Once upon a time, my father did something very terrible to me.

 

Throughout my life, and our lives intertwined, my father also showed me many kindnesses. He did not abandon our family, he held me when I was scared, he cried when he watched me perform on stage for the first time. The bedrock of hatred I have formed inside my heart for my father took three decades to form and fortify. Alongside these kindnesses, I learned, were multitudes of other terrible things - some small, some bigger - that he was unleashing onto me, my brother, my mother, the world, and himself.

 

A few months after I cut contact with him, I took out a notebook and wrote I will not feel pity for my father on a random blank page. This was imperative to me - to not pity any version of my father: the child, the man, the father, the divorced husband, the abused son, the alcoholic, the drug abuser, the person. I felt, and feel, if I allowed pity, forgiveness would soon follow. And then unbelievable pain. So I denied all parts.

 

Is this easy to do? 

 

No, wait. A better question is, is this possible to do?

 

I have one thing that I always, always do when I am in grief: I read The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yucknavitch. Comfort comes in many forms. I try to understand my comforts the way I attempt to understand my hatreds. 

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Not too long ago, over IPAs in a dark bar, a museum curator told me, “The way to people’s hearts is straightforward: they need to experience resonance, and they need to experience awe.” He was speaking of museums, of course, of art, of ancient things, relics, history, philosophy. Love, maybe.

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When I first read Chronology I ugly cried. Like a wave. Like heaving. Like, I really cried. I had never felt seen like that before, felt words cut through me like that before. Saw a future for myself before. Not like that. It was the one thing, at the time, that made me believe I could write a book of my own. That what I had lived through mattered, was worth saying.

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What I ended up with is no Chronology, no way, but I wrote my way out. I wrote my way to healing. I wrote to understand things, to face myself, to see myself, to feel shame and pride and a glowing. I learned that from Lidia. I learned that from many women authors, fuck yeah. But Lidia showed me resonance and Lidia showed me awe. She said I am a fucked up girl with a story and scars and I’m trying I’m trying I’m trying. 

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I entered my creative writing MFA program a shell of a person, a sick sad ghost girl with anger and alcoholism and so much pain inside me. I had told myself sure, I’d write a novel, write something funny. I’d make a new world or kill myself.  Those were my only two choices, I felt, at the time.

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And then somehow amongst the words said and written in classrooms at desks and in my little dark room alone, I became honest. I wrote about my divorce and my drinking and my sickness and how I was trying trying trying trying. Those words eventually became a book. They also became a healing, a life, an opening.

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So she’s this peak right, Lidia is. She’s the awe. She wrote this beautiful, heavy truth about being a person and a writer. And I did, too. We did those things. Different, but not. A girl, a writer, angry, bright, being reborn through words. Resonance.

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We are by no means twins, Lidia and I. Though we are both Geminis. She is a swimmer, I’m not. She has long blonde hair, mine is short and black. We might have matched each other’s drink, at one point. But she fucked with drugs I’ve never touched. She’s a mother. She is a WRITER, a real one, with books and interviews and fans and presence. And for a time, she had a father wound that I didn’t understand. Sure, my father was gruff and he was red-faced and distant and hardened but it was different. Our fathers were different. Until one day they weren’t.

 

When I decided that I hated my father, that he would no longer be part of my life, that he was, essentially, dead to me, what did I do? I read Chronology. I thought about fathers and pain and resonance. 

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Over and over and over again people will tell me that I will reconnect with my father. They will say that life is short. They will uplift forgiveness. They will preach grace. I am not religious and never have been, so words like grace and forgiveness feel like sandpaper on my skin. I bristle. My world has become a fatherless one. It is calmer, it is safer.

 

Like Lidia, the anger of a father lives inside me. Even without him in my life, I run hot. I mistake my bulldozing for bravery, my sharp tongue for intelligence and wit. It’s hurt. It’s all hurt. But I will not succumb to pity.

 

How do we save our terrible fathers? How do we let them hold our most precious things?

 

Not all fathers are the same. Some people have gentle fathers. Some people don’t have fathers at all. I would honestly say that Lidia’s father seemed far worse than mine in many ways. 

 

I want to make clear that at no point does Lidia ever say, “I forgave my father.” Not at all.

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The things she did do, though. 

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After my father did a terrible thing and I read Chronology for the billionth time, where Lidia pulls her father out of the ocean, saves him from a sad Florida nursing home (she credits her husband for this), lets her father hold her child, manages to find kind, soft memories of him, describes his eyes - I had this other kind of awe, a new kind. I thought about the ways you let a father in.

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In my mind, Lidia’s actions somehow laid out this angry girl writer truth that I, in turn, would have to do the same. That I’d have to put something precious in my father’s undeserving hands. 

 

I don't write about my father often. I’ve tried, good and bad, and I’ve failed or not finished so, so many times. I wrote about him in my book only once: “The only thing I know for certain about my father is that he will fight for me.” This ended up being untrue.

 

I could have subbed “fight for” for HarmHurtDestroyShameBelittleTerrifyRuinBreakManipulate, or Impart an anger, a fire, a ferocity masked as something bold, but it’s deep and it’s dark and it's all wrapped up in generations of bad men doing bad, bad things and making more and more people ache. 

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But I’m not a thesaurus.

 

When I wrote that, at the time, I saw him different. I pitied him, maybe. I had empathy, maybe. So perhaps in a few more years, I’ll see him in a new way.

 

“When Andy brought my father back to me I felt cleaved between two Lidias. A daughter, a tormented and damaged girl. And a woman, a mother, a writer whose life had just been born. Andy and I found an assisted living facility about 20 minutes away from our sanctuary…It was something I could give him that didn’t hurt.” (289)

 

Pity?

 

Right now, I will tell you: I would not do that. I would not help my father. I will not give him anything. Right now, you could package anything up like a gift and I’d call it betrayal. I’ve had people say what if he was sick, what if he was dying?

 

You know what I say back?

 

Good. Good!

 

Let him be sick. Let him die.

 

I’m not proud of this. 

 

“There are moments between years that surface with a great force when you do not expect it. My father almost dead in front of me. I’m going to say it plain: I could have killed him.” (108)

 

Here’s resonance: if I was standing on a beach, watching the first man in my life, the man who had screamed at me in a speeding car, his face inches from my face, me clinging onto the seat thinking please god don’t kill me please don’t throw me into the highway - if he was dying, in front of my eyes, would I breathe life back into him? Would I save him?

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God, why am I not more like Lidia?

 

They say withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I’ve been drinking poison for years regardless - it doesn’t mean he won’t die.

 

Let’s play what-ifs.

 

So what if, maybe, I have a little girl, a baby? And I don’t do any terrible things, and I try try try and I love her and I make a new world again. How could I let him in? How could I?

 

What if my father, like Lidia’s father, loses his mind, his memory? And he forgets all he’s done? Slate wiped clean, for him. What about me?

 

What if he dies and I’m not there, what if he gets sick and it takes a long, painful time for him to die and he tries to make amends and I say no no no? What if I say yes, okay I will try, and it starts all over again, the hurting?

 

What if he changes (yeah, RIGHT.)?

 

What if I told you I’m okay with all the endings - Lidia’s and mine? She can give her father something that doesn’t hurt, and I can deny him that. As long as I want.

 

One more round: what if I end up happy? What if it’s all glorious?

 

I still resonate, over and over. I’ve loved men without rage, built my own families, made sentences and word houses, fucked up, got fucked up, tried again, took kindnesses, SWAM, said goodbye to almost-children of my own, rode a bike, ate shit, bled, cried, laughed, read everything. A million moments. I’m so lucky.

 

I’m also still angry. My father taught me how to do this well. I think that’s okay.

 

But I don’t have pity, not for him and not for me. I have tenderness for my younger self, the girl who thought she deserved terrible. Now I know better. As a writer I have my made-up responsibilities - to write well, to be honest. But no one, not even Lidia, is telling me to write my father back into my life story. I think the unknown is okay, too.

 

Life is short, but god damn can it feel long. I will continue to learn grace, be as water, let my mind change. If I start to drown I will write myself out. What else can any of us do?

 

“I drove my father’s ashes up to Seattle pretty immediately because I didn’t want them. I didn’t want them in my house, or my garden, or any waterway near me or my son.” (292)

 

I’m reading her words again, scanning for “father”, searching for “dad”. It’s more complicated than I’ve been making it seem.

 

~

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Oh, did you know I met her? Lidia. She asked me about my book and I gave it to her. She held it in her hands and put it against her cheek, like a precious thing. She thanked me and asked me to sign it.

 

The awe.

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