What Is A Father?

A century ago it was the norm for men to be good fathers. Maybe I’m just naive. A century ago it was also the norm for men to be wonderful husbands. Again, maybe I’m just naive.

In today’s world, it’s been said that there are wonderful fathers in the world. In fact, many people in my own life assert that there are wonderful fathers in their lives today. Many people also assert that they have wonderful husbands too.

While I didn’t have the wonderful father they had or purported to have, I do have a very wonderful husband as I’ve referred to in other blog posts.

The father that had a hand in my creation was not in my life and as I’ve been told, walked out of my life when I was 1 month old. One month old to the day, the day my step-sister was born. My father married her mother and adopted her but …..what about me? Yes, it hurts.

A bit of history behind my parents:
My father and mother met on Labor Day weekend 1965 after she graduated from High School, finished Basic Training, and had arrived on the base. They married March 19, 1966. Their relationship was tumultuous from the beginning, even from the Labor Day meeting from what she says. After they married, they stayed in base housing for a few months until they were both discharged and then moved to my father’s home state.

Between August 1966 and April 10, 1967 when my father walked out of our lives, there were three separations; him either setting her up in an apartment, sending her to her mother and demanding her back, or him working in another city just to be away. They were together a week shy of 13 months when he left and filed divorce papers.

While my tenure with my mother was also very hard and very abusive with so much more to come in future posts, my father’s leaving my life, not getting attached to me, and not being there to protect me presents difficulties for me. Yes, as time went on, he did the customary child support, the obligatory monthly calls to me, and nice presents, but he missed all of my growing up except the short stint I spent with him at age 9.

Short stint:
My time with my father was difficult due to his wife. She couldn’t accept me for his daughter, just like my step-father couldn’t really accept me for my mother’s daughter and so molested me to hurt my mother, which it did. So much happened during that short time with my father and then he sent me back to my mother with the command that my step-father never return. My father never should have sent me back and that quack psychologist was a part of that because he told my father there wasn’t a thing wrong.

Going back & no way out:
Unfortunately for me, that man did return and the perils grew much worse for me. My father didn’t know he’d returned because those obligatory calls were listened to on the second extension; hence, my father could never ask. I was threatened within an inch of my life that if I ever told….. Letters were censored as well so I could never get a letter out that included anything about it. This is not my father’s fault but what was his fault is not standing up for me when it came to making a choice between me and his wife that she dictated. Had she accepted me, there would not have had to be a choice. I never would have ended up back with my mother. My life would have been so different from 10 years old on.

My life after being sent back:
While there is much pain in my life over my father and many might say and have said– “he did what he could” – I say…. “No, he did not do what he could.” I don’t believe the “he did what he could.” So many reasons why. So many things that happened that my readers will learn at a later date as they read the little girl’s stories, the little girls who live internally.

My father didn’t even make it to my high school graduation after he told me he would try. He didn’t make it to my first wedding but did my second, however….. He didn’t even make it to my college graduation last May after he promised me he would.

College graduation 2013:
My graduation disappointment removed my 10 year old little girl idealization I’d carried for 36 years. What a painful and hurtful time and to this day, it has put a major break in what relationship we did have – mostly one-sided as I was continually the one to reach out and chat. The disappointment given to me on the heels of forgetting my birthday, once again, and telling me so. He didn’t want to tell me the “real” reason either. Basically it boiled down to, consistent with the rest of life with him, priorities. I wasn’t a priority. He never said that outright but I knew. I knew because I never had been a priority before.

Different topics we had to stay away from but until then, we had chatted a lot online. The breach has made that relationship ever so different now. I’ve often, throughout life, felt I was on the “back burner” and there is nothing that makes that even more true as to have a parent break the promise of being there for such a monumental occasion as a college graduation. He said he was proud of me. Whoopie. Proud but not proud enough to fulfill a promise. Mmmm…..

Silence from him:
After the graduation he didn’t communicate with me for over a month – waiting for ME to contact him in order to send me my card and gift. While I’d “erased” the hurts of the past with his attendance at my second wedding and thought our relationship would then become two-sided and what it should have been, I have been sadly disappointed and so very hurt. I’ve also come to realize that I am still so very hurt over childhood traumas. As I work through these things, I realize ever so much more about him. So to me, Father’s Day is not all wonderful.

So, what is a father?
A father is someone who protects his child, cares deeply for his child, and carries the responsibility for providing for his child, not only physically, but emotionally, mentally, and educationally. A father teaches his child, walks alongside his child through the ups and downs of childhood and teenage years, goes through those monumental events with his child, goes through those teen love heartbreaks with his daughter, builds his daughter up finding her strengths and helping her develop them, and much more. A father develops that relationship by being there. Mine wasn’t there.

Now my hubby is picking up the pieces. Happy Father’s Day to my wonderful loving hubby. I love you with my whole heart.