The Woman I Am, the Father He's Been

"I really feel like, after reading that blog post, I suddenly understand your obsession with Teddy Roosevelt."

"Yeah?"

I'm chatting with a (male) friend of mine about some of the writing I've done surrounding my father and why it's a hard topic for me to broach. I'm also trying to articulate exactly why I feel so goddamn compelled to keep trying to write about our relationship with one another. 

"Yeah. The father/daughter stuff was good. Your (kinda unrealistic) expectations about men was super interesting. I felt like I could better understand those and how those tied back to the men you find interesting in history now that I've read about your dad." 

***

A friend described me last week as "snarffectionate." 

Man, I've got a lot of feelings. My predictive text now recognizes ohmygodfeelings as something that follows the words "men," "boys," "domestic violence" or "best friend emergency." But despite having a lot of feelings, I seem to be best able to communicate my affection for other people through a series of backhanded (at best) compliments and often through snark and sarcasm. 

When it comes to giving an actual face-to-face, real compliment, I'd rather hide behind sassiness. 

For what it's worth, when I receive compliments I generally change the subject or walk away. 

I don't receive a lot of compliments. 

***

I do not introduce the men in my life to my father.

He's met a grand total of two, maybe three of my male friends from college. He met one friend from graduate school, and since then, no one. It helped tremendously that throughout college I lived, you know, at a college for women in the middle of a cornfield (not Mom and Dad's idea of a vacation hotspot).

I do not introduce my male friends to my father and with the unavoidable exception of my high school boyfriend, I have never once even considered introducing a boyfriend to my father.

So this summer, while planning a trip to Milwaukee for a Brewers game with some male friends of mine, I made sure to arrange it over a weekend my folks would be at the cabin. Imagine my horror when Mom and Dad informed me that they'd be back on Saturday and would see us Sunday morning before we left.

"Are you sure you guys don't want to come back Sunday? I mean, after we've had a chance to get out of the house?"

"Kelly," Mom asks "who the hell are you bringing over that you don't want us to meet them?"

***

I can't stop thinking about my father.

I've been doing a lot of things lately that remind me of him. Whether it's boning a chicken and thanking the lord for all the times I watched him butcher a deer or logging running miles and feeling myself getting stronger and faster, I keep thinking about him. 

The consequence, of that much thinking about him is that I want to write about him, about us and our complicated, undramatic relationship. The problem is that whenever I try to write about him my chest tightens up and it hurts to breathe. 

My relationships with the rest of my family are entirely straightforward. I am the spittin' image of my mother. My brothers and I have friendly enough relationships, and I would bail them out of jail if they needed me. I can articulate why and how much I love them without any of the hangups I seem to have surrounding my father. 

Part the the issue, I expect, is that I'm afraid to simply be labeled as the girl with "Daddy Issues." 

Part of the issue, I expect, is that when it comes to really strong emotions, I never learned how to deal with them aside from wrapping them in a bundle of snark and sarcasm and hoping that everyone would see through those layers to the affection that was inside. 

It is, to a certain extent, a defense mechanism I learned from him. 

***

I don't introduce men in my life to my father for a lot of reasons.

One is because of his politics. We are at opposite sides of the political spectrum (aren't most children/parents?) and he really likes to argue. I tend to back down from disagreements with him (or with anyone outside of a completely academic setting, where I will eviscerate you if I can). Another is because the men I date/spend time with tend to have little interest in professional sports, hunting, beer-brewing, shooting, or fixing things. I suppose to a certain extent I'm worried that my father will look at the men I'm spending my time with and think "is this it?" 

That last part is extremely unlikely. My father likes just about everyone. 

More than anything, I think I'm trying to protect my father. 

It's a silly sentiment, especially if you've met him, but it's one that I can't shake. 

It is deeply, profoundly important to me that the men in my life like and respect my father. And I worry that because of his idiosyncrasies, he might be a tough sell to the academic, comic-booky type men in my life. The reason I need them to like and respect him, I realized in a moment of therapeutic breakthrough, is not because he's my father and I have a bunch of Midwestern conceptions about the roles of men formed because he's the person he has (although these are certainly part of it), but because more than anyone else in my life, he has formed my personality. 

I am the woman I am because he's been the father he's been. 

We are polar opposites when it comes to everything from politics to religion to our feelings on American car manufacturers. But all of the aspects of my personality that I like: my work ethic, my ability to hold my own in a conversation about cars or cooking, the capacity I have for finding wonder in stupid, silly, every day things, are all a result of him. 

I love him so much for teaching me these things. 

I don't introduce the men in my life to my father because I'm afraid that they won't love and respect him the way I do. And, when it comes down to it, not loving respecting him the way I do feels a lot like a direct rejection of the best parts of who I am.