father’s daughter

When I say that I grew up “without a father,” I mean that I grew up with his absence. His absence in my life is its own tangible and alive being that I’ve interacted with. It is not akin to having a ghost lingering in your life as much as it is a clingy pet cat who follows you around, insisting on being acknowledged and tended to. My father’s absence has needs and wants, it has a silent seat at the dinner table, and a place in my mother’s bed. It instills discipline and guidance, and it participates in sibling quarrels. 

My father has been in my life by not being in it. 

Growing up with someone’s absence can feel like a parasocial relationship. Here I am thinking about a man who wrote lengthy love letters to my mother, and whose favorite word was seemingly benchod. I think about the way that he was obsessive with his hygiene and how he collapsed when he heard of his brother’s passing. There is so much that I know about him and so little that he could ever know about me. Parasocial. 

Last summer, my sister called me to tell me about one of my father’s letters. In this letter, he asks about me. The detailed contents are a blur to me, but I do remember that my father’s absence had abruptly become his presence. Our parasocial relationship was yanked from under me. I existed to my father as much as he has existed to me. It’s like when you’re checking yourself out in the reflection of a car window to only discover that there’s someone watching you from the other side. Suddenly, the space you adopted as your own is now brutally shared. Suddenly, the grief you could never claim demands to be claimed. I could no longer hide behind the question “how do you grieve someone you never had the opportunity to love?” The answer is: you grieve the love you missed out on.