Yah, I know I am a couple of days late with the whole father’s day post but that should give some insight as to my view/opinion on father’s day. I totally forgot it was father’s day until it was hastily mentioned just before the sermon in Sunday’s service. I had my ‘oh yeah’ moment quickly followed by, I better text my father the obligatory annual “happy father’s day text“. I got distracted and forgot to text him until some point before the end of the service, father’s day was mentioned again. With the second clunky reminder, I sent my father the awkward but annual “happy father’s day text“. A couple of hours later, the sibling text me telling me it was also our father’s birthday. How many more awkward moments can we fit in before 3pm on a Sunday afternoon. I sent another text saying “and a happy birthday to you too. how did you spend the day?”.
By now you should be slowing but surely getting the notion that I do not have a relationship with my father. I don’t even know him as a person. My parents fell in love whilst still young, married young (mother says she was 21) and they had me when mother was about 27. They had the sibling less than two years after me. It was all going swimmingly well until my father decided that infidelity was a good idea and just like that the marriage ended. I don’t think I was even 5 years old when they separated. I never saw him after they separated and I was too young to remember anything of significance about him and who he was as a person.
My only memories involving him are of the bad thing he did which led to divorce and him marrying someone else. There are other bad bits in between the marriage breaking down and the divorce such as a bit of domestic violence but let’s move on from that. The main point to take away from this is that he did not keep in contact with the sibling and I. If you were non the wiser, you would never know that he was married and had a family before his current second family.
I was 25 years old when the sibling and I met up with him for the first time since the separation one evening in winter. It was almost comical that we were going to meet our father at a busy train station…and had zero idea what he looked like. Nevertheless, from then on, a sort of relationship between him and us was started. By sort of I mean exchanges of birthday/holiday season texts. Since he downloaded whatsapp he also comments from time to time if I change my profile picture.
But alas, I grew up without a father, a mother doing everything for us and no idea what it is to live in a two parent household with a husband and wife. I don’t know what a father’s role is in the home. I don’t know what he is supposed to do, say or advise me on. I don’t know how a father fits into the picture of a home/family. Where do you insert him? Where is he relevant? What does he do? Would I have been happier if he was around? Would life have been different? Would I be different? Would I see men in a different way?
I’ve often heard the phrase women choose/marry men like their fathers but how true is that when I don’t really have a picture of a father. My picture of a father is non existent because for the simple reason, I did not have one. But perhaps that is my picture? Maybe my picture of a father is that of a man that is irrelevant, a burden and one that breaks things.
I am not naive enough to think that my relationship (or lack of) with my father hasn’t had some sort of psychological impact on me and the way I see/relate with men. Don’t get me wrong, I never contemplated entering a nunnery, in fact quite the opposite, I have quite a lot of male friends but there’s still seeds sewn from the past.
I don’t know the depths of the impact but for now I do realise a couple of things. I realise that I don’t automatically as a given, respect men. I have met many in fact most of the women I meet seem to have this automatic by default respect for a man just because he is a man. That’s missing for me. A man has to prove himself to me or rather earn my respect for me to look up to/respect him. There just has to be a reason why I should listen/follow what a man says. I’ve also realised that I underestimate men and their capabilities and I tend to think the worst of them at times. It goes back to the man proving himself to him. Unless a man shows me his capabilities and values, he is relegated to the (I don’t want to use the word useless but I am struggling to find another word) pile. I also didn’t know how to be soft and womanly around men. How could I know when I grew up with a mother who did all the cooking and all the DIY stuff around the house. She would cut my brother’s hair and then do mine. There’s lot’s of other things too in the way I see and categorise men but I am not in the mood to explore how far the rabbit hole goes at this time of the night.
Luckily, it’s not all doom and despair. God has put in my path loads of wonderful men, caring fathers, faithful husbands and lovely bachelors. I know and have seen that there’s a reason why God said “it is not good for man to be alone“.
For now though, father’s day is still the day that doesn’t mean anything to me other than time to send the annual awkward text.
It’s the good life
The Good Life Confessions 