Dear Dad:
I will not be sending you a card. I will not be calling you. I will remember you.
When my husband swears at the recalcitrant nut he's trying to take off, I will fight a panic surge. He knows why I don't stand there and hand him tools. You saved money by repairing all the cars and household things yourself, and took out the anger at things being worse than they first appeared or being rusted or stuck down out on the woman who was driving when it broke or on the kid whose hand it came off in. We did it on purpose, you know.
I'll remember you when my friend offers me a stick of gum and I refuse, for the same reason I don't eat salads. You are why my jaw doesn't articulate properly. I'll remember you when I see the scar on my leg that should have gotten stitches but didn't. You were too busy, too tired, and damn it, I should have known better than to ask you that question then.
I'll remember you when the smell of summer grass and gasoline drifts in and I flashback to being yelled at viciously because I didn't mow the yard right, because I didn't fold the underwear right, because I asked a question, because I was there, because I had the nerve, the temerity, to be born female after I made them get married. I'll remember when a tall man with a bit of a belly and broad shoulders moves like you, and fear/anger wells up in me, and I have to breathe and move to look at him to prove to myself it's just someone innocent.
I'll remember you when I have to explain to the well-meaning friend that I never wear choker-style necklaces. You taught me to freeze and shut up and give men whatever they want just to make them stop being angry at me, especially if there's a little physical violence involved. To this day I never told you my first boyfriend raped me. You wouldn't have believed me. Or you would have said I asked for it.
You've said that I'm lazy, not disabled. You've said that my husband is lazy. Why doesn't he just go down to the factory and get a job? That's what you did in '67, after all. GM had twenty assembly and fabrications plants here. Go look at the 200 acre field out on the edge of town there. The only thing there now is grass. Or were you asleep when they moved the plants to Mexico? When the town shrank from three high schools to one? We choose not to have insurance, choose to be poor. You are an agnostic at best, and you yelled at me when you found out I wasn't a Christian any more. Tell me, do you know that the reason I never could connect to Christianity was that I couldn't wrap my head around a loving, non-judgemental father?
I remember what you said when your stepfather died and your brothers called and asked if you were coming to the funeral. You said, "Why? That bastard never did anything for me." You did some things right, yes. I understand that for what you had it was a heroic effort. But that doesn't excuse what you did do. I have spent the last decades healing the bruises and doing surgery on scars in my spirit, and I am no fool. I will not be in relationship with you if I have to play games and pretend that everything is fine...that if there's anything wrong, it's my fault because I'm female.
So there will be no card, no visit, no gift, no phone call. I don't know if it hurts you. It hurts me, because the world is full of the good kids who had good dads and have good relationships with them, and it's their day, and it would have been nice if we could have done that, if you could have loved me for what I am, and not hated me because I wasn't what you wanted. And in the end, I wish you peace. Somewhere else. I think that's as good as we're going to get.