a video on how to tie a tie?”

“I couldn’t remember how to tie a Windsor knot!”

We laughed together for a couple of seconds and then I left to allow him the chance to finish getting dressed for his company’s Christmas party. On the way downstairs, in mid-smile, my nose started to burn and I felt the redness in my eyes appear. This was one of the side-effects of growing up without a dad. And yet his father will never know how the internet stepped in to raise his son.

A Father’s Power – How You Treat Us Dictates Our Choices

I wish that fathers could understand the power they have in their hands. I wish they knew how their treatment of our mothers teaches us what to look for in an intimate relationship. The following are two excerpts from interviews. I asked them the question, “How do you think that watching your father’s treatment of your mom affected you?” Please leave your own comment and tell us how your father influenced your choices in men or women.

“I remember my boyfriend putting his hands around my neck for the first time. The one thing I kept hearing was that he didn’t love me if he abused me. But my father put his hands around my neck. My father talked down to me and told me I was stupid. And I knew my father loved me. There was no way for me distinguish how my boyfriend treated me from how my father treated me. I watched my father mistreat my mother and me. How was I to know that I should expect anything different?”

-Casey

“I was going to say that I went into relationships knowing that I was different. But I don’t think I did. I think I just kind of went into them without really thinking. I think that in my first relationship, I didn’t really expect much from guys. I kind of saw whatever they were going to give me and just took whatever that was. As far as how much love they gave, how much consideration, or accountability, or honesty, I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t have a standard.”

-Joanie

Fourth of July

Every fourth of July, my brother and I ran to the car, crawled inside, and prepared ourselves for the annual trip to see the fireworks with my father. It was the only day of the year that we didn’t fight over the front seat. Any spot in the car, was just as good as the next.

We looked for a place to sit down on the field and instantly we forgot about the 45-minute search for parking or the quiet battle against the elbows, knees, and voices that belonged to the hundreds of people walking alongside us. Everything and everyone became a distant memory as we spread our blanket on the grass and awaited the first spark in the sky.

We sat there, mouths open, eyes matching. I don’t remember my dad saying a word as my brother and I talked about which one was the coolest, until a new color would invade the sky, becoming our new favorite.

It was the only time our household was at peace. It is my favorite memory of my father and my own little piece of happiness that I take out every fourth of July and wrap around myself.