I have a photo of my father and me, together.
A black and white snapshot of a moment in time.
1966.
My father is younger here than I ever remember him being. His hair too-short and unevenly cut, his shirt too loose around his frame. He was not a young man when I was born, but in this photo?
He is just a boy.
He looks so much like my brothers that my breath is caught for a moment.
He is a man in this photo, but there is a boyish vulnerability. I do not remember that vulnerability. I gently run my finger over his face in the photo, as though there might be a way to connect with the fragile emotions I see in my father.
My fingertips feel nothing, but my throat is clenched.
An uncertain boy holding his first-born child. Me.
I am tucked up against his cheek, my face to his. His eyes are cast downward into me. My eyes are closed by the force of what I believe is a yawn. My mouth is open wide, but there is too much peace in the photo for this to be screaming.
This father loves this child. The child is held close, adored.
His hand around my waist. My hand stretched mid-yawn to explore the scratchy surface of his chin.
That this was ever me. Ever him. Ever us.
I caress the photograph again . . . that this moment was . . . ever.
Sigh.
The last time I ever spoke to my father, I was 18 years old.
I had not spoken to him in several years by this point. My choice.
I was at my mother’s house. Visiting. And the phone rang.
Was it a holiday? Why was I at my mother’s house? I cannot recall.
Let me think.
OK, this was just before I moved in with my first serious boyfriend. And so I am thinking it was Christmas. Pretty sure.
The phone rang. And the phone was passed around and various people spoke. I wasn’t paying that much attention, as this was no longer my house, and there was no reason for this phone call to include me.
But then the phone was thrust into my hand, my mother urging me to talk, “Kris? Your Dad wants to say hello.”
And because my mother spoke those words so that he could hear them? I could not back away, as much as I wanted to back away.
And so I took the phone.
Happy people swirled around me, happy people who had all spoken with this man without being harmed.
Held the phone up against my ear, “Hello?”
“So now you’ll talk to me, you fucking cunt? Trap you at your fucking mother’s house and now you’ll talk to me? You whore, you fucking whore.”
And I died a little inside, but I said, “Please . . . “
“Fucking useless cunt whore. You bitch! You think you can ignore me? Refuse to speak with me? I hear you’re moving in with some boy. Fucking him. Is it good, the fucking? Tell me it’s good.”
“I can’t do this.”
He is screaming into the phone now, “I just want to know. I just want to be updated on your life, sweetheart. I just want to know what’s going on with you. So is it good? Does he fuck you like you want to be fucked? Tell me about his cock, baby.”
I let the phone drop, held just the cord in my fingers as his voice swung back and forth around my knees.
No tears. Rigid. I was rigid.
But no tears.
I stood rigid for a moment.
And then pulled the phone back up into my hand.
Held it against my cheek.
His voice raged against my cheek.
I said, “Goodbye, Dad.”
And I hung up.
This morning?
I brush my fingertips against my cheek, remembering the acid of that voice against my face.
And I brush my fingertips again over the face of this young awkward man in the photo, who in that moment loved me.
His cheek against my cheek.
My father and I.
We both wrote about photographs today.
And if you were funny all the time, I wouldn’t love you so much.
As I just commented on your post?
I am a little stunned that we both wrote about photographs today.
And your post is lovely.
Just lovely.
I think you’ve got a little of your peanut butter in my chocolate, and a little of my chocolate in your peanut butter.
It’s nice when things come together like that.
Yes, I like that too.
Plus also?
Yum!
what Nigel said.
if you were funny all the time, i wouldn’t love you so much.
You make me teary.
Sigh.
Oh, Kris. I just want to hold you right now. Or maybe I need to be held because you are the strong one and I am in tears over this post.
No hugging.
And no tears.
Just another part of my story.
Of who I am today.
No tears.
I’m really sorry you had to go through that. It makes me so sad for you. I, too, have had some very ugly conversations with my dad so I know how deep that pain goes.
At the time?
The pain was deep.
Now?
I have only joy as I see Mark as father to our two daughters, and I see what can be.
How the love can sustain.
Only joy.
There are no words. There are tears, but no words.
Awwww, I did not mean to make you cry.
It was long ago.
And far away.
A black and white photograph.
Love you, babe.
Oh, my dear, I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine a father who would say such things to his child, I had such a different sort of father, and I am so sorry that you ever had to hear this. You survived, you thrived. You are a survivor and a thriver. But my heart has opened up and bled a little for you today. I forgot to breathe for a moment, and that was just reading this echo of your moment, so long ago. And then that photo, that faded record of love that was clearly once there. And somehow our brains can wrap around it all, how things change, how people get broken. But our hearts? Our hearts are another matter. I hold you in mine today.
Thanks, you.
To have my words cause me to be held in your heart?
That is beyond lovely.
Thank you.
I have similar photos of my father. Photos that show youth, free of life-altering mistakes and poor choices.
I could stare at them for hours and still not imagine the things that he would do before he essentially brought about his own death.
I could stare at these images of him forever, wishing he had stayed that man and that he was still here.
But he’s not. And the father that you had in that moment, in that picture? Died too. Long before he physically died.
You are an amazing writer, Kris.
No one else can transport me to a moment and place like you can.
No one else can make me feel and see and hear the way you do.
How fortunate I am to call you my friend.
Love you. So so much.
Sigh.
You, Nichole?
Perhaps understand this post more than anyone else who will read it today.
Thank you.
I love you as well.
Damn girl, you are all deep and dark today. I guess that’s why I wait everyday to see what you come up with next. They are memories – the good with the bad, like most everything else in life.
Sometimes I am deep and dark.
And sometimes I am silly and foolish.
I have many sides.
I like to mix things up.
Just remember that everything you went through and endured has made you into the person you are today. Your husband and daughters are very lucky to have you – you KNOW what it feels like to be hurt, you KNOW what it feels like to grow up in poverty, and you KNOW that you broke that cycle and are giving your daughters the life you didn’t get to have – full of love, laughter, and simply being a child.
Thanks, you.
I am very happy with who I am today.
And all that has gone before?
Has formed me.
And I love who I am.
So there is that.
Man, what was his obsession with fucking? Good God.
It’s hard for me, because I keep trying to attribute logic to his behavior, & clearly there isn’t any…at least not any that makes sense to me. How twisted must his mind be that he could speak that way to his daughter? To anyone, really.
Does it help to have a picture of him where he is showing love? Before he was the fucking-obsessed nut? I’m not sure if it would help me or just make me that much more sad.
Actually, that’s not true, come to think of it. I do know. I haven’t spoken to my mother in years (my choice also). She is not nearly the “challenge” that your father was, but she is cold, manipulative, and selfish. She had little interest in me & I was really more of an inconvenience to her.
Then when she tried to choke me after my dad left? Well, that sorta put an end to that.
It is painful, because when I think about the few times where she did do things that I felt were special, it makes me sad to have lost that part. But really? That part was so rare anyway that I don’t think I’ve lost much. It just makes me a little wistful about the mother, that when I was little, I thought loved me.
My father was mentally ill, and he had a tendency, when angry? To sexualize everything.
My siblings and I do not see all of our shared past in exactly the same way, and this phone call?
I do not think registered in any of my siblings’ minds that day.
My father wielded his power selectively.
As for the photo of my father holding infant me?
It makes me sad for what apparently once was.
And for what I never knew.
i want to kill your father.
He’s already gone.
And as I have said elsewhere, if he was still alive and I was writing these words?
One of us would be dead.
i’m sorry, Kris. maybe that comment was inappropriate.
i know he is already dead. but i seriously want to kill him anyway.
sorry for saying that so bluntly.
no filter in this moment. love you.
No, not inappropriate.
Real.
And real is always good.
I wished him dead many times.
And those wishes were never inappropriate.
Sigh.
Wow. Just, wow. I hate to leave a comment so… disconnected, but it’s a powerful post and I want to tell you that.
Also, do those memories make you more grateful for your husband? Because your story makes me more grateful for my relationship for my father and the one I think (hope) my husband will continue to have with our daughter.
You know how they say that there is a blessing in everything?
That I get to see Mark father our girls?
That I get to see how love looks and feels?
From him.
Every day.
I am more than grateful.
Much more.
My dad wasn’t an abusive father, he just wasn’t too interested in being a father at all. Which, as you said, makes me appreciate my husband deeply on so many levels and makes me grateful for what I have and what my kids have. Even if they don’t know to be grateful for it yet themselves.
Fabulous post today, woman. Just….truly amazing.
Thanks, you.
Just . . . thanks.
This post? Strong and weak at the same time You are able to balance that because you are amazing.
I am not a big fan of the weaker.
But it is there.
And so I balance it with strength and bravado.
Because I also have those things.
Amazing?
Nah.
Necessary.
And thank you.
I will never understand any person’s need to act like that to anyone, much less their own child. I hate him.
Understanding another’s mind when the mind is irrational is impossible.
There is not sense to be made.
No comprehension to be gained.
So I had hate.
Now?
Sorrow.
For him and for me.
Sorrow.
Ah Kris. Wow. No words. Other than, you are a rock. In a good way.
Thanks, you.
Perhaps not a rock.
A very hard shell over the softer center, though.
Yes.
perhaps a tootsie pop?
how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?
i loved that owl.
and was too young at the time?
to realize how crazy sexual that was.
You?
You are wicked.
I like you.