Dead-Inside Dad

My father gave me his glass knees and dark sense of humor.

His hazel eyes with the gold flecks on green.

His love for books and good food.

He told me to stop looking in the mirror so much, because vanity was a sin. He never left the house without ironing his shirts and slacks, shaving, trimming his fingernails, cleaning his shoes, and walking through a cloud of expensive cologne.

He told me to drink hot tea in the summer (because it would cool me down more than ice water) and dry between my toes (so I wouldn't get athlete's foot) and stop wearing make-up (because it would make me break out). I didn't believe him when he was right.

He told me I shouldn't bike too much (or else my ankles would get too big and no man likes big ankles) and never cut my hair (because it wouldn't look feminine) and read about the Illuminati (because I didn't know how the world worked). I often believed him when he was wrong.

He hissed You are just like your mother in a way that made me hate both of them. He called me munchkin when I was little and bitch when I was a teen and intimidating when I was grown. But he was always the one I was the most scared of.

I never knew he was terrified of me, too.

Only after his death, I saw a picture of him as a little boy, wonder and beauty and joy practically beaming out of his face. I crumpled over my desk because I'd never known this boy. Never caught a sideways glimpse of that life in my father. When he became my dad, he'd already been dead inside for so long that I spent my life surprised he was still holding on, day after day, decade after decade.

When he actually died, I wondered what had been the point of his life. I had no idea if he'd found joy or meaning in anything. I couldn't remember the last real conversation we had. Or I could, but it had been so long that remembering it was painful.

Fifteen years ago, I was standing in my garage with him when he visited after I had my last baby (because that's where he hid his alcohol). I was at a low point, which I'd tried to conceal from my dad, but either I wasn't as good of an actor as I thought or my father was more perceptive than I gave him credit for. We were both hiding from each other like children behind a curtain, feet clearly visible.

He said that life was a series of falling and getting back up, and that his life was over once he decided not to get back up again. So, he said, no matter what, you must get back up. And maybe because it's one of the only times he ever saw me, saw through me, saw inside of me, it didn't sound trite but profound.

Maybe he saw himself in me that day. Saw the desperation, sensed the depression. The terrifying thoughts I never told anyone.

I have pictures of me as a baby sleeping on his bare chest (I can almost hear Bob Dylan in the background), and pictures of me standing next to him as a teen trying to look normal during a visit with my small shoulder in the vice grip of his meaty hand (masking the fear that he wouldn't let me go back home to my mom).

I know things about him now. About how that boy turned into that man who became my dead-inside dad. I want to say that I would've gotten back up, but I'm not sure. I want to say that I would have lived, not just survived, but I'm not sure. I want to say I would not have abandoned my kids, but maybe him leaving was indeed the best for us. I used to be so certain he was wrong.

He chose isolation and loneliness maybe because he couldn't face the monster, and also maybe because he didn't want to become the monster. Maybe leaving was the kindest thing after all.

When I think of my father, I think of someone hiding in shame, being crushed under a burden of self-hate so heavy and so undeserved. And I also think of my mother telling me about the day I made him a dad. He peeled into the hospital parking lot so fast, tires screeching, she could hear the car and almost smell the burnt rubber from the eleventh story. (I don't know how many stories there were, actually.) But I see him sprinting up the stairs, his long legs taking three steps at a time.

There is a picture of the three of us, in the small apartment under the roof, the early summer heat singeing the edges of the photograph. I'm a newborn in my father's arms, looking skeptically up at him, my parents gazing down at my face.

I can't see his eyes, but I imagine love.