Pretty Lynne Writes

This is the first year of my adult life when I don’t find myself uncomfortable, standing in front of the Father’s Day cards, trying to find one that feels authentic. 

Dad, you taught me everything I needed to know…

Nope. Dad opted out of teaching me about money, for example, because he said I didn’t have any and someday I’d have a husband to do it for me. 

A Father is love, is support, is always there when you need him… 

Hmmm. Does the time he folded up his newspaper and then left the room while I finally confessed to being depressed after months of crying silently in my room count? 

Dad, you were always there to help…or pay for things when I needed them! 

Well, when I moved into a new apartment and you told me good luck, you didn’t seem too willing to help, or pay. 

I would usually settle on something simple and hope it sufficed. I remember one year I wrote “I love you, Dad,” and it was the first time I had said or written it in easily a decade. But I missed loving my dad, so I tried it on for size.

In my dad’s last years, he was liberal with his loving declarations. But he was also liberal with his criticism. I didn’t stay married when he thought I should. I stuck my nose in where it didn’t belong. He once kicked me out of his hospital room because I talked to the nurse when he wasn’t there. 

Our relationship wasn’t easy. My mom tells the story of how, when I was a toddler, he took me to Canadian Tire and showed me all of the tools. There are photos of him looking like a proud father with baby me in his arms. 

Somewhere along the way, we stopped seeing each other as teammates and started to see each other as a problem. You could argue that, as the parent, he had a responsibility to find a way to connect with me. But knowing his own childhood and probable neurodivergence, I know he just didn’t have those skills. 

My father was a well-liked and well-regarded man. He quietly paid for hungry people to eat. He took an illiterate client to his driving test and read the questions to him. He joked with the staff at the nursing home. Many of them showed up at his memorial service and cried. 

Now that I am an adult, I can see so many things about my father to admire. I can see the ways he tried, the times he celebrated me and that he loved me the best way he could. I can be grateful he was so loving and kind to my mother and glad she spent 57 years married to him. 

But I wish he had been the kind of man to take me aside and tell me he was proud of me; that he trusted me to make good decisions; that I lived up to his expectations for a successful life. I wish he’d been the kind I always knew I could call on to ask a question or ask for help. 

I miss my dad. I miss the dad he might have been. I miss the dad he was. Life is complicated, isn’t it?

This year’s card, if I bought one, would be a return to those simple messages: 

Happy Father’s Day. Love you, Dad.