The last time I saw my father, it was a hot day in mid-July, just a month ago. He and my step-mother had driven six hours north to retrieve his car from me. The car he was supposed to get last October. I wanted it gone, this reminder of him. How do I explain ... there is much I have forgiven, but still so much I cannot yet forgive. The car was not a generous gift, but a loan with a million strings attached. Strings I have been trying to detach since I was ten.
But he came here, finally, and the day was spent sweating and squinting, charging the dead battery, replacing flat tires, making small talk. All talk is small with him, empty of meaning. He lacks the depth I always longed for him to have. He has always disappointed. Promises were meant to be broken, with him, gifts to burden, lies to soften the inevitable blow. He cannot be who I wanted him to be, who I dreamed he was in my childhood.
He was once my hero; now he is always the villain, and I am angry for still loving him, for still secretly needing him to care. So angry that I avoid his phone calls, keep visits to a minimum, and call him by his first name behind his back. So angry and yet so sad. In this disappointment lives a little girl who just wanted to be good enough to be loved.
This trip was no different than the others before it. Every time I find, upon reflection, that I still dream he will change and he will love me for who I am... a lesson I have not learned myself. Maybe what I am really waiting for is the day that I stop waiting for him to change and learn to love him despite his imperfections, and maybe that will be enough.
