Dad

Call me a big blubbering baby. Tell me to 'get over it', 'move on', 'grow up' or whatever. Last week as I set at my desk at work and told Mom on the phone that Dad had forgotten my birthday I cried hard. My face got blotchy, eyes swollen, the whole nine yards. I choked out the words and tried in vain to act like I wasn't crushed. But I was. He's my dad for Christ's sake! Yes, I know he was Las Vegas on one of his many gambling trips that he and his girlfriend take and that he 'simply forgot.'

I suppose it's just a reflection of our relationship as a whole.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me or hurt the way it does. In spite of the fact that at this point in my life Dad and I are the closest we've ever been emotionally. But 'close' to me is a relative term. I am not a Daddy's girl.

My relationship with Dad is probably not that different from anyone else's. At least no one that I know. We're not particularly close but not emotionally distant either. By the time I was born Dad was thirty years old, married with now three children and running his own business. We were living in the town he'd grown up in which was an economically depressed area. He wanted to make money. He wanted to be successful. I'm sure he needed to show his father that the business he had purchased from him wouldn't flounder and fail under his ownership.

My dad was driven to make money. All of my earliest memories of him are of him working. One of my most vivid memories is me being small enough that I used to attach myself to one of his legs (wrapping my arms and legs around his calf and ankle) in an effort to make him to stay home. He would laugh and say he had to leave and then try to shake me loose. To me, he seemed to always be in some sort of state of working.

Dad wasn't a complete ogre. I also remember him coming to watch me cheer in elementary school or play softball for the fire department in the summer (the extent of my sports playing). But even those activities were tempered by his work schedule.

In the mid-eighties he moved his business to a nearby county and then moved our family to the same town a few years later. By that time my Mom got sick and their marriage began to deteriorate rapidly. He escaped to work even more. He had an affair with his secretary (whom he is still with).

All of his hard work did finally pay off. Dad retired at 50 years old (having sold the business to Queenie) and now 14 years later (due to his hard work and wise financial investments) he's enjoying the fruits of his labor. He takes frequent vacations and his house is free and clear. Still, I often wonder if he is really happy.

So on Father's Day I will try not to dwell on all the things he wasn't. Dad taught me many good things and for that I am grateful. Still, I am wishful to have the kind of father-daughter relationship that Beloved has with Princess and Lovely. The one where your dad seems to need you as much as you need him. The one where there is mutual respect. In my heart I am a Daddy's girl wanna be.