a nice moment

I had planned a long post today, but I have no time, so it will have to wait.  But I haven't missed a day with this NaBloPoMo thing yet, so I need something.  I thought I would tell you a quick story.

So if you've been around, you know my dad passed away last June, and that my relationship with him was difficult.  I've spent a fair amount of time over the past few months processing anger and confusion and resentment and and and.  If you've been reading along, I've probably bored the crap out of you with it.

But a couple of nights ago I was making myself a V-8 to drink while I was fixing dinner.  My dad used to fix them.  It's sort of like a Virgin Mary, I guess, but we would never have called it that at our house, it was just something to drink.  You pour as much V-8 as you want in a glass, then shake in some worcestershire, and tabasco, and squeeze in some lemon or lime juice.  It seems like there was something to shake into it, too-- probably Lawry's Seasoning Salt, or maybe Lemon Pepper (I skipped that this time).  I was standing there in the kitchen making it and simultaneously being my 7-year-old self, with my dad carefully showing me how to do it. 

And I realized that the good memories, the stuff that he did so well and taught so well, are always with me.  The bad stuff I need to process and work through, but the good stuff is so much a part of me that most of the time I'm not even aware of his influence.  And there are a lot of things like that:  he taught me how to change the oil in my car (which I never do, but I know how!), and how to watch a football game (a down is like a chance, they get four chances to move the ball ten yards...).  He took a baseball once and showed us how to change your grip to throw a curveball or a slider (not that I ever did that, either, but I understand the idea anyway).  He helped my sisters and I pick out cars any time we were buying a new one. 

So, yeah.  The good bits are always with me.

clay feet

I wrote the parking place post last night, but didn't publish it until this afternoon because I wanted to let it sit overnight.  When I started it, I was going to try and describe my experiences as a process-- this happened, then this happened, then this.  But I've realized that's not possible.  Partly because I just don't remember it that well-- the 50-year-old brain doesn't do details well.  But also partly because it didn't happen that way.  Much of this was going on at the same time.  It's just different pieces of what happened.

So another piece was dealing with hypocrisy.  That's such a cliché that it seems kind of dumb to bring it up.  Of course I figured out that there were a lot of hypocrites in my religion, including myself.  Duh.  Can any of us live up to our higher ideals?  There are hypocrites in every religion.  It makes you wonder if it's even worth it to have higher ideals.

But I'm pressing on because there's stuff I need to process here.  The hypocrisy hurts more, I think, when you hero-worship someone and then they fall off the pedestal.  And it hurts even worse, I think, when you compound that hero-worship with a long-term resolute determination to not see the person's faults.  So that you spend years, decades, shoring up your hero's heroic-ness, and when they fall off, you realize not only their flaws, but also your own participation in the whole mess.  You have to deal not only with anger and disappointment, but guilt and self-recrimination (how could I have been so dumb?)  You would have been better off--both you and your hero--if the hero worship had never happened.

This is my dad, of course.  He had faults, plenty of them.  Who doesn't?  He was a brilliant teacher of the Bible, and he created a version of Christianity that was compelling and beautiful and....oh, what's the right word.  real?  He could take the stories in the Bible and make them come alive-- the characters, the settings, the teachings.  He'd re-tell one of the scenes from Jesus's life, and turn it inside out, so that you'd think, whoa.  I never thought of it that way.  He was very clear about grace and forgiveness and love.  And I bought it.  All of it.  Hook, line and sinker. Not just the theology, but his projection of himself as the Teacher, the Man of God.

the problem was that he couldn't live in his personal life what he taught in his public life.  He wasn't exactly a horrible father; there are many who are far worse.  He just wasn't a very good one, and we had to cover that up so his ministry could continue to thrive.  He was by turns--turns that were completely unpredictable-- angry, cold, withdrawn, funny, critical, absent, and affectionate.  He was so proud of us when we made him look good, but at the same time so afraid that we would embarrass him.  We actively participated in creating his image so that he could keep doing his thing, even though he was emotionally abusive to my mom, and incapable of seeing his children as anything other than extensions of himself and his own needs. 

But was he unusual?  I don't think so.  I've read memoirs and heard stories of other people whose parents were "in the ministry" and I don't think he was much worse than any of them.  It goes with the territory.  But even though it's common, you still have deal with it.  I had to grow up and figure it out.  And especially, I've had to extract my faith, my belief system-- the theology I learned from him-- from who he was. 

That's harder than it sounds.  There's an old family story about me from when I was about four or five years old.  I was playing with a boy about my age and my mom overheard us boasting to each other.  "When my dad grows up," said the little boy, "he's going to be Superman!"  "Ha," I replied.  "That's nothing. When my dad grows up, he's going to be God."

You see my dilemma.  God the Father, earthly father.  I had them all entwined.  And that's what I've been working on processing for the last couple of weeks since I figured this out.  Or since I figured out this most recent round of it-- I've always been aware it was there.  How much of my anger and rage at the religion of my childhood is anger and rage at my dad?  Much of it, I'm afraid.  Maybe even most of it.  There's no chance that I'm going back to it.  Once I was old enough to make up my own mind, I left--motivated at least in part by a determination not to let my dad have the satisfaction of thinking I condoned his teaching.  And once I was out of it, I found a gazillion other reasons to not be there.  I'm not going back.  But I have to acknowledge that a big part of the break had nothing to do with the religion at all; it had to do with the man that tried to teach it to me.

I think there's still one more post coming on this topic.

Legacy

I've been talking to Julie some about how difficult it is to let yourself grieve for someone with whom you had a complicated relationship.  (For those of you who haven't been around very long, my amazing, difficult, complicated father passed away in June.)  Like all complicated things, it's easier for me to just push it away than to let myself think about it.  So, this post is part of an attempt to correct that.  There may be a few more forthcoming.

What I inherited from my father:

• if you put me down in a new town and leave me there for more than 48 hours, I will have figured out the main roads and many of the back roads.  Give me a week and I'll know the scenic routes, the fastest routes, and their alternates should traffic or boredom be a problem.  I can have endless conversations over maps about how to get from here to there.
• a sometimes spasmodic, sometimes consistent, sometimes inconvenient spirit of generosity and a neurotic desire to help
• blue eyes
• a love of travel:  to the next town, the next county, the next state, or overseas.  Trips by plane, train, subway, boat, and above all: road trips.  Although planes and boats require dramamine for me, which dad didn't need.
• an endless fascination with questions for which there are no answers:  why are we here?  what happens after we die? what/who is God?  what does it mean to be a moral person?  Dad's interest took a more orthodox route within the confines of his German baptist heritage while mine has moved far beyond the beliefs I was raised with-- but I still blame it on him because of his...
• boundless curiosity about how people work and how the world works
• if you find us at the lake, the car keys will be on the right front tire.  Just so you know.  Sometimes the left if the right seems a bit too exposed.
• his fanatic interest in cars and all sports (especially baseball) is muted in me into a more general interest that is still well above average compared to most women.  However, I did not inherit his fascination with tractors.  One of the more miserable memories of my childhood is being dragged (wink, wink) to tractor pulls.  At one point, he owned 4 tractors.  Or maybe it was 5.  And this is when we lived in a normal house in normal neighborhood (albeit with a big back yard).
• above average academic ability balanced with below average emotional intelligence and social skills
•  a love of pie
• a tendency toward irrational fears that don't respond well to reason, and yet a love of reason that makes it difficult to acknowledge that those fears even exist
• a tendency to take what's going on inside my head more seriously than what's going on in the "real" world
• a firm and abiding belief in prayer.  I've told you before I don't understand how it works, but I believe in it.  One of my dad's favorite ways to trip you up was to ask, when you had come to him with some seemingly insurmountable problem, "Have you prayed about it?"  And of course you hadn't, because if you had, it wouldn't feel so insurmountable.
• we are night owls, creatures of the night.  People talk about how fresh and new things are in the morning, and it's like they're speaking Martian.  I don't think I've ever in my 50 years felt fresh and new in the morning.  It takes about an hour after I wake up before I can even be civil, and that's if I've had a good night's sleep. 
• and we've got the insomnia that goes with that.  dangit.
• road trips.  Have I mentioned road trips?

I had dh read over this to see if he could think of anything else, and he said, "Well, both of you married well."  :-)

an old story

I've never come up with internet names for my beloved sisters because they don't appear all that often in this blog.  But I need names for them for this story, and even though I'm a lot less concerned with privacy than I used to be, it still feels wrong to use their real names.  so I googled "names that mean brave" for my older sister and came up with Val, and "names that mean friendly" for my younger sister and came up with Amy.  I love google. They are, of course, much more complex people than a single character trait, but I needed something to start with.

Fourteen years ago, Val surprised us all by deciding to get married in her late 30s-- much to the relief of my mom, who at that point was still married to my dad, and couldn't imagine that it was possible to be happy while single.  In our dysfunctional youth, Val was the star of the family.  She was a talented athlete (and still is, although now with six kids she doesn't have much time for it), an excellent student, and an amazingly hard worker.  Everyone in town knew Val and watched her athletic career with interest, although since she isn't particularly outgoing, I know that sometimes made her uncomfortable.  Dad was an athlete himself, and since he had no sons, Val was his chance to mold an athlete, to put it mildly.  Their relationship during that period was alternately tense and stormy.  Amy and I tried to stay out of it as much as possible. 

But Val never met the right guy until she moved to a big city and started attending a new church where she met my future brother-in-law. Amy and I had been married for a dozen years at that point, so it was the first wedding in the family in a long time, and it was a big deal.  My dad was doing double duty by walking Val down the aisle, where he would "give her away" while the pastor of  her church officiated, and then moving up to the front to conduct much of the rest of the ceremony.

So about fifteen minutes before the wedding was supposed to start, I found myself alone with my dad in the waiting area for the bridal party.  We were past our estrangement years at that point, and I had already spent hours and hours with a therapist trying to understand him.  I thought I had a handle on it.  I thought he must be feeling pretty emotional about his favorite daughter getting married, about giving her away and all that.  I laid a hand on his arm and said, "How are you doing?  Are you hanging in there OK?"  He looked up from my hand, surprised, his ice-blue eyes cool.  "Oh, yeah, I'm fine," he said, holding his hand out to show that he was rock-steady, no nerves.  I'm not sure he even understood what I was worried about.

Fourteen Years Later....
So the day we were leaving for our trip to Europe, I got a call from Amy that Dad had started to go downhill.  But of course we didn't know if it was temporary, or a final descent.  I talked to both Val and Amy, and they each urged us to go ahead with our plans.  But Val said, "You'd better call him before you leave.  It might be your last chance to talk to him."

I didn't want to.  I hate talking on the phone, for one thing, and for another, what the heck was I going to say?  But both sisters were urging me to call, and I knew it would mean a lot to his wife, so I called.  "Hey, Dad," I said.  "I hear you're not feeling very good."   He talked for a bit about feeling really weak and not being sure he was going to pull out of it this time.  I felt nothing but numb.  I couldn't think of anything to say.  Silence fell, then stretched out for ten or fifteen seconds.  "Are you OK?" he finally asked.  I realized he thought I was silenced by grief, and only just stopped myself from blurting out, "Oh, yeah, I'm fine."  "I hope you're feeling better soon," I said instead.  "I love you." 

I didn't catch the parallel until this morning.  Am I turning out just like him?  Maybe so.  But at the time it felt like, and still feels like, I was just done.  I had no more emotion to spend on him, I had already given it my all.  and yet here I am, still processing. 

suddenly, the phone rang.

For the last 25 years, I've felt a small clench in my stomach when the phone rings.  It will sound stupid when I admit this, but when has that stopped me before.  First of all, because I have a hatred/fear of talking on the phone that borders on phobia.  But also because it might be my dad.  His influence on me when I was young was practically mind control-- not because he was so awful, but because I was so anxious to please him that I took everything he said, all his attitudes, far too seriously.  And he had paternal and religious authority to back him up, not to mention that he was three times my size.  That's not to say that I take it as my fault that he was so overbearing, but just that I can acknowledge with 50 years of experience with my personality that I'm prone to that kind of thing-- that anxious, hand-wringing state of mind that doubts my own perceptions and worriedly tries to figure out what everyone else wants so I can produce it.

Dad played on that, to be sure.  He didn't mind that his middle daughter would do or say almost anything to please him.  He wasn't one of those fathers that wanted his daughters to grow up to be strong and opinionated.  Well, actually, he probably would have said that was what he wanted, but that wasn't the kind of attitude he fostered.  He fostered subservience, instant agreement to his opinions; we could earn his instant, icy disfavor if we got angry at him or rebelled.

Anyway.  I'm getting off track.  The point I was trying to make is that when I finally started going through therapy in my mid-twenties, in some ways it was like recovering from brainwashing.  So it was really, really difficult to be around him in anything but the most casual of situations because I was so well-trained to just default to his opinions, his way of thinking.  It literally scared me to be around him for many, many years because I was so afraid that I would give in to him, that he would have that kind of control over me again.  It was a long time before I could trust myself enough to know that I was too strong for him to control ever again.

So you take my dread of talking on the phone in any circumstances, and add to it my fear of talking specifically to him, and you get that knot in my stomach every time the phone rang.  It's the reason we finally got caller ID after many years of resisting all those fancy newfangled phone features (which may come as a surprise for the three of my readers who aren't old enough to remember back when phones didn't have caller ID)(heck, we still had a phone sitting in the closet that had a rotary dial up until about five or six years ago).  So if I was home alone, I could check the phone first and see if it was Dad.  I would (usually) still answer, but I had a few seconds to take a deep breath and be ready before I answered.

So last week I was home alone on Wednesday morning and the phone rang.  And it suddenly occurred to me that it couldn't be my dad.  It will never again be my dad.  The repercussions of that are still sinking in-- I can feel it like a mellow, glad sound reverberating through the layers of myself.  It feels like a bodily sensation, that relief, that relaxing of anxiety.  I felt a bit guilty about this at first, because it seemed so disrespectful of the dead to be relieved that he is gone.

But I've discovered --to my surprise-- that as I let that relief sink in, the good memories are coming back.  He used to lie on the couch in the living room and play King of the Mountain-- the three of us (who were all under age ten or so at that point) would try to roll him off the couch, giggling hysterically all the while.  And how utterly comforting it was to be able to hold his hand in a strange place. And his intuitive sense that something was bothering me-- he didn't always have it, but he knew more often than my mom did, that his odd, introverted middle daughter was bugged by something.  He was a good man.

in which I overuse my new word (more about dad)

One of the odder things I learned in school this year is the new way to use the word "fraught."  I thought when you said something was "fraught" it was always followed by "with...."  As in, fraught with peril, or fraught with challenge, or fraught with difficulty.  But now you can say something is "fraught" all by itself, and it means that it is difficult, challenging, perilous, or just plain old complicated.

So if you've been around awhile, you'll know my relationship with my dad was fraught.  It was all of those things:  difficult, challenging, and definitely complicated.  (perilous might be a bit of a stretch, but there were a few times it felt that way.)  So I wasn't sure what to expect when he died.  I wasn't sure how it would feel.  We each made numerous, numerous attempts to bridge the gulf between us, and none of them were entirely successful.  I'll tell you why that was, in my opinion-- because he was incapable of accepting responsibility for any of the havoc he caused in my life.  His solution to bridge the gap between us was for me to forget everything negative about him.  I wanted to bridge the gap with honesty, with telling the truth about what it was like.  He wanted me to forget anything bad ever happened.  Oh, dear, this wasn't where I was planning on going with this.  Obviously for the two or three of you who read here and knew him, that is an enormously one-sided take on things.  But this is my blog, and I can't speak from his perspective even if I wanted to.  I can only speak my own words.

Anyway.  there were a couple of years (ten years ago? twelve?) when we were literally not speaking to each other, but things had improved since then.  I gave up my bitterness and resentment toward him years ago-- or at least the bulk of it, it still surfaces now and again.  I've held him in a benign, distant sort of acknowledgement for a long time.  You're my dad, I'm your daughter.  It was just too difficult for me to do any more than that, because his twisted reality wreaked too much havoc with my own.  We'd see each other once a year or so (not bad given that we lived 2,000 miles apart), we called occasionally, we kept track of what was going on in each other's lives.  Well, actually, that was mainly one-sided-- he'd tell me about his stepsons and their kids, and I would listen.  Usually he would remember to ask about my kids, but not always.  It worked for me, and he seemed happy with it, too. 

Last summer he made one more attempt (and props to him for being the one to initiate it), which failed dismally in at least one way-- it convinced me once and for all that he was never going to be able to see things from my perspective.  Rather than any kind of acknowledgement of my experience, he wanted me to feel sorry for him because it had been so difficult for him when we were estranged.  But it succeeded in another way-- it laid to rest any anxiety I had that I should keep trying.  He just wasn't capable of what I wanted from him, and I love (loved) him anyway.  And he loved me in his own way, as much as he could. We were so very much alike; I suppose it was inevitable that our relationship would be fraught.  Is that forgiveness?  I'm not sure. 

So for the last year of his life, there was a sort of settled acceptance between us.  Détente. It was nice.  I liked it.  We talked more (though still not often), and he spent some time with MadMax, whom he loved very much.  But I wasn't sure how it would be when he died.  Would I wish I had tried harder?  Would I regret that I didn't give in and accept his reality so that we could be close?  Would I even care that he was gone?  Would my life actually be simpler without having to worry about my fraught relationship with him? 

I think I spent the first week or so in denial-- not surprising, since for most of it, I was traveling.  And traveling and traveling.  But now that we're back home, I find that although I have yet to feel any sense of regret (which may be yet to come, I'm not ruling it out), I have definitely been mourning him.  It has surprised me a little.  It's not something I feel all the time, but once or twice a day, a wave of sadness comes over me-- sometimes even strong enough that I find tears running down my cheeks.  Sadness for what could have been, I suppose, but also sadness that my dad is gone, that the unique person that he was is no longer in my life.   There's a hole there, no matter how difficult he was, a hole no one else can fill.  Today would have been his 79th birthday.  My sister said she ate maraschino cherries today in his honor-- he loved maraschino cherries-- and maybe I will think up something like that, too.

I read back over this and realized that by not telling you the details of things that happened long ago, I run the risk of making myself sound like a harridan who couldn't forgive her sick, aging father for his minor sins.  And I guess I'll just have to accept that, because at this point I'm not going to drag all the crap back out and air it publicly.  I could.  I could tell you details of things that happened in an attempt to convince you it was as painful as I'm telling you it was.  but you know, I just can't do it.  Partly because someday my kids will have their say and I certainly am not a perfect parent.  But mainly, I'm just not going there.  I've dealt with it-- I have years of therapy bills (and a good dose of peace) to show for it.  I'd rather leave it back there in the past where it belongs.

rest in peace, dad

I'm sitting at a Starbuck's in Seattle (which is like saying I'm sitting on sand at the beach, I know) in what has to be the yuppiest shopping center in town, and it is great to be back in the US.  Free wi-fi, and a lovely evening to sit and type.  We flew back from Dallas this morning, got in to Seattle just in time to be hungry, so went out for Vietnamese.  Then dropped dh and MadMax back at the airport so they could fly home-- dh has to work next week, and MadMax has basketball camp.   This was the week that Nell and I were supposed to be gallivanting around the moors, or maybe Dublin, and it's hard not to have... well, pangs.  But there's no way I would have missed the time with family that happened this week, so it's all good.  There will be other trips.

There was a delicate balancing act to perform this week.  Anyone who is the child of a much-admired, fairly public person will understand.  You have to publicly honor the good that your parent accomplished--which in the case of my dad, was considerable--without losing touch with the reality of your own experience, which may be quite different.  It is the rare public figure that can live up to their hype.

There are cases where the person's private life was so much at odds with his/her public life that the truth needs to come out, and the public accomplishments need to be re-assessed.  But I don't think that is the case with Dad.  I didn't (and don't) have any problem with remaining silent while listening to people talk about the amazing things he did.  He did some pretty amazing things for me, too.  But I have to say that the private times with my sisters, our spouses, and a few people who knew him very well, where we were able to laugh and cry and roll our eyes at the pain he caused along with the joys, was more therapeutic than the more public times.

But having said that, I have to say that the service was beautiful.  My dad had reached a point of contentment with his life in the last few years, and his illness lasted long enough that he was able to come to terms with his death, too.  He was ready, and although I doubt his wife would say she was ready for him to go, she was in any case ready for an end to his suffering.  I think in circumstances like that, the funeral can become a celebration of someone's life, and this one was.  Two of his mentees (is that the word for someone you mentor?) spoke movingly, and the man who was our pastor when I was in junior high and high school spoke.

My sisters spoke, too.  They asked me if I wanted to join them, but I didn't.  I didn't really think it through, I just knew for sure I didn't want to get up there and speak.  Not too surprising since whatever other reasons there might be, I have a life-long complete and utter dread of speaking in front of people.  My sisters did a lovely job of being humorous, and honest, and loving, without going into too much detail.

In a classic act of dad-ness, Dad had scripted his funeral, including telling our retired pastor what he wanted him to speak on.   The pastor made us all laugh telling the story.  "I don't let other people tell me what to preach."   "Then I'll find someone else to do it," my dad replied, which I can completely believe.  But they were both joking, because the pastor knew he would honor Dad's request, and Dad knew that there was no one else he would trust to do it.

So he talked about grace, using his own words and dad's outline.  The sentiments expressed were fairly standard ruminations on the Christian idea of grace, which is-- as we were taught in Vacation Bible School-- God's Riches At Christ's Expense.   Grace is about a gift you don't deserve, the love you receive at the moment when you are most unlovable, a cosmic random act of kindness of which you are the recipient (with random meaning not that it was unplanned, but that there is no reason you should have been picked out for it).

It's one of the most obvious of the major Christian doctrines, and one that is relatively easy to define, and yet it is--in my experience-- the one that is the hardest to live.  Because it requires giving up the idea that we need to deserve love and acceptance.  To truly recognize grace at a soul-deep level is to give up feeling inferior, like damaged goods.  It is to give up feeling unworthy, or unacceptable, or bad about yourself.  The ideas expressed at dad's funeral were specfically Christian, but I think it translates to any spiritual path.  I've been thinking about it a lot.

In fact, the funeral itself felt like a moment of grace to me.  I'm not done processing my dad's death, and certainly not his life or his influence on me, but there was a moment toward the end of the service where I was able to just let go of all that and be at peace.  At peace with him and at peace with me.

Nell is rejoicing at being back in the States with her buddies, but I'm supposed to pick her up in ten minutes, so I'd better go.  There may be more on this topic another time.  DSQ, it was so nice to see the Pilot Man.  Please tell him how much I appreciated his presence-- I didn't get a chance to talk to him, because I was so sure he was staying for dinner that I didn't track him down until he had already left.

tired but content

Well, once we heard that my dad was gone, it was a matter of about three minutes to decide that all four of us wanted to come back for the funeral.  It took over an hour on the phone with the Delta people (who were amazingly helpful considering how complicated our travel arrangements were), and then four days of hanging out in airports and hotel rooms to get there (Munich-Berlin-Amsterdam-Seattle-Dallas-East Texas). But we did make it, with about half an hour to spare before the graveside service.  Then there was a funeral at a local church, with a lavish potluck lunch afterwards, and dinner at my sister's for assorted family and friends last night.  It was a long, exhausting day, but so wonderful.  And there was entirely too much to eat.  I'll tell you more later, I'm sharing computer time with a household of people so can't linger.  Dh and MadMax are flying back home on Saturday, Nell and I will be back sometime the middle of last week (we have to pack up her stuff from her apartment and then drive from Seattle).

sounds like he's not going to last much more than 24 hours or so.  Thanks for your thoughts and prayers, Julie and Debbie.  This is hard but so far we are doing OK.

just wanted to let those of you who are regulars know what's going on and ask for prayers/positive thoughts/fgbvs.  I'm on a bus, believe it or not, between Prague and Munich.  We are having a wonderful time, it's been a terrific trip so far.  The only negative has been worry about my dad-- he has taken a severe turn for the worse and I've been getting daily emails from my sisters letting me know what's going on.  I'd appreciate it if you'd think of him and my sisters and his wife, and also us, as we try to figure out whether to keep going or to head back home.  My older sister, who is a medical type, says he probably has at least a week, but maybe not much longer than that.

I miss you and reading your blogs to find out what's going on in your lives-- am already writing posts in my head about what we've done.  we're leaving the city that has the internet connection so I have to get off.

dad again

A little less than a year ago I told you that my dad was dying.  And he was.  He is.  but not quite as quickly as they predicted.  They gave him 4-6 months last April, at best.  But then they started him on an experimental protocol, one of just eight people in the country who was trying it.  the others are now gone, but dad responded remarkably.  His doctor even used the word miraculous.  He was doing so well that he made it to our family reunion last summer, and got to be there for many more occasions in his grandkids' lives.  Every one was a gift.

But several weeks ago, things started going downhill again, and he spent much of last week in the hospital.  The last two nights, I've dreamed about him, dreams where I'm saying good-bye, and it makes me wonder if the end is close now.  That's the main reason for our trip south next week.  It won't be easy.  Things with my dad are never easy for me.  But it will be good.  Send some positive vibes my way if you think of it (what are known as FGBVs among some of us), with some extras for my dad, his wife, and my sisters.

Progress

A good thing happened today.  I spent the day with my dad and his wife at the hospital and I learned something I needed to know.  For years now, I've had as little to do with my dad as possible.  There were a couple of years back in my mid-thirties when I literally wasn't speaking to him.  It wasn't because I was mad at him, although I was, it was because I needed a break.  He's so intense, and being around him was so difficult for me, that it would take days to recover my equilibrium after spending time with him.  I just wanted some time off.  I kept up with him through my mom and my sisters (this was before my parents divorced), but I didn't see him or speak to him for a couple of years.

But even once we were back in touch, I never spent more than a day or two around him.  We'd have dinner with him, or we'd be at some big family gathering. Once or twice we spent the night at his new house once he remarried.  I'd be around him just long enough to realize, "Yup, he's still the same old guy he's always been," and then I'd be glad I didn't have to be around him much anymore.  Times have changed now.  His wife needs our support, no matter how I feel about him.  So the visit I made here earlier this month, and now this one, are the first times in a dozen years I've been around him for any length of time.  And I'm discovering that I'm stronger than I think. I've grown up a lot.  Which is such a relief, because I'm frickin' 48 years old.  Thank GOD.

There was that moment yesterday, which was indeed painful.  It cut right through to the core of the little girl I once was, confused and hopeful and trying to please, but just never quite getting him to see me.  But today, I spent the entire day with him, and even though he's still the same guy, he still makes cracks about women that are borderline offensive, he still looks at me and sees someone who is not even remotely related to how I see myself-- even though all of that is still true, it was OK.  I sat there with them, and we chatted between the blood draws, or sat and read, or watched Wimbledon, and I was fine.  I could handle it.  I wasn't terrified that he would somehow be able to undermine who I am, which I think is what used to scare me to death about him.  He was such a strong person, and had such an influence over me, and the way he saw me and saw the world were not at all how I saw things. It seemed like the "real" me was erased whenever I spent time with him.  But he can't do that anymore, because there's too much of who I am for him to erase now.  Ha. I guess I have my own columnar self now.

Cuteness is as cuteness does

One of the things I disliked about growing up in the south is the cute thing.  There are many ways that women can be in the South, but one of the favorites is cute, in a way that would be entirely unacceptable if you lived in, say, New York City or Seattle.  Southerners love perky women, adorable women.  And they probably wouldn't use the word "women" in this context, but I'm so used to it that I can't imagine a different way to say it.  Maybe gals.  I remember the first time I moved out of the south, it was such a relief to be able to dump the whole cute thing.  I suppose everyone has their cute moments, but generally speaking, I am not cute.  I am definitely not perky.  In my natural state, I'm kind of grumpy and prickly.  And I'm not talking about looks here.  Although being physically adorable helps, cuteness is a State of Mind.

My dad has always loved women--ladies, gals-- who were cute and perky.  The cynical side of me wants to add: women who catered to him, buttered him up, flirted with him and teased with him.  He also liked women who were "tiny."  It was the adjective he used most often to describe women whom he found attractive.  But my mom, my sisters and I are not tiny.  We are not huge, and none of us is really overweight, but we are relatively tall-- all four of us within an inch of  5'7"-- and we are not reed thin.  We were never described as tiny.

My dad's second wife is tiny. She is funny, lovely both within and without, with a heart as big as all outdoors and a laugh that you can hear from the other side of the house.  I don't in any way mean to criticize her; her generosity of spirit and her utter zest for life come through in everything she does.  But she is about 5'2" and can't weight any more than 105 soaking weight.  She is tiny, and cute, and at times you could even call her perky.  She comes by it honestly; she is a naturally extroverted, bubbly person.  And my dad finally has what he always wanted.  He said to me today, "She gets her hair up in a ponytail and gets in her Jeep [convertible], and she's the cutest thing in town."

And on the one hand, while part of me can get angry about the absurdity of a man who is 78 years old who still wants his wife to be "the cutest thing in town," another part of me has to admit it hurts.  I'll even admit to being jealous.  I wish to hell I could say that I'm beyond all that, I have my own self-esteem, it doesn't matter what he thinks, but it would only be partially true.  All those years that I tried and tried to please him, tried to twist and mold myself into being the kind of woman that he would admire.  I didn't always know exactly what it was that would do it, but I tried.  And it turns out all he wanted was something my sisters and I could/can never be.  Someone tiny and cute and adorable.  Someone not us.  He is happy with her.  He was not happy with us.

I can rage about it and I can be mad about how unfair it is, but I can't change it.  And after I let myself feel the anger and the jealousy and the unfairness of it, I just have to let it go.  I've been in therapy, I've read Oprah Magazine and plenty of self-help books.  I know how this works.  He is who he is.  It is far too late to change him.  He is happy with his cute, adorable wife, whom I love very much.  And I'm so, so glad that pleasing my dad is no longer high on my priority list.

So I'm feeling the pain and letting it go.  Wish me luck.

Dad

My dad is dying. I guess we're all dying, if you want to look at it that way, but this is the real thing. The kind of dying where the doctor walks in to your hospital room and tells you that there's nothing they can do, the cancer (which was only discovered last Thursday) has already metastasized, chemo might make you more comfortable but there is no chance of a cure or even remission. He has a few months at best, a few weeks at worst. A month ago, he was a healthy 77-year-old. Now he could go at any time.

It's a strange feeling for me. My dad and I have never had an easy relationship, but he's always been there. I don't mean "he's always been there for me," I mean that he's always been somewhere on planet Earth, somewhere where I could find him if I wanted to, or call him, or he could call me. I could dread having to see him, or look forward to seeing him, or do my best to ignore him. But he was somewhere. Apparently that won't always be true. Quite soon, that won't be true.

Other than the occasional brief mention, I haven't written about my dad in this blog. I almost never write directly about the people in my life at all, because I don't know if they would choose to be here. It's my blog, told inescapably from my point of view, and it seems unfair to drag the people I love and live with into it. But if you know my dad and you know me, you will have seen that he is written into every post. His influence on me has been enormous, inescapable. The way I think about faith and theology, the way I read and analyze and dissect, the way I can't ever leave it alone-- it's all him. Every good thing I believe about Christianity has its roots in his teaching. And many of the angry, resentful thoughts I have about Christianity have their roots in the ways he couldn't live what he taught. Couldn't accept grace, couldn't forgive old hurts, couldn't allow himself to be vulnerable enough to admit to his own failings. And those flaws sound awfully familiar, because they are my own.

My Dad was and is an amazing man in many ways-- a brilliant teacher, an inspiring leader, a visionary who could be generous, thoughtful and kindhearted to those around him, even to people he barely knew. He spent hours talking to and counseling students, often at the expense of his own free time, his own sleep. He inspired awe and admiration in people because he was so good at what he did. But he wasn't easy to live with. You might say he was easy to worship, but difficult to love. Those of us who tried during his angry years have the scars to prove it. When his unhappiness was at its worst, he took it out on us by either withdrawing into cold, supercilious silence or scathing us with sarcastic, angry outbursts. But then at other times, he could be the best daddy in the world.

It's nothing new. It's the story of millions of parents with their children, and as I raise my own kids, I see firsthand how impossible it is to be the parent you wish you could be. The passage of time (and plenty of counseling) has helped me put my dad into perspective, to see his flaws and his brilliance as part of the whole of the complicated person that he is.

Proof of that complexity: my dad is happy now. For the last half dozen or so years, he's been the happiest I've ever known him to be. Some of it is just the passage of time. I remember after seeing him one time when I was in my early 30s, I told my husband it was like he had been de-clawed. He just wasn't so angry anymore. Maybe the idea of grace was finally sinking in.

But another reason for his happiness is his second wife. When we were growing up, he was doing a not-particularly-good job of surviving in a marriage that wasn't working. But when my mom finally had the courage to call an end to that about ten years ago, he remarried a woman who suited him to a T. She isn't really my stepmother-- she's only eight years older than I am, and I didn't meet her until I was in my late 30s-- but she is an amazing person. Not only in what she does and how she lives, but because she made my dad happy, something none of us who had lived in the same house with him thought was possible. I have come to love her dearly for that. I'm glad he's happy. I think if he had received this news fifteen years ago, it wouldn't really have bothered him much. But now you can hear in his voice how much he regrets the remaining years he might have had with her. And with his grandkids. He's a terrific, doting grandfather.

But unless he confounds medical science, those years are not to be. In spite of everything, because of everything, I'll miss him.

Part I- from November 2004

This is a combination of two posts, you'll probably be able to tell where I pasted them together, written in 2004 and early 2005, and edited in early January 2008.  Both this post and the next one seem a bit gush-y and naive, even just four years later, but there aren't any major changes so I'm leaving them here.

My father is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, although he never had a church. He was a seminary professor, a college religion professor, and the director of an Evangelical retreat center and youth camp for many years, as well as a few other things along the way. He was from the Midwest, the son of a GARB (more conservative, fundamentalist Baptist) minister. My mom was raised in the South in a well-to-do home. She is as sweet and lovely a person as you can imagine, but she has her occasional rebellious streak (which I love), and one of her most amazing rebellious acts was to marry this Yankee with few prospects for success in the way her parents defined it.

My father is a theologian, by training and temperament. He loves to think about God and the nature of the universe and the beauty of the Christian scriptures. We had amazing conversations around the dinner table. For his time and his upbringing, he was quite progressive in his thinking. He was far less concerned about the externals of his fundamentalist upbringing, concentrating instead on the love and mercy of God, and how that can be expressed in our lives. I didn't always agree with him, but he was/is a powerful, charismatic speaker and it is hard to disagree with him. If I disagreed, I didn't say it. And if I said it, I caved in quickly, even if I still didn't agree. All in all, I was pretty happy with my faith, and I was sure it was Right. The Truth.

The turning point for me was when I went off for my freshman year of college at a conservative Christian school. It was far more conservative than the way I had been raised, but I was convinced it was going to be wonderful-- all those Christians together in one place? it would be like one big love-fest all the time, wouldn't it? Well, of course, that turned out not to be the case. There were cliques and popular people and snobs, just like at any other school. They just said they were Christian. I don't want to be too hard on that school, because I met some wonderful people there and had a great time. But I became increasingly uncomfortable with the larger picture, what was happening outside my group of friends.

So after two years, I transferred to a secular school on the West coast. I was in nirvana. I loved it there. Oddly, my new friends, none of whom were Christian, were so much more honest. There was no striving to be achieve the outward look of a "good" Christian. They were just good people, learning and growing and questioning like I was-- well, of course, they weren't asking the same questions I was, since none of them came from a similar background, but their attitude toward the search was similar. I was so much happier, and I felt at home. That was the first stage.

At the end of my junior year, I had a tiny experience that had large consequences. There was a housing lottery to see where we would live the next year. I don't remember exactly the mechanics of how it worked, but I remember what my prayer was: I prayed and prayed not for any particular outcome, but that I would get some sort of housing in the lottery so I wouldn't have to worry about housing over the summer. I prayed about it a lot, and I was confident that God would grant my request, as "he" had so many others.

But it didn't happen. My friends and I that had gone into the lottery together didn't get a spot, and were left without knowing where we would live the next year (which wasn't uncommon, I don't want to make this sound like it was a big tragedy, it just meant we would have to find our own housing the next fall).

But that little thing totally threw me off. It was like someone sticking a rod in the spokes of my bicycle. I had been trundling along just fine with a set of beliefs I had outgrown without realizing it, and suddenly there I was with a broken bike. What happened? The bible says, explicitly, that if you ask in faith, your prayers will be answered. I had asked with the same faith that I had had for many other prayer requests, but this one wasn't answered. Now, I know the standard evangelical responses to this dilemma, you don't need to reply and tell them to me. I could tell myself all the things I had heard all my life about why God doesn't answer prayer. And it seemed silly to be so upset about a prayer request that was so small. I wasn't the only person in this boat, there were hundreds of us who didn't know where we would be living in the Fall. But suddenly the logical inconsistencies of my faith were right there staring me in the face. When my prayers were answered, I took it as proof that God loved me and cared about every detail of my life and had a plan for me. When my prayers weren't answered, it didn't prove the opposite. I was supposed to just shrug and say, "I guess it wasn't meant to be." I decided at the very least that I had to stop believing that answers to prayer were proof of God's existence, because when "he" didn't answer, I didn't therefore believe that it proved God's nonexistence. It just didn't make sense. That was the second stage. But I wasn't nearly ready to break away. It was just another nail in the coffin.

But where I finally just couldn't come to terms with it anymore was over trying to convert people. I just could never believe the whole evangelizing thing. Sure, talk about your faith and how it works in your life. But this whole organized drive to convert people -- I just could never buy it, even when I was younger, and I was ashamed and embarrassed to be part of a group that would do it. They have ways of dressing it up so it doesn't sound anything like that, but that's what it is: manipulation, pure and simple. They can rationalize any tactic because after all, they're saving your soul from eternal damnation, right?

But it didn't take me three months out there in the real world to realize that a lot of people who weren't conservative Christians had spent way more time thinking about Christianity than I had and were perfectly capable of coming to their own conclusions without any help from me. Many of the non-Christians I met were far better people than I was, in terms of taking responsibility for themselves and their world, and relating openly and honestly with others. I just couldn't believe that kind of evangelism was what Jesus wanted, if he wanted it at all. It was such a huge lack of respect for other people and their beliefs and experiences-- to assume that I had the answer and that they were desperately in need of it (they just didn't know that, you see) was more than I could tolerate. So, with all these things and a bunch of others, by the time I was 25, my spouse and I left the Bible church we had been attending and I no longer considered myself an Evangelical.

So .. there were a number of intervening years here where I was sorting things out... but the next thing I tried was more liberal Christianity, which I loved at first (and it's where I've ended up, although there were some intervening things, as you'll see) (not sure why I had to give away my ending there, but this isn't exactly a mystery novel). It was absolutely amazing to me at first to find out that there were Christians who read the Bible as a book of wisdom and inspiration, but didn't seem to believe that it had to be taken as literally true in every single syllable. If you don't know much about conservative Christians, that might seem odd, but that is the single most important defining characteristic of being a conservative Christian: you believe the Bible is literally, word-for-word, capital-T True. It is the "inerrant" word of God: without error. Yes, it was written by human beings, but they were "inspired" by God to write what He wanted them to write (masculine pronoun used on purpose, since this crowd almost always sees God as male).

I had been raised with phrase after phrase of Scripture thrown at me constantly to reinforce every belief that I questioned or disliked. For example, it is easy-cheesy to "prove" that Jesus wanted us to go out and hit people over the head with Americanized Christianity if you want to: for starters, Jesus says right before he returns to heaven, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations," in the Gospel of Matthew. This is known, in conservative circles, as "The Great Commission." And then you can prove that women can't be pastors: St Paul says "I would not have a woman be over a man," and that's not even touching all the stuff about wives submitting to their husbands in the Letter to the Ephesians. These verses can be interpreted in lots of different ways, starting with setting them in their historical context, but when you're eight, nobody tells you that, they just say these phrases over and over until they ring in your head and the interpretation you've been handed is the only one that you can imagine.

So anyway, back to the Episcopalians (because that's where I went after I left the Bible church I had been attending). It was exactly the same Bible and exactly the same set of characters and basic outline of beliefs that I'd grown up with, but so different it literally astonished me. There was a woman pastor; I found myself moved to tears the first time I saw her in the pulpit and heard her preach. I still have difficulty putting into words how much it meant to me.

But then we moved, and the Episcopal church in our new location was not a good situation. So more searching ensued. to be continued.

I've eaten half a jar of dill pickles while I've been sitting here, how weird is that.

yours in a vinegar-y state,
Aunt BeaN