Things

There are things that I absolutely love about my dad:
He can talk to anyone
He’s smart
He’s funny
He’s dedicated to his ideas and lives with integrity
He’s emotional (sometimes too emotional – dude, you cry more than I do!!)
He looks really handsome in his clerical collar and women dig him (heh)

Then there are the things that make me want to scream:
He still doesn’t understand women (he loves us, but he doesn’t quite get us)
His ability to read a room is still uneven
His way of listening bears a strong resemblance to talking over you

I don’t think I truly understood until this weekend how much distance stands between his generation and mine; he was genuinely puzzled by my assertion that lovers should be friends and I was totally in the dark when he tried to explain what it meant to be ‘female’. Some of our conversations seemed to be at such cross purposes we may have needed a translator.

But there isn’t such a distance that I couldn’t see why I’ve chosen the life I have and the people I share that life with. You see, despite all my father’s weird-ass 61 yr old befuddlement at pop culture (Desperate Housewives almost killed him) and birth control (do NOT get him started on why black men don’t like condoms) my dad’s a guy who knows what he knows and will dig in the dirt until you finally eke out a position of your own to stand by. He honestly doesn’t care what you think of him (in that good way – though there are disturbing similarities to george w bush’s ‘resolve’ that makes me want to hit somebody); he just cares that people are thinking. And he honestly wanted to know what my friends thought about everything – sex, men, relationships, the Bible, our families, each other. (I think he freaked out my friend T- who was mortified at his whole idea of femininity and church; unsurprisingly, my father is a big fan of patriarchy.) His strong personality made me used to the strong personalities of my own friends.

In him, as much as they might shudder, I see aspects of my friends (or is it the other way 'round?):
They can talk to anyone (especially people like my dad)
They’re smart
They’re funny
They’re dedicated to their ideals and live with integrity
They’re emotional
They look really good and people dig them