Anyone that's read my previous entries knows that I have struggled with my paternal relationship and feelings surrounding my father for many years. Today I wish to explore that part of my growing up a little deeper as I find myself again attempting to rebuild broken bonds with my father and his wife.
There is a song that I hear on the radio by The Zac Brown Band called "Highway 20 Ride." This song really caught my attention due to the subject matter and perspective of the estranged father. I've spent many selfish years as a daughter looking for perfection in a man that isn't perfect, when I am obviously not a perfect daughter or mother. This song is written for a son by his father, the father desperately trying to explain all of the heartache that he feels being away from his son.
The listener is able to gain from this song that the father cares so much for his son that he makes a long drive every other weekend in order to have just a small amount of time with his beloved child. It's been a song that I hear at the most needed of times, almost like the radio DJ knows that it's time to play this one for Jenn. I heard it when my friend lost her daughter as I was on the way south to be with the family during a very tragic time. On arrival at my destination, a long time family friend reminded me again of what a wonderful and devoted father I have.
Every time this family friend has commended my father for his job raising myself and my siblings, I have a bitter feeling inside. Sure, the trips and activities seemed great from the outside perspective, but what about everything else? What about the support that I needed so many times that just didn't seem to be there? Now, at 30, it's starting to make sense to me.
No, my father isn't perfect now. No, he wasn't perfect during my formative childhood years. I have set my expectations too high, though, and have not appreciated what I do have in a father. A voice mail message that I can't bring myself to delete that says, "I love you so much." Something I know I've taken for granted all of these years. "Of course my father loves me," I've often thought to myself. What I know now, however, is that he doesn't have to say so. He says this because he needs to.
He didn't have to pick us up for the weekend visits, nor did he have to take us places. As children, we expect so much. My four year old has developed a habit of asking me daily what "prize" I have brought him home. What he doesn't understand at his age (yet) is that not every day brings a prize. What I didn't understand as a child was that not every father goes to the trouble and expense to take his children to the beach, the mountains, the amusement parks...all of those wonderful things that we did growing up and just expected.
As my father's health is so obviously in decline, I find myself regretting the relationship never being more developed than it is today. Will I know the answers to questions posed by my children about their grandfather? We have already lost my father-in-law, also a man that remains a mystery to me in so many ways. I want for my sons to know their grandfather in this life while we still have him here with us, and I want for them to remember him fondly when he is gone.
I feel so strongly that my father not only loves me and the rest of the family, but also would love to know us better. I would like to know him better. How? That is the simple yet troubling question that I find myself facing at this point in life. Visits are costly with our current fuel prices, and phone conversations are difficult with modern phone service being no better than what we all know it to be. So...letters? Maybe that's the answer. I'm not sure how well the responses could be written with the paralyzing stroke leaving its mark on my father since last year, but it's worth a shot. :)
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