Let’s start with an informal poll. Raise your hand if you’ve
eaten food off of the floor.
Okay, now raise your hand if you didn’t raise your hand and
are a liar.
Next poll. Who has eaten “damp” food that’s fallen the
floor? Like, a watermelon slice or J-ello?
Last poll. Be brave.
Who’s eaten food that their father found in the gutter on
the side of the road when she was ten?
When I was ten, I ate a crushed, but still hermetically
sealed Hostess Cupcake that my father found on the side of the road. But
there’s context. There’s always context.
Mark, my biological father, had context of his own. He was,
on the one hand, a man who married an 18-year -old, dropped out of college,
produced a daughter, and was divorced when that daughter’s mother decided that
life as a lunatic’s spouse was no longer for her. On the other hand, his family
is a real treat. That is to say, growing up Mark was no Hostess Cupcake.
Those roadkill cakes had context, too. My father had been
out running when he saw them with their signature white icing swirl, laying in
the gutter, practically unmangled. It was not something he’d normally bring me,
what with his diabetes and an eternal hatred for both enjoyment and fat people.
Add to that that he was also the cheapest bastard alive and there was no way
he’d have bought me cake, never mind a brand name snack cake. This was manna
from heaven, if heaven were a 24-hour convenience store.
So when he returned to the small apartment he lived in, one
I was legally obligated to visit every other weekend and each summer, he gave
me his treasure. And I ate it.
When a crazy man brings you gutter cakes, you eat them. You
eat them standing in the living room while he watches. You thank him and ask
him to retell the tale of how he just found them there and thought, “I bet
Nicole would enjoy eating trash!”
I bet you think you’d have refused, but one did not refuse
my father. Not because he would have beaten or locked my in a closet, but
because I would have had to endure his profound disappointment. His was the
kind that could only be exorcised on the wind of a heavy sigh after hours of
silence and shunning. Plus, I like cake.
Let’s revisit that poll. Have you ever done something in
context that you’d never consider in any other circumstance? Remember: Honestly
leads to emotional freedom.
Another thing that leads to emotional freedom is death. When
my father died when I was 20, I was free, in a fashion. Free to make my own
decisions about what lay before me in adulthood: keg stands, finishing college,
dating seriously, diet fads, jobs, legally binding marital union, home
ownership, pets, taxes, credit card bills, children, and cable TV service
calls. Well, kind of free. Because, for better or worse, the framework laid by
my father would factor heavily into my choices. It’s not enough to be on the brink
of adulthood with the absence of poor parenting. A young person needs,
especially a daughter, the on-going influence of a high-quality parent,
especially a father. There’s just something about daddy issues.
But how does one identify a high-quality parent? A
high-quality parent smiles often, revels in your triumphs, expects better of
you and helps you achieve it, and does not pilot the car with his knees while
rolling joints on the highway. A high-quality parent avoids DUIs.
When my father was holding grudges against me and giving me
the silent treatment because, and this is a quote “You don’t love me the right
way.” My Kevin was talking with my mom about having more kids, and saying, “But
we already have a daughter; we have Nicole.”
Kevin taught me that boys are indeed checking out my legs
and that I should be both proud and wary. He taught me that his disappointment
over my actions is not disappointment over my entire being. He taught me to
love and laugh and listen to the important people in my life. The only thing
more consistent than his love and support is the ticking of time itself.
It occurs to me now, as a parent, that biology has nothing
on commitment. The quality parent commits to the whole package and renews that
commitment daily. Because even when you start on the road to parenthood, you
don’t get to be a parent until you get in there and make do. Long after the
diapers have been moldering in a landfill and the tantrums of tweendom have
ebbed, there will be an adult child who will look back and remember that
you—daddy—were there in the thick of it all and those times will be the
touchstones along that all-grown-up child’s path that help her navigate bills,
jobs, legally binding marital union, cable TV service calls, and even her own
children.
So, informal poll, would you choose a different dad? For my
part, I couldn’t have picked a better father. But then, I’ll never need to
because Kevin picked me.
***
I wrote this piece for That's What She Said, 2013. I read it in front of a live audience. You can see the reading on YouTube.