We often hear the phrase ' like father, like daughter' being used. I wonder how true it is. My roommate absolutely swears that the root of all her problems traces back to her mum and dad. Fact or fiction?
Today I spent the afternoon at my parents. One, because I love and miss them. Two, because they moved into an apartment with a swimming pool downstairs.
How much of me is from mum and dad? Logically the answer would be - everything.
Dad has never been a very academic person. In contrast, he was the bad boy of his school and family. Some people say that they cannot imagine their parents being a certain way or another but I can. My oldest uncle have, on more than one occasion, accused him of being the black sheep of the family. While he may be joking, I have long suspected that there is some truth in it. You see, my dad was a musician. A drummer to be exact. He played for the Alleycats at one point in history. Drinking, women and drugs came naturally. This doesn't say very much about my mum, but the story must go on.
To give him some credit, dad did successfully get over his brush with drug addiction. Actually it was more of a glued-on rather than a brushed situation. My favourite - my daddy was a druggie- story is the one where they had to hold him down and forced him into a tub of beer. How that was supposed to help the cravings, I do not know. Apparently detox included tearing at your own flesh because you feel ants crawling under your skin. Pretty scary stuff. Right up to a few years ago, there wasn't much good I could say about dad. We were too different.
As always, pent up emotions can never stay pent up for too long.
The Big Bang
In the summer of 2003, there was a huge argument. It was the biggest disaster of my adult-family life up to that point. Let's just say that there were lots of yelling and name calling. My bother was smart. He locked him and his wife up in his room and stayed out of the whole deal. Me on the other hand, not so lucky. It all began with the dumper (recently ex-boyfriend). In fact in retrospect, a lot of conflict within my family originated from the dumper. I remember him always telling me of instances where he felt I was unfairly treated by my family. He was right of course. As soon as I started looking out for them, voila! Everyday there was something I felt the need to fight for. Why were they treating my brother better, etc. It was a bad, bad time.
Everything came out in the open that fine day. I had accused him of things I have never dared say before and he was hurt, I know. Success can be bittersweet. This I learned.
The funny thing was that the dumper got into the argument too and he yelled at my dad. From that day on, dad had a grudge against him. As a matter of fact, all my male friends did not like the dumper. The girls thought he was nice but the guys, no. One of them even congratulated me on the breakup.
A month after the whole incident, him and I moved out of my parents'. I was so stupid, he was not worth it.
Ahh shit, why am I talking about the dumper again. Back to the original story.
So anyways what I wanted to say was that my brother and I both have lots to thank dad for. We inherited from dad our love for taking vacations ( mum too for this one), our love for swimming and being in the water, a natural ability to be funny (most of this went to my brother though), our easygoing nature and of course by no means least important, the ability to sing along to any oldies from the 70s,80s and 90s! Yeah!
It's a bit too early for father's day but, what the heck. Thanks dad, for everything.
You will live on through my every success.
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