I really thought long and hard about writing this little blog today, but I always think that whatever dilemma I am going through so are others and sharing is caring. The dilemma I have is how to celebrate father’s day when I have such mixed emotions about my own dad. I grew up with the Hobby Dad and as long as we (my 2 older brothers) were on board with the Hobby of the Moment we could steal away a sliver of attention. The first hobby was airplanes…Remote Control ones and a real life Cessna big one. So large was this hobby that my father created a very intricate workshop in our basement to build these giant model planes and later opened his own Hobby Shop because my father did nothing in a small way. The real plane which was a very beautiful Cessna was around briefly until my dad had an accident at work (he was a Jet Mechanic) and a piece of metal sliced through his retina which resulted in him losing his pilot’s license. I never really liked those balsa wood planes, but I had one, because to not build one and fly it myself would have been to lose out on those precious 5 minutes of attention I got when I nosedived the thing right into the ground. My brothers built and flew them too…I’m not sure how my mom got out of it. My sister was born right after my dad’s eye injury and she was too young to play with Epoxy so she was exempt. The next hobby following planes was the Corvette, which lasted about 4 months until my mother realized that 4 kids in a Vette was not going to be practical, and of course he really wasn’t a good driver with that one eye either. So… a few eye surgeries later, the motorcycle phase began. This one lasted a good long time and once again resulted in my dad opening up a side business to repair motorcycles and his deep involvement with that rugged bike gang…The Goldwing Club. My brothers and I managed to scrape some money together and we had our own motorbikes…of course. I co-owned a Honda SL70 with my brother David that mostly I just rode around the yard and burned my leg on the exhaust pipe. My parents had the matching jackets, the personalized helmets and all the expensive crap that went along with it, the radio on that thing could be heard a block away.
By this time I was actually out of the house, being as my parents moved to Florida and I didn’t, thinking that I couldn’t leave “ The Band” and thus leaving me to fend for myself eating ramen noodles while they drove around in matching jackets on the beach. My relationship with my dad pretty much declined after that and not long after my parents divorced, which unleashed a whole new parade of hobbies. There was the Rollerblading phase, the Stunt Kite phase and the coup d’grace the Horses. I think it’s important here for you to understand that when my dad went in…he did it big. It wasn’t just Stunt Kites…it was custom stunt kites and international stunt kite competitions, rollerblading in full decked out garb on the finest wheel bearings created, and the Horses…well see that takes me to Dr. Phil. When my dad entered his horse phase a whole new level of detachment with his family began. By now my father was re-re-married to his third wife, and together they purchased a large house in a “ Horse Community” and built a barn for the new family additions. Third wife had some bucks…my dad maybe not so much as all those hobbies probably drained his bank account. My dad’s horse was named “ Rusty” and that horse was better than any of his 4 children, so much so that when my dad had a cardiac scare, he put the horse in his will telling us that all his money would go to the horse so it could be cared for. Now…at this point I should say a few things. One, I do love my dad even with this extremely self-absorbed personality he was a nice man. Probably a man who never should have had kids, much less daughters. My dad was a church going man, never drank, never heard him utter a swear word and was home like clockwork when I was a kid. So he was “ around” he just wasn’t around emotionally, which I realized some years later was the “ why” of how I ended up married to a man 14 years older than me and maybe not the best choice…but that’s another story.
Actually it’s the Dr. Phil story. I was watching the Dr. Phil show one day, and they had this thing on that said something like “ If you had an emotionally distant father and it resulted in poor self-esteem and bad choices in men, “ write us. Hmmmm…sounded so familiar…so I wrote a rather brief humorous piece on my dad’s hobby life. They called me. Yeah…seriously called me and invited my dad and I onto the show. You can’t make this up. I called my dad and explained the premise of the show and if there is one thing about my family, we know our own shortcomings, so he said to me “ okay Trish (never calls me by my real name, FYI), if you think this will help, I’ll go”. So I thought about how my sister was going to kill me for dragging my dad on air, how Dr. Phil was going to demonize my father so I called the show back and declined the offer to expose my father and I’s relationship to millions of viewers, even though…I could have been a star.
Right now my father lives a few hours away, but he might as well live light years away. The building of barns, pitching of hay, the riding of bikes and the endless refusal to strengthen his back resulted severe nerve damage and the destruction of his spine. This destruction lead to pain medication and depression and more medication and more depression and then neuropathy of his feet and his attempt to silence the pain by overdosing on anxiety medication. Things just declined and he is now a shell of his former self, this man is more child than father. It’s sad for me and it’s sad for my brothers and sister. It’s hard to rectify the father I grew up with faults and all with this empty man. So on father’s day, I think about all of this. I remember the family vacations, his dry sense of humor, his love of buttermilk (so disgusting) and the laughter we shared. I love my dad…I miss the man he was…I honor the father I had…and I say to those dad’s with daughters…don’t underestimate the power of that relationship. Otherwise you might end up on the Dr. Phil Show!!!
Happy Fathers Day to my brothers who held up the slack, my son’s father for always being there after the dust settled and to all my friends who are great dads!
Giddy-Up
PT
