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| Me and my dad at the recent 2012 Women's College World Series tournament in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A trip of a lifetime for the both of us. I suspect as time goes on, the significance of this trip and what I learned about myself, my dad and our relationship will have been very much worth it. |
What is it about our parents, my dad in particular, when we, the children, become the adults?
My dad seems to have little interest at this point in the things that are important to me-my training, my blogging, my goals-the very things he used to brag about to his friends and strangers.
Now he is caught between the parent he was 30 years ago and the dramatically different father he is today-tired, slow, insecure, more inpatient, and what comes across as perpetually cranky-which he denies.
But is that entirely his fault? Part of his new personae is a result of his congestive heart failure, and this physical transformation has resulted in an emotional one as well.
Where is the guy who had such a smile he could light up a room? Where is the guy who was so light hearted? I know it is not entirely his fault that he has changed. I mean, don't we all change as we get older? I don't want to be the same person I was 30 years ago. Does he? And is it fair for me to expect this?
Even as I age, I have identified personality traits in myself that bear a striking resemblance to those of my father from which I tend to recoil in embarrassment. How do I reconcile this?
My dad isn't the same dad he used to be in a lot of ways, but I know that is because he is struggling with his own new inabilities, which confuse him and make him feel helpless.
And while I struggled with all of this during our recent trip to Oklahoma, a trip in which I was doing a lot of taking care of him over the course of 9 days, I realized there is one constant in his parenting that has not changed since I was born. At the end of the day, his love for me, the only love on the planet-the love a parent has for a child-remains completely and totally unconditional. And if his body would allow him, he would do anything to protect me, dare lay down his life for me.
Why isn't this enough? Why isn't this the thought that is always in the back of my mind when I want to throttle him?
I don't know, but I guess I better figure it out, because he won't be around for ever thanking me, and calling me pal, and telling me how much he loves Doug and thinks of him like a son.
Maybe I need to be a bit more mature and use what time we have left together to treat him like an adult, instead of the child I have started to treat him as. And maybe when he hurts my feelings, i just need to calmly let him know. Or maybe I just need to let him ramble on to complete strangers about his gall stone attack and the trip to the Oklahoma City Medical Center ER, or just ramble onto strangers in general. I mean, I am an adult and I can walk away for moment and later return if I don't want to hear the story for the umpteenth time.
Maybe I just need to realize that whatever shape or form he's in, he's my dad, and he's alive, and he raised me with a healthy dose of respect for myself and others, coached several softball teams, taught me to ride my first bike, told me a guy would say anything to get in my pants, paid for my entire college education so I would graduate debt-free, paid for my wedding, told me on a daily basis that he loves me and is proud of me, and will love me unconditionally and be equally proud of me until the day he dies. Surely, that should be enough.
And if it's not, how different does it make me from him? And is that really the daughter I want to be?
