measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dad I just got off the phone with my dad. Since I wasn't able to get a card until Friday, I made sure to call and chat with him for a while. Not only because it's Father's Day, but because this weekend marked a bit of a "times change" milestone for him. This was the first year since 1984 that my dad wasn't on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for Father's Day. It turns out that not only is he not on Hilton Head, but he's on call for the weekend (babies don't wait, after all!), and Anne is away at a horse show for the weekend. So he' s all alone on Father's Day. He's pretty bummed. I hope my phone call to him helped a bit. My dad and I have a good relationship, although it is distant at times. He and I are a lot alike-- we know we love one another, but we don't need to talk all the time. Sometimes a bit too much time goes by between our chats on the phone for my tastes, but I know regardless that my dad loves me. He and I just have busy lives, and being 2,000 miles away from each other doesn't help. We see things similarly, and have similar senses of humor-- a bit whacked, able to laugh, at least internally, at things, even if we can't express it openly in front of people. We both celebrate knowledge and learning, and just the experience of life itself. But at the same time, we both overburden ourselves with too many rules and expectations, and tend to drag ourselves down. We have a strict work before play ethic, which often causes us to burn out before the end of a workweek. Granted, my father is much more disciplined than I am. But hey, I love my father. I don't want to be completely like him. Yet, anyway. :) Since my dad remarried in 1999, I do feel like we've grown a bit further apart. I guess in a way it's natural. My dad has a new woman in his life, and it's something completely different to search and explore. Both my brother and I are grown up now, and his attention doesn't have to focus on us anymore. I just hope that we don't eventually grow completely apart. I miss our chats in his den on warm early summer evenings, when the scent of lilacs carried on the breeze through the open window. He'd be at his desk. I'd be sitting on the floor against the built-in cabinets. And we'd just talk as he'd look through catalogs. They were comfy evenings at home. The two of us loved to talk. And we talked about heavy topics-- religion, politics, philosophy, etc. Maybe that's why Dad and I have been able to get along so much better as adults than my dad and Scott do-- because Dad and I were able to come to a place where we could just *talk*. Didn't have to be about our day-to-day dealings or petty frustrations with work/school. We could talk about things that challenged us mentally, but weren't things that exhausted us. Scott exhausts my father. They fight constantly. It saddens me that Scott and Dad never have been able to come together as father and son. Maybe it's a gender thing. *sigh* Happy Father's Day, Dad. I hope I see you soon. 4:44 p.m. - 16 June 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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