2002-07-16 - 2:24 p.m.
When I wrote down today's date I remembered-- this is my father's birthday. So, in the abstract sense: happy birthday, dad. I guess sending someone an abstract happy birthday thought is a small enough thing to do in the world, since it will not be followed by a card or a gift or a telephone call.
I don't keep in contact with my father, and that is a choice I made to preserve my own peace of mind. Because he is completely unable to acknowledge the validity of any life besides his own. And doesn't even know why he should. He is a person who probably has no idea why one of his three children doesn't communicate with him, and the other two have only minimal contact. Because there is a gulf, a chasm, the grand canyon of family relationships squarely between us. Filled with all the bones of my failed attempts to please him, his failed attempts to change me into the kind of daughter he wanted. And we are both too old to leap across.
The last time I saw him, at a family wedding about six years ago, we had this conversation:
How've you been?
Fine. How about you?
Fine. What's new?
Nothing. What's new with you?
Nothing.
And then we stood there and looked at each other uncomfortably for a minute, before one of us thought of some reason to turn away. And although it looks like the responsibility for this ridiculous non-conversation is partly mine, I have to explain: there is not one thing of major or minor importance in my life that he would even begin to understand, much less approve of. So I don't go there, I play it safe. So I am fine and nothing is new.
When I was a kid, we often celebrated Dad's mid-summer birthday with a cookout. And Mom would stress over picking out a gift for him that he would like, that wouldn't make him say, "Why did you spend my money on this?" And he would be in a bad mood because he wasn't a good sport about getting older, and all of the birthday arrangements, no matter what they were, were somehow irritating to him. So we were always glad when it was over.
The problem was that he always had a way of making us feel like we wanted to please him. We wanted to bask in the glow of even a few minutes of his approval, as fleeting and conditional and full of pitfalls as it was. He was young, and handsome, charming and popular with everyone outside the family. We lived this schizophrenic family life..... so attractive and appealing on the outside, so full of tension and anger on the inside.
Which is why I grew up believing it was I who was always wrong.
My dad is probably celebrating his seventy-first birthday without hearing from any of his children or grandchildren. And in some way, I'm still sorry about that. I'm sorry because I know he will never feel anything but wronged. He will never look at himself and his behavior and realize that he drove us away. He will just feel forgotten.
When I was a kid, I joyously bounded down the stairs on the morning of my birthday, and said to my father, "Do you know what day this is?!" and he said, "Yeah, it's two days before quail season opens."
So, I guess that would make this about twelve days after the fourth of July.
�
