trauma does not exist. part 3

I recently asked him what he wanted to be in life. well, that wasn’t exactly the question, but for our purposes, it will suffice. his answer knocked the wind out of me. his father could sometimes be a hard man.  not unreasonably so, but hard all the same. he just didn’t want to be like him. I hear that and I pity him. because, though he succeeded, it’s come far too late.

why dance around it. he was rudderless. in those days, he moved from one place to the next, living the life of a bachelor. that didn’t stop him from taking wives though. plural. ephemeral unions, turbulent and unsatisfying. broken women who would make him into the angry, hateful man he was for most of my childhood. 

like any good romance, they began with infatuation. in no time at all, though, they would lead to unwanted pregnancies, volatile marriages, unloved children. these were telenovelas, not love stories.

that first one was entrapment, plain and simple. it began like a corny movie. high school sweethearts and all that. he was no jock, and she was no cheerleader, but there was something quintessentially american about it all. 

she was mexican, indigenous, and other things beside. i only mention this because i wonder if perhaps he’s one of those white guys who’s always had a taste for the exotic. she got pregnant right out of high school and he did what stand up men resentfully do. he married her.

in his telling, she went crazy. but then again, in his stories most women do

when the marriage collapsed, he tried hard to see that daughter of his. it was the mother that made it impossible, he says. who stymied him at every turn. so quite naturally he gave up on this daughter. it wouldn’t be the last time he walked away from a child he decided wasn’t his.

years later, I would like to believe his version of events. especially since we’ve now reconciled and I can for the first time see him through a kinder, softer lens (is that how daughters see their fathers?). but I remember the way he looked at her when she would come over. hair cropped, overweight, no makeup, dressed in baggy pants and t-shirts. at 4 years old, even I could see how he physically recoiled from her. I felt badly for her. she came to visit her dad, but it was clear he wanted nothing to do with her. was there a part of him early on that saw the man she yearned to be, the man she eventually became? it’s not the story he tells. but I can’t help but wonder. he didn’t much care for women but he cared even less for women who wanted to be men.

so he left. he hit the open road again. quite literally. it was the seventies. years later, my sister and I are almost dismayed to hear stories of quiet nights filled with below average lounge music. where are the sex drugs and rock and roll. he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t snort a thing. how unbearably boring. it’s hard not to think that he’s keeping things from us. so many things.

another year, another woman. he always had suspicions that this second one was crazy, too. he would never admit it, but I think he was probably drawn to her because of her wild ways. he was a square, but he wasn’t a saint.

she was drugged out. she was drunk most of the time. she’s what we’d call a negligent mother. she slept around on him. a hysteric, of the victorian variety. she was a woman, after all.

she came with a daughter. this is when the story gets murky. I only know that she wasn’t his. blond, blue-eyed, a pretty little thing. the perfect baby girl to replace the other one we don’t talk about anymore. maybe he saw this as redemption. a chance to get it right. to be the ideal husband, father, man.

but let’s be honest, he wasn’t exactly looking to become a father (again). that marriage began with an out of wedlock pregnancy too. he was getting predictable.

now, though, he’s not so sure the child was really his. it will take a long time, but eventually that son of his will become like all the rest of us – unwanted, spurned, cast out. that wasn’t always the case, of course. it’s only when I told them what that son of his did to me that he was willing to let him go. it was not the first time I told him. and it was not the second time. I guess third time’s the charm.

he adopted the blue-eyed blond-haired daughter that was not his, just as he would me one day. he laid paternal claim to the son, which at that time he still agreed was his. and then he met my mother and his mess became ours.

I know that we all make bad decisions when we’re too young to know better. I know he was trying to be a good man, a good father. I know he eventually becomes exactly that. a good man, my father.

and yet. there are still times that I can’t help but hate him. for bringing them. into our home. and breaking it.