Return Policy: Father's Day

“Fuck Father’s Day” is what I saw on the feed.  Below that, the author of the post made the comment “He left when I was born so Fuck Father’s Day.”  I certainly understand the sentiment.  I suspect, so do a great many other angry and embittered children.  How sad.

The problem with fucking Father’s Day is not in the sentiment itself, but in the anger behind it.  What this woman’s father did to her was bad enough, but she is carrying around a considerable amount of anger and pain as a result into her adulthood.  That’s two decades of fucking Father’s Day every year.  What a legacy.  While I would like to place the blame entirely on the father’s shoulder who abandoned her, that kind of hatred, anger and pain was taught, it was not the direct result of a legacy.  The father initiated this, but the people who raised this woman fed into it until it grew with her body.  Now it is bigger than what she can contain and it is poisoning her outlook on life, poisoning any hope of a decent relationship with a man and poisoning her relationship with herself.  She needs to forgive her father so she can have a life.  Ultimately, that’s why I forgave mine.  Then she needs to go about forgiving the people who chose to allow their bitterness to poison the mind of a young child so this woman would grow to hate Father’s Day and everything it represents. 

One of my children has ample reason to hate Father’s Day.  Her biological father did not place her best interests at heart, placing his own selfishness above her well-being.  Admittedly, I played a role in this dynamic as well, but I kept the lines of communication always open.  He knew where we were at all times, he had a phone number with which to reach us and he chose not to communicate with her except for rare and sporadic visits.  When he did communicate with her, he tried to overwhelm her with fatherly feelings she did not return to a man who was essentially a stranger to her.  As an adult, he inundates her with Facebook messages filled with anger against the one person who has always been there for her, me.  He pressures her for a relationship and contact when she wants nothing to do with this type of a person.  He is not approaching her from a position of love, it is still about him.  She is smart enough to see it. 

My second husband fulfilled the role of her father from the time she was eighteen months old.  He doted upon her and adored her.  He wanted to adopt her but the biological father who did not visit, did not make attempts to communicate with her and did not provide any form of financial support blocked the adoption.  Her step-father was referred to as daddy since he was the one who was always there for her.  He called her “daddy’s little girl” and treated her like the princess she was.  Well, until one day when my second husband decided he didn’t want the marriage any longer, and since he did not want the marriage he didn’t want his little girl, either.  He did this at one of the most vulnerable points in a young girls’ life; when she was entering into the teenage years.  This child was abandoned by not one father, but two. 

I did not poison her mind against either man, though she does understand the realities of each of them.  There is always a way to deliver truth that minimizes the harm to the person receiving it.  The fact is, this child did nothing to deserve the treatment she received by either father.  Despite what both men did to her, she is for the most part a loving, giving young woman.  She is a nanny while she puts herself through college.  She is great with the elderly, children, the disabled and animals.  She is in a relationship with a young man who treats her well, and it seems to be good for her.  Though she and I have mother daughter issues, she was raised in love and raised to view others with compassion through the eyes of reality.  She was validated for the wonderful person she is and taught to look forward into the future, and not to mire herself with the guilt from the past.  What her fathers did to her was an inherent flaw in the types of people they are.  It had nothing to do with the wonderful person she is, not did it define her.  It did however; leave its coloring upon her life. Father’s Day leaves a void in her each year.  She does not live her life in anger because of it. 

We need to be careful not to allow our anger to be instilled into the lives of our children.  It is not their burden to carry.  I liken it to racism.  It is a learned hatred.  Children are not born angry; they are not born with the knowledge of hate.  This is something they are taught by the people around them and it cripples them for life.  While my daughters and I cannot partake in the joy of Father’s Day for ourselves, there are men in our lives who can and do.  For those men, we will join in the celebration and not bring our loss with us.   Our loss will remain were it should; behind the smiles we express to the men who deserve to have this day in purity because they lived up to their responsibilities.  We have men in our lives that are everything our fathers were not, and this we learned through the pain of experience.  The “Fuck Father’s Day” is unfair to the wonderful, loving and giving men who deserve this day.  They do not deserve to have it marred with the transgressions of men who have not fulfilled their responsibilities to their children any more than mothers deserve to have the day ruined for the failings of other women.  Just because I wasn’t fortunate enough to have such a father in my life, nor were my daughters, it does not mean that the day should be fucked. 

My hope is that this young woman finds peace so she can find a man who will not let her down.  Until she does, carrying that anger will not attract men into her life that will treat her any differently that her father did.  Anger breeds anger.  Mothers need to pay attention.  This young woman does not feel this way because her father left her when she was born.  That was instilled in her.  She does not carry this hatred of men because her father left her, she carries it because her mother did and she gave this twisted gift to her daughter.  I wonder what the return policy is.