A Father's Day Shout-Out to Those Who Have Troubled Fathers

     It is Father’s Day and some of us did not have good fathers. If you have or had a good father, be happy and grateful for that, and feel no need to read this post. For those of you among my sisters and brothers who did not have a good father, read on if you wish.

     I read Anne Lamott’s Facebook entry this morning about her not-so-hot dad and how he felt that women were lesser beings who should entertain and serve men, and fit a standard idea of beauty while they did so. I think in the 40’s and 50’s there were a lot of dads like that. I am remembering reading that when World War II ended that women, who had been working in factories and doing jobs that would have been considered men’s work before the war, were told to go home when the men returned.

     Rosie the Riveter: go home! The kitchen awaits!

     My own father came to San Francisco when he was discharged from the army after World War II, and met my mother here in the City of Love- long before it was called that. They married and had one child: me. I was not the child they would have been dreamed of. First off, I was born a girl. My father’s mother blamed my mother for that. Her first born son obviously should have had a first born son. In the 1950’s it was not known that it is the father who determines the sex of the child.

     My father was fine with me until I became a teenager. As I began to mature into becoming a young woman, with a young woman’s body and a prize fighter’s attitude, he hated me. One day he told me he wanted me to kill myself, and do it soon, so he could bury the memory of my ever having existed in his mind. He told me I was worse than nothing, and should not exist.

     So ...uh...yeah. Happy Father’s Day. And by the way dad, who has been among the departed for over twenty years- I still exist.

     I remember thinking at the time that I had multiple choices. I could go along with what my father said to do and end my life, or I could decide that this man, who had given me life and now wanted me to take it, my father- was wrong about me and what I should do.

     I decided to live. Dad did not get to be the decider about whether I lived or died.

     There have been decades that have rolled by since he said those words, in response to my mother finding a journal I had been hiding, in which I referred to her with the infamous “B” word if she found and read my journal. He was a limited and miserable man. He wasn’t the man he imagined he wanted to be, his life was not turning out the way he had imagined for himself, and I wasn’t the child he would have chosen.

     As I have gotten older I have better understood his pain, and I am long past carrying a burning torch of anger about such moments. Such flames would only burn me, and there is no “win” in that.

     Unfortunately I married someone who ended up being a poor father to our sons. When picking a mate, we women don’t always think about what kind of father material they are. The man I married was good looking and charming and I was crazy about him when we married. But he turned out to be such a poor husband and father that I had to divorce him and raise our sons alone so he could not wreak continued havoc in our lives.

     I have one son who is a father. And he is an excellent father. Even though his own father was only an example of how not to be as a father.

     Sometimes you watch the generations roll by and you see something good happen that has no precedent. A family member will stand up against tide and time and trauma and decide to do something beautiful. Something righteous.

     I decided to live, despite what my dad wanted. And my son decided to be the wonderful father he himself did not have.

     Happy Father’s Day to us. And to you.