Dear Old Dad

I don't know about you, but when I struck out on my own as a young adult I swore to myself that I would never, never, ever, ever, not in a million years live with my parents again. Ever.

I was slightly emphatic in this decision.

Imagine my horror when I found myself homeless, jobless and married at the ripe old age of 29. Not only did I need to move back in with a parental unit, I needed to drag my poor unsuspecting husband along with me. It was either that or continue living in Sweden for the rest of my life. At least neither of my parental units would consign me to total darkness for six months out of the year. And they wouldn't force me to eat marzipan.

Just a side note here to satisfy my own sense of self. We could have chosen to continue living in Sweden, or we could have chosen to rent our own small apartment, but we thought our stay in my hometown would be very temporary and we didn't want to waste any money. In the end our stay turned out to be eight months. Just the right length of time.

Our choices in parental unit housing were limited. My mom, the natural choice, lived in a small one-bedroom house with two very large dogs. Unless we wanted to share the futon with a giant golden lab and a very elongated basset hound, we would be moving in with my dad. It was the stuff of nightmares.

I grew up with a very low opinion of my father. He's an alcoholic. He wasn't violent during our childhood, so I have no tales of horrific abuse. Mainly, I have no tales at all. He was an absent father, preferring to spend his weekends in a state of drunkenness out in the desert, where he would hunt coyotes and arrowheads with equal fervor. I thought I hated him.

Though I was very unhappy at the prospect of moving in with my father, my poor, unsuspecting husband was practical. He didn't see anything wrong with my dad. Yes, he was loud and he hadn't cleaned the house a single time since my mother left over five years ago, but Mike was convinced my dad was relatively harmless. Did we really want to move into an apartment only to move out a few weeks later when Mike finally landed the perfect job in some faraway locale?*

I wasn't convinced, but it seemed like for the sake of practicality we had no choice. We moved in, spent a solid week scrubbing the place down, and generally settled in for the long haul. I quickly found a temporary job, so it was up to Mike to spend all his time with his new father-in-law.

Then something funny happened.

I realized I didn't hate my father.

I realized all the years of adolescent anguish weren't caused by my father's alcoholism. Rather, he was a jolly fellow with a hidden intelligence. I'd just never seen it before because my mom is so impatient she would yell before he had the chance to articulate his thoughts. I understood that. My mom spent a lot of her time yelling at me for my slowness of speech and movement. I discovered quickly that when my mom wasn't around to yell at us, we got along just fine.

I was shocked to learn that I had more in common with my father than I ever imagined. He's a hard-drinking, gun-toting, prejudiced right-winged conservative. That's just what I assumed. Turns out I was right on only two of those counts. He's hard-drinking and gun-toting and he likes to make shockingly horrible prejudiced statements, but he is really an old softie and would be a supporter of the left wing if he cared enough to make a political statement at all. I was stunned to the very tips of my toes when he told me there was no reason on earth homosexuals shouldn't be able to marry whomever they wanted to marry. Why is it anyone's business? Indeed. Why is it anyone's business? And gun control? He's all for it. He thinks the NRA is comprised of a bunch of criminals. He's never needed to use an assault rifle while hunting; why would anyone else?

I had never imagined I might share some political beliefs with my own father.

And there was more. I discovered that we are both laid-back, type-B people. We can both sit around and not do anything. We can talk just for the sake of talking without trying to "win" the conversation. We can leave dishes in the sink for a whole hour after dinner, or maybe even longer. We can sit silently and think our own thoughts. Living with him there was no pressure, just easy companionship. There was no stress.

This came as a shock, since my childhood home had always been a nexus of stress, chaos and yelling. Always the yelling. My mom and sister are both high strung type-A personalities. They're always moving, talking, arguing, busy, busy, busy. They don't understand the meaning of relaxation; everything was always an emergency. Turmoil ruled supreme. If you didn't move fast enough or talk fast enough you got yelled at. You couldn't discuss anything remotely philosophical or political because my mom and sister had to win every argument. There was no room to agree to disagree.

Moving in with my father was the best thing I've ever done for myself. I learned to appreciate a man I never really knew existed. I learned who I was and where I came from. I made a new friend.

*My husband is a satellite engineer so we knew there were very few locations that would have a space control station needing someone with his expertise. When we decided to move to the US we thought it would be best to land in my hometown and visit with my family while we waited for him to find a job.