Last year for Father’s Day, I purchased the book, Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers and the Changing American Family. If you are a father of a daughter or a daughter who wants to know more about and understand your relationship with your father, this is the book. This book uses multiple interviews with women who share their personal journey and relationship (or lack of) with their father. These relationships are ones that are complex, diverse, dynamic, sometimes difficult, yet enriching.
Daughters look to their fathers for support and guidance yet do not always receive what they are looking for or need. Even as daughters get older, they continue to turn to their fathers for guidance and direction and sometimes acceptance and approval. Our need for independence and finding our own identity as a young girl comes from a feeling of dependency – a yearning to shed the skin and create distance, but not too much distance
My father.
After I purchased this book for my father, I bought a copy for myself. Over the course of a few months, my father and I would “chip” away at this book together. He shared his insight, his perspective. I did mine. We discussed our relationship and how it has evolved and continues to evolve over time. All the conversations around this shared activity helped me understand not only my relationship with my father, and all its intricacies, but the special bond between a father and his daughter. It provided clarity where there once was little.
I accept him for one he is and just as important, for who he is not.
My relationship with my father is neither complicated nor simple. It just is. It has become one of honesty and openness. However, our relationship wasn’t always this way. Years ago, it was much more complicated, complex, dynamic, and distant. I have no doubt disappointed him at one time or another. Past circumstances and the impact of his words and behaviors – not always good – had a profound impact on my life. It took me some time to recognize that despite some of the negative interactions between us, begrudging him for past ills, is just time and energy wasted. So I didn’t. I have moved on and so has he. Thankfully. Words and forgiveness lessens the space in between…
My father has taught me valuable life lessons. I still turn to him, but the conversations we now have are different. Guidance has turned to suggestions and support. We talk books, sports, jobs, relationships, family, and work among other things. His stories are known to be long in duration – sometimes too long – as importance for him is on detail and the nostalgia of life. His conversations can be tangential with nonsequedors interspersed and can drive the most patient person crazy! That includes me! My impatience with him at times gets the better of me but in a loving way, I am able to share my frustrations with levity.
We have both grown in our relationship – both individually and together. I listen and so does he. Much better than he did while I was growing up. I like to believe that I, too, have become a better listener, a better daughter. In many ways, I am my father’s daughter. In many ways, I am not. I recognize the role that his family or origin played in raising me. I believe he did the best that he could. However, remaining in the past and blaming doesn’t do any good. So I don’t.
Time lost doing that is well, time lost. You cannot get it back.
I cannot seek to understand my father or any other person for the matter, in a single incident or situation. People are more than the sum of their parts. My father is no exception to that rule. Nor am I. Acceptance is a wonderful feeling. A powerful gift. It allows and teaches a person to move forward. I am keenly aware of the futility of time. It is finite. I realize that with each passing day, my time with my father becomes increasingly limited. I know that I have had more days with him in the past than I will have in the future. I have made sure that there is nothing left unspoken.