My mom bore six children—a girl, a boy, a girl, a boy, a girl, and me. I was supposed to be a boy. James. But instead I was Michelle. I was never masculine or a tomboy, and instead am fairly girly with my snobbish vanity. But in some sense, I sometimes feel like the son my father never had. Of course he had a son, but their relationship isn’t what one might consider the typical father-only-son relationship. It’s more of an association than a relationship, with occasional encounters and discussions, but nothing comparing to the week-long fishing trips my husband, the only son, takes with his father. Instead, my father has a unique relationship with each of his children, no one more important than the other, but each one a special connection the others just don’t get.
Our family dynamic often reminds me of that of a fifties family, with the father at the head of the table, the mother dutifully cooking and serving. It’s not that my dad doesn’t help out—he does, a lot. It’s that there is a level of service expected by him, from us. Most of my family—parents, two sisters, and our kids—eats dinner together quite often. My dad comes in, goes into his room to change clothes, and sits down in his chair at the table (where no one is sitting, and if they are, they get up as soon as he comes in the door, before he even approaches the table). My mom dishes his plate and brings it to him. Then he asks, usually whoever is up, for a drink or the salt or some butter or whatever else he may need to make his dinner more palatable. On the occasion that none of us are up at the time, he simply states, “Is there water/salt/butter/whatever on the table?” to which one of us replies, not with a verbal answer, but by getting up and getting it for him. Whether this is intentional, whether would we not jump up to serve and please him he would gladly get up on his own, is unknown. But I doubt it. Our service is expected.
Although the others may have, this apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Through simply looking at my family, I am definitely my mother’s daughter, with her short frame, blue eyes, light hair, and wide hips. The only look I inherited from my father is his unibrow, which I meticulously tweeze daily. My personality, however, is so much like his as to drive my mother crazy. I can hold two conversations at once, whether with a person or myself. I will be paying equal attention to each, yet make each feel as though, because I answered the question of the first, I didn’t hear the question of the second. I’m moody, and my desire not to talk to people when I’m in these moods has hurt many of their feelings—but that’s how we deal with it, to keep it out ourselves and work it out on our own. During periods of great stress or tension, my father has been known to go weeks at a time without saying more to any of us than an occasional “humh.” Like my father, I’m sarcastic to the point of being annoying, tossing out my, I think quite hilarious, wit like stale candy at a parade. My father may not speak much, but when he does, there’s sure to be a smart-ass remark in there somewhere. When I’m finished with a conversation—that is, when I’m finished saying what I want to say, and hearing all that I want to hear—I attempt to end the conversation rather abruptly. My father will simply say, “Huh, okay,” and walk away, never mind if the speaker is in mid-sentence. I still hold out for a goodbye, but my abruptness is escalating, and soon those I was talking to will whisper as I walk away “Um, I guess I was done talking,” like they do to him. My outings with my father consist of—unlike traditional father-son outings of fishing and ball games—literary readings, NPR events, lectures from the World Affairs Council, and workshops on educational pedagogy, each followed by brief conversations about the philosophical nature of such things. Like my father, I have gone into the field of education. My father taught high school Social Studies and Business for a number of years before systematically climbing the ladder to counselor, vice principal, principal, superintendent, and now the inevitable retired-teacher occupation, college professor. I am a certified Middle/High Language Arts teacher, which I taught for three years, and am now working my way into the field of alternative education.
Generally speaking, I am a very insecure person. I’m consistently second-guessing myself, and usually assume that people don’t like me. In many fields of my life, I feel as though whatever I do is not good enough. But certainly, more so than anywhere else, I feel that nothing I ever do will be good enough for my father. In my mind, I will never meet his expectations. I will never be a good enough cook, cleaner, writer, wife, mother, daughter, teacher to meet the expectations of my father. A while back, we had dinner at my house—spaghetti. Part way through dinner, my father asked, bluntly as he always does, “There’s no garlic bread?” Despite the fact that the rest of the dinner was suburb (homemade spaghetti sauce, made with venison shot by my husband and tomatoes grown in my garden), I thought it a failure because of the simple lack of a loaf of bread. Although I thought about this frequently, and made a specific point of serving garlic bread the next time I made spaghetti, the criticism elsewhere isn’t as hurtful as it is in regards to my profession.
It is in domain of our profession, which I know to some extent I entered into because of him, that the real dynamic of this father-daughter relationship exposes itself. I’ve accepted criticism from my colleagues since I began working in education six years ago. I’m a reflective person, and I listen carefully to what they have to say, evaluate its validity, and try to take their advice or criticism and use it to my advantage. When it comes to my father, however, in the area of my profession, any analysis is taken quite seriously. It’s taken to heart, not as a piece of constructive criticism, meant to advance my teaching abilities, but rather as a jab to those abilities, a statement of my lack of talent. Recently, I’ve started working at the same school my father is the director of. In doing so, he’s been able to see my teaching first-hand. In this, I’ve heard him give me praise, both to me personally, and in talking with other staff, and the staff at the various schools we work with. But this praise is outweighed by the criticism—not in the amount but in its effect. There’s a best-practice theory in education, 1 to 5, that with every one negative statement you give a student, you should give five sincere compliments. Even if that was the ratio my father used with me, it wouldn’t matter. That one negative would drown out the memory of the five praises and would fester in my mind for weeks. With my father, even the slightest joke is taken to heart, and my hands start to tremble, and my voice begins to quake, and tears slowly begin to emerge and slip down my cheek more quickly than I can wipe them away. My mother and my husband will attempt to comfort me, telling me he’s really just kidding, don’t take it so seriously, you’re a fantastic teacher (cook, cleaner, writer, wife, mother, daughter). And as much as I want to believe this, and as much as I sometimes convince myself that I actually do believe it, that his antics are just constructive criticism meant to help me improve my skills, just done so with his signature smart-ass twist, I can’t. When it comes right down to it, I really do think that he thinks I suck, if only just a little.
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