Category: journey

Father’s day was one of those frustrating days that, for all intents and purposes should be wonderfully reflective but because life has a way of complicating things- it became less so. 

Significantly less, honestly… 

On Saturday Chw was short tempered and moody. We’d had a great Friday night, and he’d slept in that morning so, for the life of me, I couldn’t quite psychoanalize why he was being cantankerous. For the most part Gen and I ignored his mood, and Amanda went to work. As the day progressed, and we made our way to the Roller Derby bout- he seemed to even out and all was right with the world again. 

Enter Sunday morning. Homemade cinnamon rolls, warm and gooey… Cards, kisses, hugs, doting affection, new clothes and plans for taking him to his dream museum while we are on vacation- were passed out. Happiness flooded around us, or should have. 

Then I remember… For us, Father’s Day always sucked. 

How could I forget? 

There is the slap-in-your-face reminder that we had craptacular father experiences growing up- (aside from my foster dad, as I’ve mentioned, but the details only complicate this further- so moving on.) And then, when we were still but babies ourselves Father’s Day (and Mother’s Day) served as a blatant kick-in-the-teeth reminded of the babies we’d lost. 

Well into our 30’s, we don’t dwell on such things now. My husband is a truly great dad and we love our kids more than we can possibly sum up in words and phrases. I was one hundred percent eager to shower him with the adoration he deserves- but from the start the day seemed off. 

Then, during a quiet mid-morning moment he confessed to me why his mood had been off the day before. 

Because he feels like a fake dad. 

A fake dad… 

And I couldn’t hug him hard enough. Then Genny took him (and me) to see Kung Foo Panda 2 and it sort of made me want to crawl in bed and cry the day away. For my husband. For our kids. All he wanted today, honestly, was to spend the day with us. He wanted his life to feel real, validated and authentic. But for him, it’s already (by the nature of life) a sensitive day… And for our oldest daughter, it’s just an unexplainable complicated day. Instead it sort of took on this element of sadness… 

Sadness sucks. 

And then, when he went out of his way to do something nice, his family just sort of heaped on the hurt. Also with details far too complicated to delve into here- he came home emotionally beaten and trying to put on a brave face. He actually felt GUILTY for ruining our efforts, so he spent the rest of the day pretending. 

All in all, it’s far too much to bear for one man. I felt so helpless… 

The morals of this melancholy tale are- 

– infertility/miscarriage sucks ass everyday, but some days are far worse than others. (primarily Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, baby showers, etc…) 

– loving kids, as though they were your own, who have been hurt before you is hard. So hard. So sad because you love them and though some wounds heal, those scars will always be a part of who they are. Also, like an ugly monster, those scars will rise up and effect you on the biggest, most significant of occasions… and on holidays. Like Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. 

– Sometimes life is unfair and it sucks. 

– Being sad unexpectedly, or still hurting from something that was a long time ago isn’t self pity- it’s just the way it is sometimes. Losses, like those of babies, children, parents, innocence, childhood, etc are real life losses… they leave a part of you empty for the long haul. 

– Be sensitive to people who have lost babies or been abused. PLEASE don’t tell them to “get over it” because it was “a long time ago.” 

The end… 

My first “life” lesson was probably on that of fathers. Mostly because mine was absolutely nowhere to be found, in a very small town where a chunk of his family still remained. While those remnants of family members worked hard to slander my girlhood name- my father never managed to come rescue me as I wished he would. 

 Lesson learned: I’m worth nothing if even my own father refuses to love (or even meet) me.

The funny thing about life lessons though, is they keep evolving.

I dreamed of him saving me from my step father and his lust for me. 

Lesson learned: If I am worth anything at all, the only worth is in sexual things. 

When life intervened and I ended up in a group home, I imagined my father riding in {looking quite a lot like Joe Penny, circa mid’80’s}and dadding me in the way that a dad should dad his daughter. {yep, I did just make a verb. It’s allowed.} When i was fifteen, however, my birth mom grew weary of me placing my complete-stranger of a father upon a pedestal and she sent him a letter. He replied, to me, with pages and pages of beautifully penned words of love. 

Pedestal earned. My daddy loved me. My daddy wanted me. 

Two years passed before I would meet him- an event which no one bothered to emotionally prepare me for. I completely shut down/withdrew during the few hours we had together. Honestly I remember none of it. Later, though, when word got back to me that he was disappointed in me and wished he hadn’t met me- I completely lost my compass.

Lesson learned: I was a disgusting, repulsive girl. I would never amount to anything. 

Roughly six years later, I was a twenty three year old divorced girl who had just had a complete hysterectomy. I was a little overwhelmed and making some fairly self destructive choices. One night, on a long car ride back to Boise from my foster parents mountain home, my foster dad (whom I just call dad.) Told me of his love for me. He touched on disappointments in choices I had made, expressed deep seeded concerns he had and recounted how he had been the one (as in, one and only) to sit, wringing his hands, in the waiting room while I’d had tumors removed. (The hysterectomy had not been scheduled. Cancer had been the giant fear that day.) He talked about shared holidays and the eleven years he’d spent daddying me and how blessed he felt by the trust I had given but that he wished I’d really give in and trust him more. 

Three years post that car ride conversation, my father made it known (via his wife) that he wanted another go at things. He felt crippled in his insecurity but wanted to really make things work with me. Except they didn’t work. Around my husband’s very crazy work schedule (he traveled, a lot) and my youngest’s school and special needs routine- both Chw and i felt like we were moving mountains to treck the 6 hours south to spend quality time getting to know them. Though I had grown up a lot, I had enough self respect to know that I’d take time with opening up and very openly communicated that, to which both he & she had claimed complete sensitivity and understanding. 

But they were not sensitive. 

And they were not understanding. 

They kept score of my multitude of imperfections and each trip down there, which led me to opening up more and more of my brokenness and love, became some catwalk for their secret judging and score keeping to commence. 

On my 29th birthday, via a string of hateful emails my father’s wife spoke for both of them as she attempted to insult me to my core and shatter me. Though the shards of her hatred did hurt, I was (thankfully) able to see her words for what they were. She’d never taken the time or made the effort to truly know me. To truly know us. The only person their words deeply wounded was my attachment disorder daughter who loved them and still, six years later, wishes they knew and loved her. It was her their rejection hurt. A tiny child who’d already been hurt so much by the time she made it to our family… 

{sidenote: we spent the entire next day riding roller coasters and playing in the ocean. I thought, not one little time, about them. There was no heaviness… second sidenote: For years, following, I did include them in our Christmas card list. This was always for Genny. She still, though I don’t understand it, loves them. In the grand scheme of her life with us- they hold but a blip. Because she’d never had “grandparents” before them, though- that blip made a pretty big impact. I regret giving them that power over her. They didn’t deserve the gift of her love…}

After another six years, I look at my husband. I look at this man who hasn’t blinked an eye over my inability to birth a little us. He adores our kids and I know him, I know his heart. He physically could not love them more. I look at my dad, (from a distance, as he lives in Kansas and I haven’t seen him for over a year) and I know the man he is. Such a good man… An amazing man. I look at our friends, and the men we know. Men who love and work for their children. Men who know basic things like their children’s favorite colors and bigger things like their fears and secrets. 

EVERY man does NOT deserve to be a dad...