I don't think about him much, but I have been thinking about him more lately. I guess maybe it's the holidays, or the fact that this is usually as long as we go, or that I heard that he's single this year. He doesn't do well single. In the past I have always been like some strange platonic version of the 2 am last call call: not really what you want, but better than being alone. Not this time though, because I have kids to think of now, and they don't deserve that sort of on again of again, convenience based relationship, and because my husband put his foot down. He isn't welcome in our lives until he says he's sorry; not only for the awful things he said during our most recent fight, 3 years ago now, but for everything. That would be quite a litany of apologies, and since the last thing I can imagine emerging from that mans mouth is an admission of wrong doing, I guess this is the way it will stay.
I used to think that every parent, no matter how sick or twisted, had some sort of biological compulsion to love their child, even if only in their own sick and twisted way. My father dispelled me of this myth when I was a sophomore in high school; "My parents didn't love me." He said, "and I don't love you either. That's life, so just buck up and deal with it.'
My parents married before they found out they were pregnant, and split up when I was 8 months old. High time too, since my mom waited by the window for the unpredictable drunken arrival of my father, and then sometimes hid under the bed, for fear what that arrival might bring. He never hit me, but after throwing ice water at me, she knew it was time to go. Ironically, he doesn't have any memory of this stuff. His alcohol saturated brain, recreated a much rosier picture. He suggested giving me up for adoption, siting that he didn't want me, and she couldn't afford me, but she refused, and so on we went; just the 2 of us and the learning curve string of boyfriends. He signed his parental rights away for relief from child support, you could do that back then, but she let him see me anyway, because she thought I would resent her if I didn't know him. When Christmases came, the gifts I received signed love dad, really came from his girlfriends or his business partner, who felt bad that I would not receive any thing from him. (Strangely his business collects Toys for Tots now, the irony.) The courage it took, for her to leave, to let me see him, to raise me alone, most women don't have it.
She remarried when I was 9, the man who is my real real dad. At just 21 years of age, he endured my hate and bitter venom, as I fought to protect my mom, our relationship, myself from rejection, from his authority. His endurance finally won out, but he still has hate letters in his drawer from my childhood self. I wonder why he keeps them. My biological dad meanwhile, quit drinking, cold turkey, it's own form of extreme courage, but if you ask me, he was self medicating for much deeper things, so instead of improving matters, it made them worse.
After he told me he didn't love me, we didn't speak again until I was a freshman in college. When we started speaking again, I think I'd long since outgrown the expectation that he would change. I just thought I could live with the way he was, and make the best of it, which I tried to do, until my children got involved. But then I just couldn't expose them to the hurt that I had endured; years of feeling like it was my fault, before figuring out that he had been damaged beyond ability to love; something that happened long before I came along, and had nothing to do with me. Years of getting my hopes up and getting let down, years of taking a backseat to everything until he got lonely. When he insulted my husband and daughter, lines had to be drawn. He has never met Baylie or Levi; I don't know if he knows about them or not.
I don't think of him too much, but when I do I have a strange subdued feeling, like those passionate feelings of childhood have been muted somehow. I don't feel anger, just pity, and a vague sense of loss. You stop expecting, but a small shard of heart clings to hope. I no longer feel unlovable, you see, my name, which I never liked, was one of the few things my biological father gave me, only I think now that it was really God who gave it to me. Amanda: it means worthy of love, you see, it was my Heavenly Father, telling me that even if my earthly father didn't find me lovely or worthy, He did, like the way all the biblical names say something about the recipient. What a strange gift.
I believe my dad has a heart so hard, that it will never accept Jesus, because to do that he would have to shelve his pride, but far be it from me to put limitations on God, so everybody say a little prayer for my dad this Christmas, and who knows what miracles may be afoot.
