My dad’s gotten his Senility Troll down to four panels or less lately. It’s like I’m trapped in the comics section of my local newspaper. Today’s installment:
DAD: Oh! In case I forget – an early happy birthday to you, Anne.
ME (in a tone implying I’m a little incredulous he could miss it): My birthday’s tomorrow, Dad.
DAD, Looking half-offended, half-joking: I know.
ME: …
DAD (Returning to deadpan): So… How old are you going to be?
Of course, before I can answer, he smiles and says, “Did you know I helped deliver you?”
As it turns out, I had forgotten (oh irony) that he had.
He crooks his arm like he’s holding a tiny imaginary baby and says, “I helped pull you out, and you were much bigger than expected, and I cleaned you off and checked you, and then I carried you to the nursery.”
The sentimentality is so foreign I’m blinking back tears, thinking how it’d be nice to have a cup of coffee and sit down before I get emotionally pepper sprayed next time. “Thanks for the lift,” is all I manage to squeak out.
He snorts. “Well at least I didn’t drop you.”
From the couch, where Middle Sister lies splayed, comes the comment, “You really have to question why he’s denying it, Anne. Sounds guilty to me.”
Later, of course, he’s grouchy and not following the conversation very well. He mistakes what my mom has said, either due to hearing loss or having lost the thread of the conversation, and the two of them go around in a circle, trying to sort out what’s being said. Both of them get their feathers up and my dad wanders off to his office.
I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m so much more OK with him being senile than I am with him being sentimental. If I had my choice, of course, he’d be neither. But of the two changes, it’s the kindness that brings me to squished-faced sobs and the sense that the world is rocking on its axis, not his disorientation or irritability.
Saying it out loud seems so pitiful, but I think I’ve spent my life knowing I was his least favorite child. Who I learned to be was defined in part by his disinterest, and by the standards of his disappointment. These days, I feel like an old-timey sailor, trying to make my way by charting the stars, and in the Constellation of All Things, my father’s star has moved, and my understanding of the world off kilter.
The other part that is hard to admit is he and I are very much alike.
When I was a new parent, and a new wife, I was afraid I’d end up like him, and that I would inflict on my children some shade of the parenting my father gave to me. In fact, prior to marriage, I told my future husband I didn’t know if I could actually live in the same house with him, that I might be the kind of person who simply couldn’t tolerate that much contact.
But because my dad was that kind of person, I’ve been pretty determined to live my life differently. Three kids and a work-from-home husband is a lot of contact to tolerate, and I’m proud to live a life connected to people.
Still. Some days, while the other mothers are full of their cooing ‘oooh, I wish my children would never grow up, I love spending all day doing projects with them!’
I find myself checking my watch and shifting in my chair and thinking that I am frighteningly like Dad, that my love for my own children would make me do anything for them, but I am not like some parents, (my mother, for example) who could play with kids all day and then invite over the neighborhood kids to play, and then bake cookies for everyone and then throw everyone in the car and go to the beach and go to bed laughing from all the joy of togetherness. Frankly, even doing one of the things on that list sounds to me like an exhausting pain in the ass.
I know at least one day a week, I am fighting my nature in an effort to be a more involved parent than my dad, and even working as hard as I can, I am easily lapped by lots of moms who do those things because it feels energizing to them.
The point I’ve been trying to get to about my dad’s newfound sentimentality is this: My sailor’s map has a lifetime of using my father as the pinpoint from which I pushed myself away. When I feel worthless for lack of personal ducats, I have been able to look at the constellation of my life and show myself how I am providing for my own children a parent who is not driven to familial abandonment via ambition. That is truly something, yes? It is not motherfucking cookies on the beach glitter explosion, but given what I have to work with, it is worth being proud of.
Now my father is changing, he is no longer a caricature from which I can cleanly move away. I am terrified as I feel increasingly sympathetic towards him. If he becomes a good parent to me, I will have lost my due North. I will see things from his perspective, and finally see that he was something of a good parent considering what a Bad Kid he had to deal with.
I am afraid I will forget what it was like to be a child, and I will start treating my kids the way he treated me. I’m afraid it will be easy to do, too, since he and I are so alike in disposition.
And one day, instead of just looking at my watch while the other mothers fawn over motherhood, I will simply get up and walk out.
What the what? Did you just say that your dad was a good dad, given what a bad kid (you) he had to deal with?
Anne…it doesn’t work that way.
Yes, it’s possible that he didn’t automatically ‘connect’ with you like he did with one or more of your other siblings. No parent can connect equally with each kid, because no one connects the same way with everyone in the outside world, either.
What’s more likely is that he loved you an awful lot, even though he didn’t ‘connect’ with the exact same ‘click’ he had with other kids. The kid I don’t ‘click’ with? Is the one I worry about the most, the one I secretly pray for twice as much, the one I keep a secret eye on all the time.
What I have found, in dealing with my own elderly parents, neither of whom connected with me when I was a child, teen, or young mom, are now saying I’m the one they can talk to. The one they like to spend more time with. And all those years I was the absolute rock-bottom least favorite? Means nothing. The only thing that counts is that we’re close now….
My parents, who by most standards were pretty remote and non-cuddly and kind of inattentive after our basic needs were attended to, are now Smurfs. The minute my brother died they turned into huggers. They are unrecognizable from the people who raised me.
I’m going to guess that your dad’s diagnosis has made him re-evaluate, much the way my parents have. I’m going to give zero odds that previous remoteness had anything to do with your worth as a child, and everything to do with your dad’s inability to work around the lack of a ‘click.’
All that matters is that I hear little clicky noises every time I read what you’ve written lately.
Oh, and about that fawning thing…raising children full time is hard, and it’s messy, and the kids are incoherent, and anyone who says that they’re fawning over motherhood is either lying or has better pharmaceuticals than we do. I didn’t like chasing little kids around. I hated sitting at scores of soccer/volleyball/softball games. I’ve only recently (after over 20 years of mothering) managed to sort of enjoy band concerts.
That stuff has nothing to do with getting to know your kids as people, which is a key, I think, for enjoying your kids more and more as they get older. I have friends who do all that fawning stuff absolutely correctly who absolutely hate doing it and kind of resent the intrusion of all of it. And it shows.
If it’s any comfort, you don’t show that resentment. You give every vibe of seeing the inherent humor in the kids, evaluating them as people, not burdens, and I guarantee that it is precisely that vibe that will carry you into those kids’ adult years with flying colors.
Remember, you’ll know them as adults far longer than you’ll know them as kids. Protect that future relationship with them by doing what you’re doing: pacing yourself, not getting burned out, and enjoying them.
Sending lots of love….
What Beth said. I made a generally muddled-up job of mothering my two, who are now twenty-seven and thirty. One turned out pretty darned good, one is fairly majorly messed up, and I don’t know if I can take credit or blame for either one.
Basically my years of child-rearing are a blur of misery for reasons mostly unrelated to my kids. I was wallowing in depression and an unhappy marriage, teetering on the edge of alcoholism, and my kids remember the anger. I hope they also remember the fun times, and that I loved, and love, them.
This is raw. All I can say is that your feelings are seeking out the right path and right way to handle this and there isn’t one set in stone before you. It keeps changing and throwing you for a loop.
I would have to back up what Bess said about being the child least connected with, especially after I turned 5 or so, but the most prayed for(at different times all of us children earned this effort).
God be with you on this journey.
Well you certainly have a lot to deal with right now. No one can understand how hard it is to see someone change before your eyes unless they have experienced it.
I guess my first response was at what point did anyone expect fathers of that generation to BE connected to their children? I look at my own dad, who is going to be 75 next year, and know that he was a product of his upbringing, of that time and space he existed in. We were not close, he was difficult to live with, but I know he loved me. How he acted toward me had very little to do with who I was, and had everything to do with who he was. I know that.
He was a different parent than I am, by virtue of us being different people. I am also not parenting like my mother, or like a thousand other women I could point to. I parent like I want to parent, like I am capable of parenting, given who I am, the tools I have to work with, the fact I work full time outside of the house, and all of the other aspects of living my life. I do the best I can, and try for better as often as possible. In the long run, I know kids survive, they grow, and become who they will become. And then they go out and do it differently from us, because they are different people, growing up in different times, with different priorities.
I know one thing for sure. The past is the past. It was what it was, and now it is gone. The present is here to make of it what you will. You get to decide what today will be, you get to decide how much of the past you let influence today. But it is all dust in the wind. You can let it go and let today be new and fresh. Do the best you can.
I’ll second the “what Beth said”. I love my kids more than life itself and I have no idea how all of us will survive 6 more days of Winter Break from school. This is supposed to be a magical time where mommy is off of work and spending every moment with her darlings doing amazing things, right? Ha!!
The relationship you have with your father is very much like the one I have with my mother. I was the oldest and least problematic, so I was pretty much ignored. I moved out at 16 while my younger siblings stayed near and dear to momma’s heart (and house) well into their 20’s. Ever since I had kids we’ve had a partial truce of shared motherhood (with, as expected, tons of guilt trips on how I’m parenting wrong). When we do have close moments they frankly freak me out. I’ve made her really angry before by completely pushing her away when she’s suddenly decided to be there for me. Sigh. Families are messy. I cried when I found out I was having a girl because I have such a bad relationship with my mom that I’m terrified of repeating it.
Sorry to be so long winded. Just wanted to say there is someone out here who understands. You are awesome! 🙂 Hang in there!
Oh, oops! “What Bess said” that should be! 🙂
Dunno… here is my muddled take on it:
I can go along slogging through nearly any amount of emotional raw sewage for days without blinking, but if anyone looks at me with the slightest amount of sympathy in their eyes and asks with any kindness “how are you doing?” I will fall into a shivering, sloppy bawl-fest.
and again:
When Dadguy goes off on a work trip for a week, I am fine for the duration. I am even OK when he calls the day before he’s supposed to return, to tell me that he has to stay an extra day, and now I have to scramble to make everything work, and even though I haven’t had a break and the kids are eating my soul… I am sailing over the top of everything, and it all works out till after the kids go to bed the first night he’s home and I cry for two hours straight.
Sometimes I think I fall apart when there is finally enough emotional room to do so. Perhaps the sentimentality is giving you some room. Fall apart. It’s OK, then you can get back to life stronger and refreshed.
It’s the choices we make that define us, not how we feel.
Yes, it’s true: you could simply get up and walk out. And sometimes, people do. It’s your choice.
But you know, we all could. Most of us never even want to acknowledge that thought because it’s profoundly uncomfortable; it rocks the foundations of the lives that we’ve built around the people we love, but we ALL have that choice, that dark potential, though we may never choose to exercise it.
From reading you with respect, affection and wicked delight over the years, it does not appear to me that the choices you have made have been bad ones. And if sometimes your framework for a choice was not to be like your father was, is that so bad? It doesn’t make your journey invalid or deluded. I imagine your children would be rather glad of it, were they to know.
And just because your father’s behaviour to you has changed – for the better, albeit heart rendingly so – does not mean that you have to rewrite history (especially since your logic seems to be that only one of you can be good and if he is good then therefore you were bad).
I hesitate to offer assvice to you when your situation is so gruelling (clearly I will overcome my hesitation), but you just might be on a path to a new and better constellation for your choices, with a bit more freedom for you to define what good parenting means for you personally (playing to your strengths and escaping the Stepford Mother mold), rather than a reaction against something.
Nonetheless, how you can think that you are a less-than-stellar mother is beyond me – your clear-eyed appreciation of your children as individuals, your wise and funny understanding of both your and their quirks, moments of genius and moments when you and they lose it, and your articulate recounting of it – through all these things your intelligence, honesty and love for them shines through.
I feel like that. a. lot. But I’m ready to hear myself say it. I’m tired sometimes of feeling myself know it. If my mother ever apologized for all the shit she put me through I’d feel some sense of “daughterly”(whatever) duty to forgive her. Then what?
No, you will never walk out. Your map may have to include a small re-route, but not redrawn. You are already AWARE, and that’s half the battle. And the cookie slash beach glitterfest you speak of? I’m not one of those moms either. I was SO thankful my first born was independent, and that my second was so laid back he didn’t care if I was a down-on-the-floor kind of parent. Plus he had his sister to follow around (yay!). Do NOT put yourself down for that.
I’m also pretty sure your mother found the whole ordeal exhausting as well, even if she won’t admit it.
I’m glad that others have offered a lot more feedback than I plan to, as I just wanted to commend you on how beautiful and well-written this post is.
Maybe since you were so much like your dad, he had trouble relating to you. That sounds odd, but some people just have a tougher time with interpersonal connections, particularly ones they may find challenging on any level.
What seems clear from this post and your more recent one is that he loves you and seems to want that connection. Perhaps his new found sentimentality is a small gift that the tragedy of senility has to offer. I hope it finds a place in your heart. Be well.