The first time my husband held our daughter in his arms, he cried.
It was a luminous experience.
The next morning, I woke up fatherless.
We never talked about my father when I was growing up.
My mother removed him from our lives like a surgeon removes a suspicious mass.
No loving stories around the dinner table.
Questions about him were unceremoniously cut off: “He’s gone.
We have to move on.”
I’ve often wondered if the loss was too painful for her to talk about.
More likely, she meant exactly what she said.
She was, in all things, a very practical woman.
But during my childhood, I imagined that my father wasn’t really gone at all.
He lived in the elm tree outside my window.
At night, he sat in its branches, watching me sleep.
He always listened with pride.
From my earliest years, I knew how it felt to be an outsider.
Sometimes, my outsider status came like a slap in the face.
Listening to their angry, hushed voices from the kitchen, I felt embarrassed and vulnerable.
That wouldn’t have happened if my dad had been at the table.
Men came into and out of our life.
Some stayed for a time.
Most meant little more to me than the man who showed up every Thursday to cut the grass.
My mother even married one of them.
He didn’t venture to be more than he was.
One morning, he, too, was gone.
My mother never said why, and we never asked.
That’s how things worked in our family.
I won academic prizes and tennis matches and wore just-right clothes.
I got into a good college and went on to earn a Ph.D. And yet the loss of my father circles my life like a prowler looking for an open door.
I’ve watched her eagerness from a young age to talk business with him.
I’ve laughed at the way they indulge their love of Kanye West, singing together in the car.
But the prowler keeps rattling the latches.
Why didn’t I have this?
What would my life have been like if I had?
Am I simply curious, or is it darker than that?
Am I enviousor worseresentful?
I have an advanced degree in psychology and have spent my career studying families, damn it!
I can dissect my feelings clinically.
What I haven’t been able to do is make them go away.
I’ve never talked to my husband and kids about these thoughts.
(I hide these thoughts well) and “Get over yourself.”
I’m learning that the best way to handle the feelings is to invite them in.
I know my dad is preserved in the amber of remembranceand invention.
He never let me down or had too much to drink.
He remains loving, consistent, strong, handsome, neatly pressed and freshly shaved.
He’ll be that way in my mind forever.
My relationship with my father is a fantasy.
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