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To all those father’s out there happy you day. This was a holiday that I always felt left out on. I had no father. Oh, I had one, of course. None of those Midi-chlorian moments or stars in the East. I am neither that good, nor that bad, nor quite that weird. But my parents were divorced by the time I was six months old, so, I never knew my father.
I saw him twice, maybe three times in my entire life. The first was when he came to visit my mother when I was about five or six. He was much more interested in her than in me. It was a grown-up thing that I didn’t understand. My grandmother told the story for years that I played with his good ink pen and he took it back at the end of the visit. She knew how to hold onto a grudge and she hated my father. (No, I am not exaggerating. I was raised on horrible stories of my father. What my family failed to understand was that half of my genetics was my father’s, and hearing how evil and awful he was, ended up making me feel badly about myself. Go figure.) The second time was when my family was off making funeral arrangements for my mother. I was six that summer. He came to the neighbors that were babysitting me.
I’ll never forget how happy the neighbor was when she announced she had a surprise for me. She was smiling, then this man came in. This man I’d only seen once in my life. This stranger, who was tall and dark and no one I knew. Frankly, I was scared of him. Scared that he’d come to take me away. The neighbor didn’t understand that a father is not just someone who deposits some sperm and makes a baby. A father is someone who raises a child. The man that she called my father had not done that. I refer to him as my biological father, but in truth, in my heart, I have no man who has that honorable title.
The third and last time was at my mother’s funeral. I don’t remember that much. It was a time of great hysteria. I mean hysteria. Weeping, wailing, the whole old-testament emotional roller coaster. To say that my grandmother did not take my mother’s death well, is like calling the Titanic a boating accident. My male relatives saw the stranger away. They told him in no uncertain terms that there was no money to be had, and if he came back they would make him sorry. I believe they meant it, and apparently so did he.
He did try to write me some letters, but my grandmother either sent them back or destroyed them without telling me they had arrived. Years later she would apologize for that. She would make amends in the only way she knew how by giving me his social security and all the information she had on him. It took a great deal of soul searching for her to give me the information to find my father if I cared to look. I have some idea of how hard it was for her to admit that I had the right to look for him, if I chose. I didn’t choose.
I have no father, and I never needed one. My grandmother and I didn’t need a man around the house to tote and fetch and do the hard labor, that was my job as I got older. She raised me to be the man of the house because that’s what she needed. She was woman enough for any household. If we needed repairs beyond simple ones done, we hired it done. Though one memorable summer I did help my Uncle Toots (Elbert) roof the house. I follow orders really well, but he quickly learned that you don’t want me coming up with my own idea as to what to do with tools. I just don’t think that way. In fact, Toots is pretty much the only person in our family that has a true gift for tools and fixing stuff, that I’m aware of. It’s apparently not a common gene trait in our family.
I did pick an uncle when I was about 11 to give a father’s day card to, and my aunt promptly divorced him. The lesson was clear, there were to be no father’s in my life, not even borrowed ones.
Then I fell in love in college with a nice young man. To show you what flipped my switch at twenty in a serious way, here’s the list. He was working four jobs and keeping a higher GPA than I was. He read science fiction, and fantasy. He played Dungeons and Dragons. We were willing to admit all this to each other on a Christian campus where reading the stuff or playing the game could get you accused of being a Satanist. I’m not kidding about that. It was pretty frightening.
He was a hard worker, and very serious. I needed that at twenty. He also had the most beautiful shoulder length chestnut brown hair. It had a lovely wave to it, and looked fabulous when he swam under water. He also had the most lovely brown eyes with great lashes. I’ve always been swayed by good hair and eyes.
What I didn’t realize was that the hair was not a fashion statement. It was being a poor college student. The first chance he got to cut it, he did. His reasoning was that he couldn’t get a job after college with long hair. I would spend the next sixteen years begging him to grow his hair long again. He would start to grow it out only in the sixteenth year, when we were separated.
He was the first man in my life. The first man I ever shared a home with. I had no map for it, so I borrowed his. He had a father he loved and who had been there for him like a father is supposed to be. It would take me over a decade to realize that his map wasn’t working for me.
In my thirties, what I wanted in a man had changed. My job was very important to me and I needed a man who understood that. Strangely, Jon had cut his hair by the time we started dating even though he’d had it long most of the time we were friends. He started growing his hair out as soon as I requested it. He understood it was important to me. Jon and I both read science fiction, fantasy, and horror. That was still a must in a man for me. And yes, Jon has lovely eyes, though they are blue and very different from my ex-husbands. I don’t have a preference on coloring in a man, just pretty eyes, nice hair, and I like my men a little delicate in appearance. I also prefer men who are not too tall. If a man was over 5′ 9″ he had to have other sterling qualities to recommend him.
I’ve digressed, or maybe I haven’t. I never had a father. All my intimate relationships with men have been husbands. I have no other model for men. But Trinity, our daughter does. She has her father, and she has Daddy Jon. She truly does feel she has two fathers. She also has Three grandfathers. I had one who died when I was ten. Where I had no male role models she has many. Is it karma, or just ironic, that her childhood is so different from mine?
Trinity gave her father his gift early. I offered him a chance to have her on father’s day, but they had made plans, and she’s okay over here with us. Father’s day isn’t once a year it’s every day. Every moment that they help the kid with homework. (Thank God, both my husbands have been better at math than I am. Trin would have been so out of luck there.) Every day that they help with some problem, tuck them in, read a story, answer one of those hard questions. Father’s day, like mother’s day, is every day.
Trinity gave Jon his gift early because she couldn’t stand to wait. Very her mother’s daughter, I’m afraid. She made a ceramic bird feeder, because Jon, like me, loves to feed the birds in our yard. But it’s not just any ceramic bird feeder, it’s red and has a dragon crouching in the middle of it. How cool is that, and how much does she know her dad? For her father, she made a bowl with his name in it. Something practical, something he might use. That speaks to her father, as well. Both gifts say that she’s paying attention to the two men in her life. They say that a girl tries to date men like her father when she’s old enough. It will be very interesting to see how these two very different men translate into Trinity’s idea of what a man should be. There are so many different ways to be a father, and she is seeing some of that variety, and so am I. Being married to two good fathers has taught me some of what I missed. I guess I do finally get to celebrate father’s day, after all.