crazy love

My dad, who passed away last fall, was often a difficult person to deal with. But I never doubted that he loved me. 

One thing I learned pretty early on is, when another person expresses love for you, you’re receiving that love through a filter they’ve pieced together based on their life experiences. If you don’t know what that filter is, love feels like control or selfishness. Or something close to insanity. 

My dad’s filter was fear and protectiveness. My younger brother was killed in an accident when I was seven years old. It was a sudden, traumatizing event that changed us as a family. After that, my father seemed determined to protect all of us, even if sometimes that pushed us away. This didn’t end when we turned eighteen. Home from college for the summer, I often stayed out late with friends or boyfriends, used to the freedoms of college and a little rebellious. In that era before texting, I rarely called to say I’d be out late.

  

My dad would get in his car at midnight and drive the streets, sure he’d find my body by the side of the road. My younger siblings told me he did the same for them. After college, when I worked in the computer industry, I moved to San Francisco, which terrified my father. He kept track of crime statistics, convinced that I’d either be killed by gangs or become addicted to heroin. 

Around this time, unexpectedly, I became a single parent. My parents were very supportive of me during this time. But it meant my father had yet another person to worry about: my son, Peter.

Which leads me to the most over-the-top expression I ever saw of my father’s love for me and my young son. 

I interviewed for a new job—in Helsinki, Finland. At this point, I’d left a bad relationship, and I wanted to get as far away from the debris as possible. At 5,500 miles away, Helsinki seemed like a great choice. Finland had a great childcare system, free university education, a good economy, and a tech industry.

As I waited to hear about the job, I went out to visit my parents one morning. I gave them the news: If I was offered the job, I’d take it and move to Finland with Peter. I think my father thought that I was moving soon. Like that week.

I had breakfast with my mom and toddler Peter, while my dad was upstairs getting ready for work. When he didn’t come downstairs, I said goodbye and went out to my car with Peter. My father heard me leave and ran out of the house, wearing nothing but a towel, shaving cream flying from his face. He pounded on the window of my car.

“If you move, Vickey–you’re going to be sorry!”

His face, under the shaving cream, was red with anger. “Finland has only six hours of daylight in the winter, and it has the highest rate of suicide in the world.” Standing there in his towel, while neighbors drove by, he listed every fact he’d researched on Finland, which was apparently the hellhole of Europe.

After his tirade, he gathered his towel around him, and left me with this: “You’re a terrible parent!”

I drove away angry. My dad was unreasonable. Crazy. I felt hurt, and it gave me even more incentive to leave the country.

It turns out, I didn’t get the job in Finland. Which was a gift. As a single parent, I needed my network of friends and family, who turned out to be more loving and supportive than I could have imagined. As my little boy grew up, my father stepped in time and time again for Peter. He took his role seriously. He came to graduations, encouraged his grandson in his talents (something my father was really good at), and he filled in for a father at school events–until I ended up marrying a guy, serendipitously  named Peter. My father and little Peter built a relationship they wouldn’t have had if I’d moved 5,500 miles away.

My son Peter with my father, at my niece Emmy’s bat mitzvah.

A day after the Finland outburst, my father sent me flowers at work with an apology for what he’d said. Then I started thinking about the filter of fear that my father lived with. I started to see it for the love it was. And that it had been a heavy burden for him to carry. As a parent of three children now, I understand that burden even more. You send your children off to school in the morning with no guarantee they’ll come back. You also have no idea whether your children will make good decisions or where those decisions will lead them. It’s something you have absolutely no control over. It’s terrifying.

This past Sunday, I heard a father’s day sermon about the love of a human father being like the love of God. A God who loves us with a fierce protectiveness. But in us messed-up humans, beaten up by life, that quality gets twisted. 

Hidden under the scar tissue, those good and beautiful qualities are there–like the desire to love, nurture and protect. 

They’re not always obvious. And sometimes they require translation.