Happy Father's Day
Sunday, Jun. 15, 2003 12:52 am
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I hate Father's Day.

When I was growing up, it represented the one thing I missed the most. The reason my life was so confusing.

I hated how we'd all have to get together at my Gran's house, how I'd have to see all my cousins with their father's, while mine was conspicuously absent. I hated the Father-Daughter dances, the presents, the cookouts…

My Uncle Jack always offered to take me to those dances. I never let him. I placed the fault of all that was wrong with my life on the fact that my father was dead. My family didn’t help. They never let me forget what a saint he was, how good he would have been to us, and how absolutely horrible my mother was.

Yeah ok, she is a selfish, inconsiderate woman, but you don’t have to tell a 6 year old that mommy’s too busy with her newest boyfriend and doesn’t want to see you at all…

I hated how every year my Gran would try to drag me to visit my father’s grave.

I never went.

I absolutely refused to go. Last year I visited it for the first time since I was 12 years old. Took me ten years to get up the courage to go there.

And what did I find? Not what I expected. No ghosts, no memories. It’s just a place. A bit of earth and grass.

Stone.

He wasn’t there.

The witchling came with me. I needed the courage.

We swept the earth clean, planted some flowers I transplanted from my own little window garden. Poppies and geranium, I think.

When the witchling was a baby I would get depressed when Father’s Day would roll around. It hurt me that my child would inevitably grow up with the same experiences that I had. Since DD had no interest in her.

But now she has James.

I was sitting here earlier this evening, trying to complete my new template, and I could hear the two of them laughing and giggling in our room.

He was playing with her, being silly and she was laughing in a way she never does for me.

He is a really good father. I mean Hani never even called him Daddy until last summer.

For a man who jumped into fatherhood with a child who was four and a half already he is amazing. He knows when to play, and how to make her smile. He can be silly, or stern. He treats her like a person, and listens to what she has to say. He can be a bit harsh at times, but he does ever so much better than most parents I’ve seen.

She is a very lucky little girl to have him in her life. And I am so happy that he is her father. He is even willing to adopt her. As soon as we get settled we are going to start the proceedings.

That little –father unknown- space on her birth certificate will be filled in.

It’s a wonderful thing. I love him so much.

Artwork © Jessica Galbreth