Nature Versus Nurture

I used to say mean things about my dad. Not mean things, just not nice. True things, sure, but not kind. And by ‘say’ I mean confess. Not to a priest or detective or anything, just my therapist. All of my therapists. They all let me say these things and then smiled foxlike when such words poured out with accompanying tears. Like a mama fox, but still.

And it didn’t matter, it didn’t change anything between me and my dad that every week I would go and say these things about him. I still texted Xs and Os. Still grabbed the mail on my way up the driveway. Still sat at the table with him, any table, and listened to his stories. I sat across from him at dinner, one bench over on the deck, sometimes next to him in the car. We still did all of these things.

But then I’d go back to my mama fox therapists and cry my face off for all the things that I wanted from my dad that he didn’t have so he couldn’t give me. I felt so far away from him, being who I was and who I wanted to be and who I might’ve otherwise been if he had given me some of those impossible gifts. If he had had them himself to give. Then, I was sure, I’d be closer to who I was supposed to be. Until then, I felt myself on the opposite end of whatever spectrum he was on, and I was nothing like him.

Okay, fine.

When I came out as bisexual and my marriage ended, my dad hugged me and held my crumbles together. When divorce wasn’t going well, when I had to move out of state with my kids, when my neighbor pisses me off. My dad can cut to the raw and tragic humor of any scenario and plot the sly demise of any foe, and my laugh is never louder than when he does.

I have this nightmare. He’s on his deathbed in a cold hospital room about to meet his maker. And he looks terrified to die. Even though in real life he seemed jealous of every one of his friends and family members who passed before he did, and even though he was envious of their swift exit from a painful existence, there in that hospital bed and silly gown with tubes everywhere, eating and breathing for him, he still wanted to live. I could see it in his eyes. In the dream, he reaches for my hand with both of his, and I give him one, but I serve it up with a nasty glare and that’s when my adrenals release and nightmare status is reached.

I ask him flat out, “Where were you when your children needed you?” And it kills him. He dies right then, that’s the last thing he hears, and my heartless eyes are his last vision in the world.

Mama Fox suggested I write him a note. He gave me stories, after all. Showed me what it was to tell a tale, how it preserved the things you wanted to remember and shaped your memory of someone to keep them in a narrative. Taught me how to speak in someone else’s words.

I wrote, “I’m sorry for saying such things about you. Please forgive me. Thank you for being true to yourself and trying your best. I love you. “

He wrote back, “I’m sorry, too. Your dad sounds like a real ass. Please forgive me for not taking his place more when you needed me to. Thank you for loving me. I love you, too. “

It’s a tale of forgiveness. It’s a gift from my dad, from where he should've been, and from where he actually was. I use it every day to be who I am.