Can You Handle The Truth?

Friday night, after my epiphany, I called my father. I haven't seen him in 20 years. I've only talked to him 3 times, maybe 4. And none of the conversations we had were good conversations. He was angry. Blamed my mother. Blamed my sister. Blamed me. For the fact we had no relationship. For everything that went wrong. And every time after I hung up, I never felt any better. Except about knowing that he hadn't changed one bit. And that he didn't see anything my sister and I went through. That he thought it was our fault. All our fault. And I couldn't make him take responsibility for his actions. No matter how hard I tried. And in those conversations, I had tried.

Apparently, this epiphany was a bigger one than say the one where Kelly looked at a picture of him and said, "My God, you look just like him." And then at that moment, I realized that he hated himself and that's why he was so cruel to me. He saw himself when he looked at me. Even though he contemptuously called me "my mother's daughter," he saw himself when he looked at me. If only it was that simple. It's never that simple.

The "Unexpected Legacy of Divorce" (an amazing book on divorce... really. Oprah-approved and endorsed) states that alot of times men abandon the first children from a divorce and go on to create a new family because they don't want to be reminded of the failures from their past. When I read that, it made sense. My father was a perfectionist. He expected perfection from himself and everyone else. But I didn't realize how right that was until I saw him. Yes, I saw him. He came to me. For the first time in my whole life that I can remember, he came to me. It was a pretty big deal.

For some reason, I wasn't nervous. I wasn't scared. I wasn't angry. I just knew it had to happen. That finally, it was time for it to happen. He's seventy years-old now, has had two heart surgeries in two years, owns two declawed cats (which I take issue with-- the declawing part), lives in a one bedroom apartment by himself, is a lawyer who now works at Enterprise Rent-A-Car as a driver and has nothing to his name aka is barely scraping by after making $60,000 a month some months. All those things made it time.

A man changes a lot in 20 years. This man more than I would have thought. Emotionally. Physically. Gone was the power suit and brown-haired corporate lawyer that appeared at my high school graduation -- that being the last time I saw him -- instead a gray-haired, Levi's wearing working man limped up my front walk. I was taken aback. Said, "Oh, hi." I didn't know what else to say. He wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to stay at home. I needed to feel safe. I remembered the angry scenes of my childhood and let's be honest, these days, I'm kind of a crier. It was Saturday. Who wants to be a 38 year-old woman crying about her childhood while sitting next to a woman of the same age with children of her very own? Not to mention her husband and the kid's father?

I'm glad that's the way it went down because we got nowhere fast. He kept blaming my sister and I for not trying harder. I said we were children-- they got divorced when I was four, my sister six and a half. How hard could kids try to have a relationship when their father wasn't trying back? He said it was my mother. I said we had no money to live. He said we did. I told him I didn't imagine the food stamps. He said I had to be wrong. I said that when a kid gets made fun of for their clothes, they remember that. They don't make it up. No one wants to make up pain. He said he gave my mom more than enough money. I told him that maybe he didn't know what enough money was. Because it's not like my mom was hoarding it. It's not like she said to herself, "No, I'm sorry. I'd rather the kids learned to suffer. I'll never buy things for them. I'd rather they eat spaghetti every night. And have reduced price meals at school. It will teach them to be thrifty." The sarcasm was lost on him. Pretty much everything was. I couldn't make him see. No matter what I said he fought me. After awhile, I wondered why he even came. After an hour and a half, I wanted him to leave. And he wanted to go. I gave him directions to the freeway. Then he saw a chair in my office area. And he asked if it came from my mom's place. I said yes. And he said that he had reupholstered it. That's when he sat down.

That's when something happened. Because I found a way in. I found a way to find out who he was. And what made him that way. I asked him what his childhood was like. I mean, once I had that conversation with my mother, I learned shit that I never knew. Shit that made sense to me about the kind of mother she was. No one taught her how to be a parent. No one taught her how to grieve.

Then, I found a way to describe what it felt like to be us-- my sister and me. Having two parents who hated each other. Who didn't communicate. Who were so busy fighting they didn't pay attention to their children. Our childhood was all about their pain. Their anger. Their yelling and screaming. And their money. What they had and what they didn't have. What one did and what one did to the other. And somehow, my sister and me? We got left behind. My father told me it was ridiculous. He told me he saw us every other weekend. I said, yes. But when we did, we didn't communicate. We did what he wanted to do. We went to stores and bought him things. Electronics. Clothes. Furniture. We rearranged his closets. Did his taxes. Watched sports. Fun stuff like that for children. I mean, the man didn't even know I liked to read.

I told him what it felt like for us after he met my stepmother (yes, I'm the asshole who introduced them aka caused this scenario to pass). To be going to a house when we lived in an apartment. Seeing two kids who had everything when we didn't. I mean, we were his kids, too. All of us. Were his kids. It didn't make sense to my sister and me. Why we were the have nots and they were the haves. And no one bothered to explain it. My sister and I thought something was wrong with us. Why did my half-brother have a better bedroom at three years-old than I did at thirteen? Why was my stepmother getting jewelry and furs and did she own two cars? And my mother? She owned one dress. Apparently, my dad's household had five cars total. When his other kids were babies. He and my stepmother had two each and one for the nanny. My sister and I bought our cars ourselves. And they were nothing to write home about.

I didn't understand why he would want us to suffer. Why any man would want his children to suffer. He said we should have told him we were suffering. I said we were kids. He said we were smart kids. He forgot a lot. How old we were when things happened. He caught himself a few times. Then admitted the thing about not paying attention to his money. Saying that he was making $60,000 a month and he let my stepmother handle things. Spend money to get things. I just looked at him and said, "And I worked 40 hours a week during college?" He told me then that he wishes he would have known that I went to UCLA. I could have gone for free he said since he was a veteran. That? It was painful. Isn't it a dad's job to know these things? To ask where their kids want to go to college? To be involved? To try? I was at a loss.

That's when he revealed the clincher-- that when he divorced my stepmother, he gave her the house. The half she was legally required to give him-- well, he ripped up the check she gave him-- $190,000 plus because he said he wanted to make sure his kids were taken care of. I almost choked. "What about us?" I asked. "We were your kids, too. And you wanted the money from our mother for the house we all hadand you didn't even think about us." My mother didn't even have a job. He didn't know what to say. He also said it didn't occur to him that after we were 18 years old we would need his help. He didn't think about college. That's when child support was over. And he was so happy to have it over. He was tired of giving my mother money, he said.

Sure there were a few light times in the conversation. Times we reminisced like nothing had ever happened. Do you still have this? Remember when you did that? He was surprised I remembered so much about him. And there were the times I told him about my mother and my sister and what they were like and why they did what they did and behaved in the way they did-- I interpreted their pain. He said he never saw it like that. He was quiet. My father was never a quiet man. It seemed to me he thought life for us was one big, "I hate dad" party. He didn't know it was a "How much can we all suffer and hurt" extravanza enhanced by our hormones each and every month. I think it made him feel a little better to hear that.

I thanked God for those years of therapy. How it helped me to explain things. Show my father how to see things in a way he'd never seen them before. And you know? He did see. It shocked me to actually see him see. The father of my childhood was not the kind of man to ever see. I also thanked God for Kelly. Because she was there. Witnessing it. Listening to it. And occasionally, taking part in the conversation. In a way that only helped me be heard. She couldn't believe how alike we were. How much alike we looked and it made her cry. As Harlequin as it sounds, it moved me to see her cry.

Yesterday was hard. I was exhausted, but didn't cry all that much. Today was a different story. I woke up in the middle of the night last night remembering all the things I didn't say. About me having no baby pictures and the other kids each having their own professionally taken photograph wall. It made me feel like I didn't matter. I also realized something maybe more important-- that this story-- our story unfolded just as it was supposed to. That no one had the capacity to make it happen any differently. And that ultimately, what my father and I discussed, was enough territory to cover for one day. He showed up at 2:30. He left at 9:00. He took Kelly and I out to dinner. My father never took me and one of my friends out to dinner the whole time I was growing up.

It was surprising to know how much effort he'd put into learning about me over the past few years. He watched the shows I had written-- gave me credit where no credit was due. And created an imaginary daughter for himself. I wondered why it took him that long to learn about me. Especially when I think about that when I child, that's all I ever wanted. But. Still. He tried to talk about his other kids. He tried to tell me how they were and what they were up to. I told him I didn't care. Which may be harsh, but it's the truth. I cared about us. That's what the day was about. Us. I'm not sure when I'll see him again. I will, of course, see him again. It won't be that long before I do. We opened the door and it's time to walk through it. I'm also not sure what to call him. At eighteen years old, believe it or not, he was "Daddy". Since being out of my life, he's been "my dad" or "my father". When I called him, I asked for him by his first and last name. That one will be tough. Kelly said she wouldn't be surprised if he walked me down the aisle. I'm not there yet. At the aisle or in that emotional space where he's concerned. But at least now I can truthfully say, the healing has begun.