Sunday, June 19, 2016

Father's Day Ambivalence, Weighted Heavily On The Side Of Gratefulness

Father's Day is tough for me and today is tough for me just on general principle. I mean, it's Sunday and I'm not ready in the least to leave on this trip and I basically leave on Tuesday to drive to Gator Bone and then to Miami the next day to fly to Havana which, no matter how many times I say it, doesn't make it real in my head but real enough that I'm a quaking mess right now and wish someone would talk me down. My husband is like Lis in that no matter what, they are optimistic and loving people who trust in the Universe in a way that I never can or will and I feel like saying to Lis right now, "This is a fine mess you've gotten me into," but of course I will end up thanking her a million times and I know that but logic and rationality have slipped away and may be hiding in a tiny child's coin purse that I lost about fifty-eight years ago.

Father's Day. Well, thanks, Dad, for being a hopeless drunk (not your fault, I'm sure) who disappeared from my life when I was five and really, thanks Mom for getting us the hell out of his life when he got that gun and almost set the house on fire.
I hear, Dad, that you tried to come and see us in Florida but when you were in Tallahassee on your way, you left the woman you were traveling with at a motel (just like you left my mother in a hotel on your honeymoon) to go on a binge and when you got back, that woman had hung herself, or something and you spent a few days in jail under suspicion of murder and this story may or may not be true.
Who knows?

One time you did get me a wallet with a cowboy wearing furry chaps on it.
Wonder where that went? Maybe that's where my optimism is, in that wallet, not a coin purse at all.

My grandfather became my father-figure and he was all the things that a boy scout should be but he wasn't exactly affectionate and he had no need to instill a sense of self-esteem in children and in fact, the very idea would have been completely mysterious to him but he was a good man and offered safety and read long books to me and played checkers with me and once, I remember him laughing at the Flintstones and honestly, he was a good, kind man and he never asked for the job of taking on two kids and their broken mother that late in his life and he handled it all with as much grace as he could and I am grateful for that.

I don't feel like talking about my stepfather.

So anyway, the best thing I've ever done was to provide my own children with a magnificent, splendid father who came with his own magnificent, splendid dad, and now my grandchildren have fathers who are the best, the Burrito Supremes, the Big Bens, the Pacific Oceans, the Holy Grails of daddies and so I rest easy on those thoughts.

It is a most beautiful day and the heat has been broken, at least for now, and I am going to make Mr. Moon some pancakes and then later on Lily and Jason and the kids are coming over for Father's Day supper and I'd just like to say to all of the good daddies out there that you have no idea whatsoever how important you are, not just in the lives of your own children, but in the lives of human beings who themselves will grow up as stellar humans, safe in the knowledge that they were loved and protected and provided for and a lifetime of therapy can't begin to replicate the results of that sort of love. Trust me. I know.

I did good. I married Mr. Moon. We had kids and he was and continues to be a wonderful father to them and to the ones I already had and those two had a daddy who was kind to them and still is and has given them a hell of a lot of good daddying and who also married a woman who was/is a wonderful step-mother whose own father was yet another amazing man who, like Mr. Moon's father, just loved and inspired all the children who came into his life.

There. Father's Day.

Gold rings on all the good ones.

Love...Ms. Moon


6 comments:

  1. when I was getting kicked out of college my first year for smoking pot and my parents came to pick me up they made me get in the front seat between them and without saying a word my father yanked both my sleeves up checking my arms for tracks. I was so insulted that it was many years before I could even stand to be in the same room with him.

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  2. Sometimes any public celebration day ..is a poison chalice to some

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  3. Ellen Abbott- How NOT to be a father. Yeah. Our dads should have written a book.

    John Gray- Truer words were never said. Thank you.

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  4. I told my dad at the ripe old age of 26, when I learned he had a new baby girl, that all his various known and unknown abandoned kids would agree with me saying we be ever so happy if he stuck with this one. He did, which surprised me, really. He passed on a handful of years ago, and we never communicated again. I had nothing else to say to him and he always said the same old I'm the only dad you'll have line. But I've made friends with that last baby girl- we're both letter writing artist types! Hugs, Carroll

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  5. The circle indeed can be broken, and sometimes that's a good thing. Peace to you.

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  6. I'm worried about you and your weaning yourself off of you meds. Over the years every time you do that you realize you shouldn't have. Hoping I'm wrong though :)

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.