Fathers Day is hard. I'm used to ignoring it and ignoring my feelings about it. But not this year. This post is way late because for the past couple of weeks I flittered around the subject like a dragonfly over water, avoiding heavy water that could drag me down and cause me to drown.
I have many mixed and uncomfortable emotions about my father. Our relationship has been too close, too distant, too uneven, too silent, too codependent, too controlling, too bitter, too poignant. I cannot in my lifetime remember having a direct, heart-to-heart, mind-to-mind, loving conversation with him -- one where he asked and listened, and I asked and listened.
Until a couple of years ago, my parents and I were estranged.