I Never Danced For My Father

I never danced for my father.  

When I was a child, doctors discovered that I had one leg  ½ to 1 inch shorter than other (later I found out it was due to a congenital scoliosis)  and a tendency to turn out my foot. The advised putting me in ballet. So at age 4 or so, I was enrolled in a ballet and tap class. I wasn’t fond of tap, but, like many little girls, fell in love with ballet. I had no talent and I was absolutely the wrong body type—sturdy build, not slender with long, long legs—but I loved it, and took classes for 7 years. And I danced at home, in the living room, to Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland albums my parents owned.  Sometimes I asked Mom to watch my "show"—but I never asked Dad. I was too afraid of the criticism I would face.

He was very concerned with my ungraceful, somewhat awkward walk, and constantly reminded me to stand up straight and not walk on my toes. To walk correctly.  I reached a point where I hated walking in front of him or even with him, because ff the flood of  admonitions to "walk heel and toe" that I heard. In all reality, I doubt his comments were that non-stop. As an adult, I know they were well-meant; he wanted to spare me nasty cracks from school bullies later on. But as a child, I never felt comfortable moving where Dad could see me because I knew what he thought about me. And I was horribly self-conscious.

Ironically, the dance training only made things worse. It didn’t strengthen my ankles or help me to avoid that  tendency to turn my foot outwards.  Ballet demands a particular line of the leg and foot, as perfect turnout. I had almost perfect turnout, and it caused the ligaments and tendons to become hyper-extended. In my mid twenties, I developed severe ankle problems, and spent a couple of years taping and bandaging my ankles merely to walk a block or two. This caused a reoccurrence of some back issues, and we learned about the congenital scoliosis.

I decided I wasn’t gonna let my fear of moving in front of a crowd (or Dad alone) hold me down. When I married the first time, we took dancing lessons to learn to waltz for the reception . I started doing costume competitions at science fiction conventions which meant walking down a runway.  Later, I took bellydancing and danced for the first time in front of a crowd of several thousand people (we won "Most Beautiful" in the costume competition, and we got several standing ovations).  I beat the inner critic with Dad’s voice telling me to "stand up and walk right".
Why am I telling you all this?

Because tonight my life changes forever. My Dad has finally agreed to move up here.  

Friday night, he called in a panic.  The state of Florida was  taking away his license. He is 87, and he’s had a couple of minor accidents in the last year or two.  This means he is housebound, and would have to ask for help from a neighbor to get to Mass and shopping. Dad doesn’t know how to ask for help.  Saturday, my husband got a call from a neighbor, who harshly criticized us both for not taking better care of Dad. Of course, he doesn’t know (or care, probably) that I cannot live in FL because of my severe allergies (which can go into asthma in FL) and because physically I am not capable of lifting Dad if he falls. More to the point, my husband is enrolled in college here and he’d lose all his credits and have to start over (after waiting a year to establish residency) and not have the Hope Scholarship to pay his tuition., Nor did that irate neighbor know how limited our income is—together, we have less than Dad does for both of us, and that won’t change until Ben graduates and gets a job.  He also didn’t know that we tried to persuade Dad to sell the house and move here immediately after Mom died, only to be accused of wanting to sponge off him and only caring about his money.  We have done everything we could except move to Florida, with little or no help from Dad. We did persuade him to put the hosue on the market, but it hasn’t sold. And, natch, Dad, who is very private about family matters,  never told the neighbor any of this, so the neighbor leaped to some unpleasant and incorrect conclusions which he felt called upon to heap on my spouse. After being verbally abused for several minutes, my husband told him he didn’t’ know what he was talking about and hung up.

After a long discussion, we concluded  my mother-in-law would fly down and, with the help of the neighbor and the realtor, stage an intervention. Why her and not me?  He doesn’t listen to me.  Never has. Never will. I don’t’ know anything about anything.  And my husband, to whom he sometimes listens, has just started clinicals and can’t afford to miss any classes.  So today, my MiL is drivi g Dad’s old Buick back to GA with Dad’s suitcases and Dad.  He arrives this evening. She will live with her daughter, giving him her bedroom, while we try to sell the house and find one that will work for the three of us. I feel relieved that Dad will have us under the same roof to care for him and cook for him and do his laundry and help him get around.  But I am scared shitless about how the next few years of my life are gonna be.

Dad isn’t an easy person.  He grew up in the Depression—he was born in 1920—and he is, to put it mildly, a tightwad. His income is limited and he pinches every penny.  He is also cranky, opinionated (I got that from him) and quick-tempered.  He has pockets of bigotry that have come out in his old age—he’s uncomfortable with African-Americans and homosexuals, though he has always backed civil rights for all minorities (acknowledging someone’s basic human rights isn’t the same as liking them as  group, sadly) and has never discriminated against someone because of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. He is simply a man of his generation who didn’t know any blacks or gays.  He’s a Dem who is leaning toward Hillary, but he has some issues with reproductive choice (he’s Catholic and a convert at that).  And he likes Lou Dobbs.

He’s always been distant toward me. He has never known my birthday or the year in which I was born. I am an only child, so it isn’t like there were 9 others to confuse me with. He stopped being interested in me once I stopped being cute. He’s never bought me a Christmas or birthday present—Mom handled that. He is very proud of my writing and my graduate degrees but is also upset because I didn’t have the brilliant career he assumed I’d have.  Well, I married a sailor, and that meant never having a real job. I am a disappointment.  He’s also always been very critical of my looks. Unlike Mom, I am not rail-thin—that larger boned body—and I don’t resemble Audrey Hepburn. I’ve always been curvy, more Monroe than Hepburn. My weight, my skin (under stress, I get hives), and my hair have always been fair game with him.

The  truth is, he didn’t need a child. Mom wanted one, far more than he did. He really never saw me, because his eyes were always on my m other, who was, in his eyes, perfect.  She was his life, and had been since she was 15. They were married for 62 years, and together for 67. They met when she was 15. What spare time he had, he spent with her. I was an afterthought.  We did watch TV together—*The Man From U.N.C.L.E, The Avengers, Twilight Zone, Star Trek* --but that was pretty much our connection w hen I was in high school.  He just didn’t know what to  say to a quiet, dreamy kid who was in 7 schools before she graduated from high school and  who preferred writing stories and who didn’t have a date until senior year.  I was the opposite of my vivacious, popular mother, who lived in the same place and had the same friends all her life.  I wasn’t Mom, and he didn’t understand me (and really didn’t take the time to try).

Despite all these issues, I adored Dad. He was the one who introduced me to science fiction. He told me stories about Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein (the werewolf and the creatures were tragic, misunderstood heroes, in hi versions).  We watched horror movies together and Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.  He and Mom took me to movies and plays.  My love of Sinatra and Big Band music comes from him, as does my affection for musical theater.  In many ways, he made the person I am today, a person he never took the time to know.

He’s gonna get the chance now. I hope he takes it. I really do.

But, hell I am scared stiff.  He has never been an easy man to live with. When I moved home after losing my first husband (we’d lost my grandmother and husband within a month; it was time to circle the wagons and be a family), I had to live by his rules, including an attempt t a curfew and the demand that I, who haven’t been a Catholic since I was 20,  attend Mass.. Those last two were disposed of within a couple of months, because I told him he could force me to sit in a pew but not to believe and that a curfew had to go.  I was always very aware, however, that it was their house rather than our house even though I paid two hundred a month in room and board.  I fear that he’s gonna behave with similar high-handedness now, because when I visited in 2003, that’s what he was like.  He’s also highly critical of my weight, my hair, my skin—pretty much everything. I worked hard to build up my own confidence, and I’ll likely have to fight his habit of criticizing me. He’s 87. He’s not likely to change his basic nature.

Toss in his physical issues—Parkinson’s and deafness—and it’s gonna be interesting.  He’s gonna have to make adjustments, like sharing the only TV, and wearing his hearing aid, because I can’t live in the same house with someone whose TV sound is cranked up past the volume most teenagers prefer when listening to rap and metal (at lest he can’t crank the base up). He’s going to have to learn some consideration and respect for others. And we’re gonna have to adjust from being only a couple or living with my MiL, who is quiet and seldom around, to having a cranky, deaf  octagenerian underfoot 24/7. We’ll lose privacy and we’ll have to go to church with him (yuck; I plan to carry a paperback and read through mass because I can’t  actively participate without feeling like a hypocrite since I despise Benny 16 and all his works).  He, of course, won’t see or acknowledge that we’re giving up anything and will view it as allowing us to live under his roof while he pays some of the bills.
I hadn’t planned to write a diary until after primary season was mostly over.  But I needed to vent and to put into words. Mostly for my own benefit, how I feel about this change. The easy way would have been for him to either sell the house in FL and dissolve the living trust and let everything go to the government while he moves into assisted living. But we’re 7 hours away, and calling him every night as I have for 2 years isn’t enough.  I want to know my father as an adult.  It is gonna be damned difficult, and so will he. But he’s my Dad, and I love him, and I’d like to give him the chance to know me before he died. Without Mom around, he may just be able to see me at last.  I don’t think I’ll dance for him, though.  He owuldn’t approve of bellydancing