daddy issues
“Happy father’s day, Dad,” I said on the phone, my mother holding the cell next to his ear. She said, “It’s your daughter Andy. Your youngest daughter - Danielle. She’s on the phone.” I repeat “Happy father’s day Dad!” Silence. “How are you doing today?” Silence. She repeats “Andy, it’s your daughter Danielle on the phone.” I picture the scene, the shared room at the assisted living care home he resides in. A picture of my son is on his wall. His record player sitting next to the gatch bed on a dresser. I imagine him looking at her, then at the phone as she presses it toward him. I wonder what he makes of it all. “He’s smiling Danielle,” she exclaims. “He’s smiling.” Silence. A few more moments pass and in the awkwardness, I call time. “Bye Dad. I love you!”
Can I remember what it felt like in my body to be a child? Can I remember what it felt like to be a child and to feel safe? I picture myself falling asleep at some event. Curled up on a reception table or conference desk. My dad finding his way over at some point to carry me to the car. My freckled face smushed against his cheek, one arm swinging over his shoulder, the other pressed around his neck.
I don’t have many memories of my childhood. Most of the ones that have carried with me through my adult life aren’t exactly heartwarming. My father was known as a soft-spoken, quiet and gentle man. Yet he was not without his flaws, his unaddressed traumas. I remember crying once as he sneered at me “You aren’t going to cry again, are you?” Memories like this remain.
The last time I saw him was earlier this year. I flew down to visit. My father needs help. To lay down. To sit up. To hold a spoon. To drink his favorite drink - whole dairy milk on ice. (“Agni-killer”, an Ayurvedic practitioner once called this. “Puts out the flame for life!”) A tv hung in the corner of the room, playing the type of 80s pop music my dad would have rolled his eyes at in better days. Music my dad certainly was too cool for back when. I don’t know if he recognizes the tv is on, or that music is playing. We fill the room surrounding him. Just more noise. I don’t know what he recognizes. It's been years since he has visibly recognized me. When I go to leave this time, I hug him. This trip is different. He hugs me back. He kisses me on my forehead. It felt like at that moment he knew I was his daughter again. He kisses me on my forehead and I feel like I have my dad again. For one brief second.
I have been a parent for a decade now. 10 years of parenting my child. 7.5 years of single parenting, and the 2.5 years before that which, felt pretty much the same as the ones to come later. My partner, just wasn’t much of one. As a single parent I have often found myself playing, (really, attempting to play) all the goddamned roles. In all the ways I can. And aware of all the ways I cannot. Fathers' day, Mother’s day… These socially celebrated days have often felt rough or raw or painful for me.
This past week a woman I had just met said “Oh, it must be so hard for you! When my husband leaves town for the weekend I’m just, like, losing it!!!” The sheer number of times I have heard iterations of this sentence. Everytime someone I have barely known has felt the need to tell me about their experience “single parenting” when their husband went to Japan or Boise or San Juan for the weekend. I do not think one can truly understand single parenting unless one has lived it. Has embodied it. “No, Becky. Your husband being gone for 36 hours does not fucking count as being a single parent.”
What does it mean to choose to raise a child outside of conventional practices? What are the options we see laid out before us?
I was living relational anarchy long before I ever heard the language of it. Coined in 2006 by Andie Nordgren, RA is the application of political anarchist principles to interpersonal relationships. It is the dismantling of the social hierarchies that dictate sexual romantic relationships - above all else. And in our society, the pinnacle of that relationship, is mononormative, heteronormative marriage. And marriage privilege is real as fuck.
I have never been married. I have spent my life on the outskirts of marriage. I became a parent outside of marriage. Marriage (dear friends and loved ones reading this, marriage for you was certainly an act of love and commitment and community…But) marriage is the tool that built the American Empire. Genocide, slavery and marriage. A white settler colony conceptualized by Christian monogamists, the US developed using marriage to build this nation-state, to determine who was a valid member of polity, and to entrench the ideology of men (yt!) to be protected by the law (as set as subscribed by other yt men) so that women (yt!) may be protected by (a) man (yt daddy or yt husband only plzzzz.)
Thousands of marriage benefits have been codified into law ever since the founding of this nation, and I wonder how often people even think about the psychological weight of societal incentives to marriage. Social security benefits. IRA benefits. Legal decision-making benefits. Inheritance benefits. Health care benefits. Estate rights. Child rights. Immigration. Citizenship rights. It goes on, and I mention these to contextualize all the external factors that push people to believe that yes, marriage is the best route to child-rearing. To have a family. To love. This society dutifully incentivizes the enforcement of marriage as - really only the legit way to roll.
I’ve never dreamed about marriage, about my wedding day. I never pictured my dad walking me down an aisle, me all in white, giving my hand away to some man. What I dream about, what I desire, what I imagine toward, is a partnership that isn’t heading toward some set destination. It’s a walk, a meander (perhaps like this piece itself- are you going anywhere?!) It’s a romantic adventure with each participant enthusiastically along for the ride. It’s the process that is the point.
I might want to live and love and imagine outside of oppressive conventional systems, and yet, I still live in them. Here I am. And the pressures are hard and they are real and they pop the fuck up. Triggers to remind me of my traumas, name my insecurities, and demand of me work. I must work actively all the time to dismantle childhood attachment issues. To feel secure in my attachments. To communicate. To love.
My relationships look different from others and so others can look at me and can say, “but is that even real?” If I am feeling defeated or low in strength or energy, maybe I can trick myself into buying into that shit. That my love and the love I receive is less than, or less worthy than others because it is not married. Because it is not busy performing on social media. Because it is not like and does not look like X or Y or Z. So - I have to remember and I am blessed with friends who help me do that. My friends, they love me. My friends, they choose me.
So what the fuck is father’s day to me. I don’t know. I know a handful of amazing dads out there. They make this world a better place. I see a lot of moms who dad the best they can. They make this world. I know some men who just didn’t know or don’t know how to be a dad, and god knows their fucking dads didn’t either. I believe in them, I believe they can figure shit out one day. I hope they do. I hope we all fucking do. Stumbling towards grace as we aim to be.