In which Inkognegro’s “Deadbeat Dads” piece triggers something
Below is a comment I left for Inkognegro in response to the follow up post to his guest-post at Single Sisters Speak (corrected for typos):
All of your words on the “deadbeat dad” subject hit home, because I had one, but this:
“Whether absent in the physical, or in the mental and emotional…your children become suspended in whatever space they were left in. This is the magic of nostalgia. If your father unplugged from you at 2-3, you will always be 2-3.”
The next-to-last time my father and I really “connected” was when I was in elementary school, and so thankful for any crumb of time or attention he could give. When he would keep his word and pick me up on weekends–and not just drop me off at his parents’ house–he would take me to bars or to his current girlfriend’s house. A common greeting upon my getting into his car was, “I got a new girlfriend. I’m going to take you to her house.” Generally, I liked the new girlfriends–if they weren’t junkies. They doted on me; one even taught me to shuffle a deck of cards.
Anyway…that’s how we “bonded”. Needless to say, that isht grew old and my resentments at his neglect, financial and emotional, grew deeper. By the time I was 19, I was over him. He tried to connect once: “I got a new girlfriend..” I laughed in his face. He continued, proudly, “I got me a white girl.”
Yeah.
So. Fast forward a decade and a kid of my own. He tries to reconnect again. This time, he’s married (not to a white girl) and has settled down. He’s a new man. His in-laws love him to pieces. I can’t stand that they don’t know who he had been to me. I cut him off.
Fast forward five-plus years and another kid of my own and my mother’s stage 4 breast cancer. She has one request of my dad: Make things right with me. She has one request of me: Let him.
He does. I do. He’s there to witness the signing of her will in the hospice rooom. He cooks me fish, grits, and cat’s head biscuits every Sunday that I am in town while my mom is transitioning. We never talk about the past. It didn’t see to matter at the time.
My mother passed away August 13 of that year. My father died of a massive stroke right after Thanksgiving.
I’m glad we got to heal, in a fashion. I miss what could have been.
I wish peace and healing for you and for your boys, in all the times and ways that you need it.
~Deesha
