A reader of my column in The Oregonian on Thursday Jan. 17 (http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/06/fathers_day_a_portland_father.html) shared her very personal story with me. I was so moved by it, I wanted to share it with you. Sadly, I am hearing so many stories like this these days. Here goes:
Kevin Renner’s article from The Oregonian caught my attention, and—along with some books I read earlier on the effect of fathers on their daughters—and led me to relate my own father’s ability to meet his only daughter’s (me) innate need for attention, affection and nurturing, a need with which is claimed daughters are born with. Kevin impelled me to respond to the title of his book: In Search of Fatherhood: Daughters Praising, Speaking Up, Talking Back.
Psychologist Charlene Kate Kavanagh introduces the article with the following quote: “Reading Kevin Renner’s memoir of fatherhood prompts me to say to women, regardless of age, culture or background: ‘Tell me if and how your father loved you as a child, and I’ll tell you whether or not you have found love as a woman.’” So here’s my telling:
I have a broken little finger on my right hand. My father shut the back of our station wagon on it, not noticing my hand was in the way. He didn’t take me to a doctor, leaving my finger permanently bent and scarred from the age of eight. Being a pianist, and later also an organist, it has always affected my range of reach on a keyboard. I don’t know for sure why he didn’t have it treated, but my hunch is that he was afraid what my mother would say and didn’t want to face her, regardless of what damage it did to me.
He also provided breakfast, lunch (including school bag lunches), and dinner all my growing up years, though he had a full-time professional job, and my mother was mostly unemployed and stayed home.
He taught me to drive with great patience and clarity, and no particular emotional affect. We never had conversations where he would ask me about my day, or tell me anything about his day or anything else about himself. Every night when I went to bed, he prayed formulaic prayers and sang “Jesus Loves Me,” unless he had a meeting or was away overnight. I hated the hug and kiss that came with it, and just endured the prayers.
He was House Punisher: When he came home from work, if my mother told him I had misbehaved and needed a spanking, he unquestioningly and immediately took me up to my bedroom and spanked me hard with his hand until I cried, then continued until I stopped crying. He never talked with me then or later, except to announce “it hurt him more than it hurt me.” (Yeah, right!) He never questioned nor contradicted whatever my mother said about anything, including about my behavior or me even when I myself knew she was lying. Never was I allowed to question either of them or explain myself.
Every Easter he gave my mother and me a carnation. And when I was in high school, we had a sailboat, which he and I sailed often on the weekends on the Columbia River. He worked very hard, both at his job, and at home—cooking, cleaning, yard work, maintaining our nut tree orchard, sheep, a dog, and sometimes chickens, a beef cow, and vegetable garden.
Neither of us was allowed by my mother to sit down and read, talk, play games, nor otherwise relax during any of our waking hours—except weekly swimming at the Columbia Athletic Club in downtown Portland, and a weekly card game of three- or four-person (if my brother was home) Solitaire. (An odd concept, eh?) My mother was definitely Martinet-in-Charge and I was aware that my father feared her as much as I did—in fact, no one I knew ever wanted to set her off, which was very easy to do! My father and I never discussed any of this, or anything else, for that matter. He just told me what my mother wanted, and I was to do it unquestioningly.
When my mother had her regular two-week periods of locking herself in the downstairs bathroom, and not speaking to us, coming out only when we were asleep or away at school and work, he endured the craziness and never even tried to explain to me what was going on, other than telling me whatever it was my fault. He always insisted that I needed to keep knocking on the bathroom door and apologize to my mother, even if I had no idea what I might have done to cause her behavior. He admitted he didn’t know either, but it was my fault and thus my duty to convince her I was sorry so she would come out of the bathroom, finally. It never worked, and she never would answer me, open the door, or come out—but he made me go through the charade. Then, when she suddenly one day, was no longer holed up in the bathroom, the invariable next stage was an hours-long harangue, for which my father seated me across the table from her to face by myself while he went to bed!
When my mother would take off on her usually solitary trips to Canada, my father and I had peace, but no special times together or conversations. That loneliness was not much better than the chaos, which reigned when my mother was home. The only time my father had any fun or laughed was when we had our occasional company, mostly relatives. He was then a totally different person, whom I hardly recognized.
So to sum up his role in giving me attention, affection and nurturing, I felt then and still know now that he hadn’t learned how to be a father to me, one who could provide for my innate needs, beyond the minimum basics of food, housing, and clothing. I am grateful for that, but yearned all my life for protection, acknowledgement, interest, pride, respect, regard and unqualified love from my father. He didn’t know how to be a father who could teach me to be a woman.
Even a wonderful grandfather and aunt could never replace the missing elements of parents, who a child looks up to unquestioningly as gods. I have done my best to manage, given the lifelong trajectory my father launched me on. And I’ve just told you something about if and how my father loved me as a child, and maybe you—or Charlene Kate Kavanagh–can tell me whether or not I have found love as a woman.
