dad
Dear you,
In a cash only dive bar in New York City, I scratched the tables with my nails and sipped a PBR. The light was dark and comforting, the air inside was warm, and as I opened my mouth, words fell out as if I had no control over them. It was days after Christmas, I had forgotten what it felt like to be truly accosted by the weather outside. I took quick little sips of beer, and I missed you.
I remember what it felt like to sit in a car next to you and laugh, the corners of our eyes crinkling in the same way, and me feeling like the smartest girl in the world, the cleverest little thing for saying whatever I had just said. Sometimes, on the way from my mom’s house to yours, we stopped at a little hot dog stand, and got crinkle-cut fries and soft serve ice cream, sitting to eat it at a picnic table next to a ceramic hotdog, one of those things that feels like it’s been around for decades for the way the color has faded and the painted-on smile has chipped a bit. I loved you, adored you for the ways I saw myself manifested in your interests. When I was little, everything you told me felt like a secret, somehow more adult because it was coming from you. When you shared things I was old enough to understand as problems, I felt valued, and mature, and like I could help you. Like you could take the parts of your life that made you nauseous, and you could change them, and I would have helped.
I remember when we went to Germany. I spent a lot of time alone, reading and writing voraciously. I read The Poisonwood Bible in three days, wrote a story about a dog in love with its owner from the dog’s perspective. Every morning we ate bread with jam and butter, I learned to force down macaroni salad, I ate potatoes and schnitzel at every opportunity. I loved the way the potatoes crunched, and then became soft, not like a chip, or like a french fry. I loved the tart wetness of a lemon squeezed on crispy fried pork. How much schnitzel could I eat, we joked. I still haven’t had enough.
The first time I got drunk was when I was sixteen in Germany. We sat outside at tables in the sunshine, and I drank rose until my face was warm from smiling. Everyone was speaking German, and I didn’t understand a word of it. But I watched your face closely, loved the way your eyebrows raised and fell with your words, laughed when you did because I couldn’t help but react as you did. You were happy, and at home, and I strained my ears to recognize mouthfuls of German words so that I could feel closer to you.
We went to visit a concentration camp in Dachau, and I took in the experience with deep, shuddering breaths. The whole town felt gray and cool while we were there; I didn’t sleep for several nights, instead, each night I listened to my ipod as it strained to drown out your snoring. I couldn’t summon the words to explain why I felt so unsafe, but I had learned by then not to bring my fears to you; you would only have mocked them. On our first night in the hotel by the concentration camp, we ate at an Indian restaurant. I told you I loved Indian food, but in truth, I don’t think I knew much about it at all. I remember not eating very much--I longed for jam and bread and butter and the kind of cheese that you scoop with a knife and spread all over something on your plate, creamy and white and speckled.
In Germany, we ate hot dogs that weren’t hot dogs at all. Not sausages either, though we ate plenty of those too. It reminded me of the time I went to my friend Monika’s dad’s house, somewhere that seemed far away and swallowed up by woods and wintertime. There was a hot tub, and a fireplace, and a rug made out of animals. I asked for hot dogs for dinner, and Monika’s dad made them for us. But when he gave them, they were all wrong, they were way too long, and the ends were all tied up in little knots, and when you bit into them they fought back before snapping off into your mouth, like they were made of elastic. I forced myself to eat them out of politeness and fear of Monika’s dad. The hot dogs in Germany were like that, and when I ate them I remembered that Monika’s dad was German, and then I felt ashamed at my cultural ignorance.
We went for a hike with my grandmother’s brother Clemens. Actually we went on multiple hikes with him, but one time I remember we ended up at a restaurant, and I ordered a beer, a stout. It was the first one I’d ever had, but I took big sips, letting the foam on the top kiss me right on the lips. You thought I was funny; that whole trip you thought I was funny.
We rented a car, a tiny Fiat, and I loved to watch the way you so easily folded yourself in half in order to sit down in it. The air conditioning didn’t work, so we had to drive with the windows down, even when we sped down the Autobahn, the kilometers ticking by like fleas.
So many of my memories of you take place in tiny cars: sunshine warming cloth seats, your sunglasses dark and expensive. In these memories, I look out the window and see corn fields, sunflowers, tiny airplanes taking off from tiny, private airports. Your voice loud and authoritative, your words always harsh, always transparent enough to see your desperate want for my approval. Your stories, told again and again, as if each time your teeth formed around the words you got closer to making things right. The universe always wrongs people like us; that’s one of the first lessons I learned from you.
When I was eleven, you started telling me that no matter what happened, I could always come to you first if I had a problem Even if I got pregnant, you said, I could come to you. Maybe you would yell and scream, but, ultimately, you would get over it and then be there for me. Silly you, don’t you know that I’ve always been afraid of how loudly you can yell?
My mom tried very very hard never to show her suffering in front of me; she held her tongue when I cried about having no one to take to the father-daughter dance, she listened patiently and without commenting when I talked about your screaming fights with Lori, loud and heavy and forcing themselves behind my eyelids as I pretended to be asleep in the backseat of the car. She hugged me, hard, each time she put me on a plane to New York, and I smeared stifled tears into her shirt; I’ve always hated flying alone. But one time I remember her frustration, she called into question the fact that I never misbehave for you. I was old enough to recognize that pattern too. But don’t you both understand by now--I’ve always been a little afraid of you?
I used to wonder sometimes if I stopped being the perfect, quiet daughter, happy to read books silently and alone in the kitchen, or practice piano for hours while you worked, or play soccer in the backyard with the dogs and a soccer ball full of holes. If I was no longer easy to parade around to people, to show off as a beautiful, well-behaved little girl who kept herself entertained without much effort from you, would you stop making me come with you to visit Lori’s family on Thanksgiving? Would you stop taking me to the cottage in New York, where the best entertainment was sitting alone in the sunshine on the dock, counting the boats and the fish I could see? Would you stop taking me away from my life and my family, stop wanting to use me as an addition to your projected image of being the family man, in front of other people? That’s all I wanted, was to stop those things.
You’re my dad, and I love you for the glimmers of truth I see behind the exterior you’ve projected. I love you for the trips we took together to the aquarium, how you pointed out the tanks you dove in and cleaned, the picture you painted in my head of you feeding the sharks behind a flimsy little net. I thought you were so brave, and so interesting. I pictured you with the afro from old pictures, barefoot and driving a bright red jeep right up onto the platform to get into the aquarium. I loved you for the way I could hold your hand, how you bought me a balloon shaped like a dolphin, and I thought you were the richest man in the world. I love you for the freediving class we took, for the way we swam together, the way you took me skiing, and the snowstorms never seemed as big and as brave as you. I love you for the way we spent all day in a wind tunnel, one of those places that simulates skydiving, and I pictured you diving out of a plane thousands of feet in the air, your teeth white against the clouds and shining out from your brown skin--the same color as mine.
In the bar in New York, I don’t tell anyone any of these memories. Instead, I grit my teeth and blink back tears, pull up the messages I will never delete, the ones from you accusing me of not caring enough to wish you a Merry Christmas. “Isn’t that crazy?” I say. “He didn’t call to wish me a Merry Christmas either, for the record.”
In a cash only dive bar in New York City, I scratched the tables with my nails and sipped a PBR. The light was dark and comforting, the air inside was warm, and as I opened my mouth, words fell out as if I had no control over them. It was days after Christmas, I had forgotten what it felt like to be truly accosted by the weather outside. I took quick little sips of beer, and I missed you.
I remember what it felt like to sit in a car next to you and laugh, the corners of our eyes crinkling in the same way, and me feeling like the smartest girl in the world, the cleverest little thing for saying whatever I had just said. Sometimes, on the way from my mom’s house to yours, we stopped at a little hot dog stand, and got crinkle-cut fries and soft serve ice cream, sitting to eat it at a picnic table next to a ceramic hotdog, one of those things that feels like it’s been around for decades for the way the color has faded and the painted-on smile has chipped a bit. I loved you, adored you for the ways I saw myself manifested in your interests. When I was little, everything you told me felt like a secret, somehow more adult because it was coming from you. When you shared things I was old enough to understand as problems, I felt valued, and mature, and like I could help you. Like you could take the parts of your life that made you nauseous, and you could change them, and I would have helped.
I remember when we went to Germany. I spent a lot of time alone, reading and writing voraciously. I read The Poisonwood Bible in three days, wrote a story about a dog in love with its owner from the dog’s perspective. Every morning we ate bread with jam and butter, I learned to force down macaroni salad, I ate potatoes and schnitzel at every opportunity. I loved the way the potatoes crunched, and then became soft, not like a chip, or like a french fry. I loved the tart wetness of a lemon squeezed on crispy fried pork. How much schnitzel could I eat, we joked. I still haven’t had enough.
The first time I got drunk was when I was sixteen in Germany. We sat outside at tables in the sunshine, and I drank rose until my face was warm from smiling. Everyone was speaking German, and I didn’t understand a word of it. But I watched your face closely, loved the way your eyebrows raised and fell with your words, laughed when you did because I couldn’t help but react as you did. You were happy, and at home, and I strained my ears to recognize mouthfuls of German words so that I could feel closer to you.
We went to visit a concentration camp in Dachau, and I took in the experience with deep, shuddering breaths. The whole town felt gray and cool while we were there; I didn’t sleep for several nights, instead, each night I listened to my ipod as it strained to drown out your snoring. I couldn’t summon the words to explain why I felt so unsafe, but I had learned by then not to bring my fears to you; you would only have mocked them. On our first night in the hotel by the concentration camp, we ate at an Indian restaurant. I told you I loved Indian food, but in truth, I don’t think I knew much about it at all. I remember not eating very much--I longed for jam and bread and butter and the kind of cheese that you scoop with a knife and spread all over something on your plate, creamy and white and speckled.
In Germany, we ate hot dogs that weren’t hot dogs at all. Not sausages either, though we ate plenty of those too. It reminded me of the time I went to my friend Monika’s dad’s house, somewhere that seemed far away and swallowed up by woods and wintertime. There was a hot tub, and a fireplace, and a rug made out of animals. I asked for hot dogs for dinner, and Monika’s dad made them for us. But when he gave them, they were all wrong, they were way too long, and the ends were all tied up in little knots, and when you bit into them they fought back before snapping off into your mouth, like they were made of elastic. I forced myself to eat them out of politeness and fear of Monika’s dad. The hot dogs in Germany were like that, and when I ate them I remembered that Monika’s dad was German, and then I felt ashamed at my cultural ignorance.
We went for a hike with my grandmother’s brother Clemens. Actually we went on multiple hikes with him, but one time I remember we ended up at a restaurant, and I ordered a beer, a stout. It was the first one I’d ever had, but I took big sips, letting the foam on the top kiss me right on the lips. You thought I was funny; that whole trip you thought I was funny.
We rented a car, a tiny Fiat, and I loved to watch the way you so easily folded yourself in half in order to sit down in it. The air conditioning didn’t work, so we had to drive with the windows down, even when we sped down the Autobahn, the kilometers ticking by like fleas.
So many of my memories of you take place in tiny cars: sunshine warming cloth seats, your sunglasses dark and expensive. In these memories, I look out the window and see corn fields, sunflowers, tiny airplanes taking off from tiny, private airports. Your voice loud and authoritative, your words always harsh, always transparent enough to see your desperate want for my approval. Your stories, told again and again, as if each time your teeth formed around the words you got closer to making things right. The universe always wrongs people like us; that’s one of the first lessons I learned from you.
When I was eleven, you started telling me that no matter what happened, I could always come to you first if I had a problem Even if I got pregnant, you said, I could come to you. Maybe you would yell and scream, but, ultimately, you would get over it and then be there for me. Silly you, don’t you know that I’ve always been afraid of how loudly you can yell?
My mom tried very very hard never to show her suffering in front of me; she held her tongue when I cried about having no one to take to the father-daughter dance, she listened patiently and without commenting when I talked about your screaming fights with Lori, loud and heavy and forcing themselves behind my eyelids as I pretended to be asleep in the backseat of the car. She hugged me, hard, each time she put me on a plane to New York, and I smeared stifled tears into her shirt; I’ve always hated flying alone. But one time I remember her frustration, she called into question the fact that I never misbehave for you. I was old enough to recognize that pattern too. But don’t you both understand by now--I’ve always been a little afraid of you?
I used to wonder sometimes if I stopped being the perfect, quiet daughter, happy to read books silently and alone in the kitchen, or practice piano for hours while you worked, or play soccer in the backyard with the dogs and a soccer ball full of holes. If I was no longer easy to parade around to people, to show off as a beautiful, well-behaved little girl who kept herself entertained without much effort from you, would you stop making me come with you to visit Lori’s family on Thanksgiving? Would you stop taking me to the cottage in New York, where the best entertainment was sitting alone in the sunshine on the dock, counting the boats and the fish I could see? Would you stop taking me away from my life and my family, stop wanting to use me as an addition to your projected image of being the family man, in front of other people? That’s all I wanted, was to stop those things.
You’re my dad, and I love you for the glimmers of truth I see behind the exterior you’ve projected. I love you for the trips we took together to the aquarium, how you pointed out the tanks you dove in and cleaned, the picture you painted in my head of you feeding the sharks behind a flimsy little net. I thought you were so brave, and so interesting. I pictured you with the afro from old pictures, barefoot and driving a bright red jeep right up onto the platform to get into the aquarium. I loved you for the way I could hold your hand, how you bought me a balloon shaped like a dolphin, and I thought you were the richest man in the world. I love you for the freediving class we took, for the way we swam together, the way you took me skiing, and the snowstorms never seemed as big and as brave as you. I love you for the way we spent all day in a wind tunnel, one of those places that simulates skydiving, and I pictured you diving out of a plane thousands of feet in the air, your teeth white against the clouds and shining out from your brown skin--the same color as mine.
In the bar in New York, I don’t tell anyone any of these memories. Instead, I grit my teeth and blink back tears, pull up the messages I will never delete, the ones from you accusing me of not caring enough to wish you a Merry Christmas. “Isn’t that crazy?” I say. “He didn’t call to wish me a Merry Christmas either, for the record.”
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