I Wanted a TV Dad

Why are you being so mean to your stepmother?” asked my father.

It was June 1980 in a pizzeria in San Leandro, California. I wasn’t from California and in fact, this was the first time I had been in San Leandro. My sister and I had been in California a week so far. My dad and I were sitting here on Monday evening in this pizzeria because my father wanted to talk to me. And I knew exactly why I was being “mean” to my stepmother. I suspected something – I suspected something that was huge and would hurt my mother, my sister and me. I didn’t know if I had the courage to ask though because my father could be mean especially when he was drinking and a beer sat in front of him right now. He scared me when he drank and quite often, I would hide in a book and escape my current reality. The pizzeria/bar was loud, and I was scared of him, but I had to know because my stepbrother had hinted that I was completely naive.

“Did you have an affair with Dian before you divorced Mom?” I asked it awkwardly as I was a very awkward 14-year-old, who had frizzly, curly hair in the age of Farrah feathered hair – my sister had the perfect hair. I had braces and I was 5’9” by the age of 11 and I wasn’t fat but I wasn’t skinny. My sister was perfect in my Dad’s eyes because she was skinny and cute and 10. Her straight blond hair was always feathered back even at age 10. As he told us both when we were 11 (me) and 7 (Marcy) – “Kathy is the smart one and Marcy is the pretty one.” It kind of made us who we were and who we became. She found her self-worth in being a vivacious cute woman and I found mine in studying.

He drank from his beer and spoke seriously, “I think you are old enough to know – yes, we had an affair for the last year of your mother’s and my marriage. In fact, I have been having affairs since you were five.” They divorced when I was twelve and I could do the math quickly.

I wanted a dad that was like the ones on TV - the ones that were always home and with their families and spent time with their daughters. The TV dads always had the right answers and supported their daughters in their interests. All I could think at that moment was my Dad was more like JR Ewing on Dallas than Steven Keaton Family Ties.

As an adult with children and grandchildren of my own, I now realize that my Dad was actually a great Dad, although human. My parents had divorced when I was twelve and he moved to Rochester, NY immediately for work. My sister and I stayed there in Ohio with our Mom. He was remarried within six months and gave me three stepbrothers. Doug was only 1 year older and his brothers were already done with high school.

That night was the second crucial night of my childhood. The first was the one where I was told I was ugly and my sister was told she was stupid. That was our take-away from being told that one was smart and one was pretty. It is kind of funny as the pictures hanging in the living room that were taken when we were both four were always assumed by visitors to just be a picture of my sister at four and at five - but they weren’t. They were both of us. And my sister was smart - way smarter in math than I was, but we had our fates decided by a drunk man at the ages of 11 and 7. And throughout my childhood and early adulthood I held that grudge- that anger.

My dad always made sure he spent time with Marcy and I. That was the first summer spent in California and our last was when I was sixteen. My thirteenth summer had been a trip driving his car from Ohio to California because that was where his company had sent him. He made sure we spent six weeks every summer with him and he tried to see us when he could when he traveled east. He worked as a regional sales manager so he spent his time driving from one of the offices in California to another one in Utah or Oregon. We saw the entire midwest and west from his car every summer. And although he worked every day, he took us with him so he would still have time with us. When we were at home during the school year, he called us every Sunday morning. He must have gotten up by 5 am to call us because it was always before we left for church at 8 am in Ohio.

My Dad and my mom tried to be friends after the divorce which was rare. As my friends’ parents divorced and were horrible to each other and pitted the kids against each other - I realized that my parents were different.

It did take my mom some time to forgive my dad. From age 12 to age 18, I watched my mother put up the tar barrels at the end of the driveway so that Dad and Dian couldn’t park in our driveway if they were in Ohio and trying to visit us. We “black-topped” that driveway so “frequently” you would think my mom had stock in the company. I think we actually only touched that driveway up once in those six years, but those tar barrels were kept to keep my stepmother out. When I was seventeen, Dad was transferred briefly to Chicago and after six months back to the headquarters of his company in Rochester, New York. So, he drove down a lot more frequently and we really looked like we cared about the quality of our blacktop.

My graduation from high school was the first time my stepmother, Dian, and my mother met. My father was really bold to think that they should meet because I had told my mother at fourteen that he had been having affairs on her since I was five. She said that when I started kindergarten - she stopped traveling with him so he must have been lonely. She has always made excuses for him because and I quote, “I work in a bank and most women’s child support checks bounce and his checks have never bounced and he gives me an entire checkbook of them written out a month before the next one is to run-out.”

But, back to my graduation. My dad comes roaring in and there is my mom who had broken her glasses that morning and had not yet put in her contacts; our house and the food is not quite ready for the graduation party and she could not remember which Amish woman in Hartville, Ohio had made my cake. My stepmother was introduced by my father to my mother and Dian offered to help. My mom said that she thought about being petty and telling her she could handle it when it was so clear that she could not - but she didn’t and let Dian help. Both women who had married my father 17 years apart were there when I arrived back from the search for the Amish household that had made my graduation cake. My dad was already drinking and Dian and Mom were talking like old friends. As an adult I feel bad for Dian since he threw her into this graduation party where every guest that came was a friend of my mom’s and my dad’s from when they had been married! She talked to no one that entire day and Dad continued to drink and reminisce with his old friends on the back patio he had built. Dian just kept restocking the trays and talked only to my mother or my sister and I.

My relationship with my father continued rocky through college where he wanted me to become a doctor and all I wanted to be was a teacher and a writer. I wanted both of those jobs fairly equally and he told me, “Those that can, do, those who can’t, teach.” And after I realized that there was no way in hell I could be in medicine I sneakily got my degree in Spanish Studies. When I graduated he convinced me to get an MBA so I would have a useful degree. He wanted me to make six-figures and be a go-getter in the business world like he was. I was an introvert who loved teaching and writing and was not good with the high pressure world of sales or finance or anything in business. I think I have been disappointing my father for years because when I did get a job in business it was to work for a non-profit that helped women and children and I still didn’t make much money. So, I realize he didn't get the daughter he wanted either. But, he always was there for me anyway.

The thing is when you are looking at your parents as a child - you see things in black and white because our brains are not developed enough to see it differently. My dad cared and made sure he not only supported us financially - but made sure that he saw my sister and I. Seriously- while he worked throughout the country he would load us both into his car and leave us swimming at different pools in different hotels in different states. I have pretty much swam in at least one pool in every state in this country except for Alaska. (Yes we didn’t hit Hawaii in the car- I know that, but I’ve been there.) He and my mother and my stepmother also started doing holidays together - seriously my mom and my stepmother would share the king bed because when he was so drunk his snores were horrible and they would leave him downstairs on the couch so the rest of us could sleep in peace. It was always fun to tell my friends that my mom and stepmom would share a bed at holidays because of his drinking.

He never stopped being verbally abusive when drinking, but he quit drinking when my stepmother got breast cancer. She was put on medicine that could not be taken with alcohol and so, he stopped drinking too. So, that part got better. And as an adult where I see so many of my friends' marriages dissolve into hate and acrimony - I admire my parents even more and even my father. Because even with all his faults (and we all have them) - he always made sure he was involved in my life and my sister’s life. He made sure we saw him and heard from him every single week. Although absent from our daily lives - he was still always there. And I realize that as humans we all have good and bad. I’m sure he didn’t get the daughters he wanted either - although we tried. I'm now a teacher and a writer and he seems to be fine with it.

I still call my dad every Sunday. He is now 83 and living with his third wife in upstate New York. I took him a strawberry rhubarb pie on Father’s Day. And then we drove around on Monday looking at the places he loved as a child - again we spent our time in a car, but now he is in the backseat and I am driving since his eyesight is going and he lets my stepmother sit in the front. I got a great father - it just took me until I was an adult to realize that we all have faults and nothing is in black or white and he gave me more than most even if he wasn't in my house.