 My dad, circa 1965 | My parents divorced when I was young, and we went to the then-common method of splitting up the child’s time: living with the mom, Thursday dinner and every other weekend with the dad. My father was an introverted farmer, older than most dads, and Thursday evenings were awkward. We’d sit in a restaurant in our small town, chewing silently. The weekends were better, because he lived with his mother on the farm, and I adored my grandmother and she adored me. I chased chickens, slept on the pull-out sofa with the cats, played in the grain silos, and learned to drive at the ridiculous age of 9. I did all that with my grandmother, except for the driving, which my dad taught me. My dad stayed in the background. |
This kind of schedule didn’t do much to develop the father-daughter relationship between us, two quiet people. The saving grace of this time was the yearly vacation, two court-approved weeks every summer. We drove to visit cousins in North Carolina and Colorado, and thoroughly explored Texas. My dad revelled in being on the road, in his quiet way. He always packed a “feed bag” of snacks, knew the strangest hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and threw out bits of the most bizarre trivia about the highway system, trains, Texas history, and engines of all kinds. Not exactly what the average American girl wants to talk about, but I knew to take what I could get.
This all came back to me this morning while reading Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. Cather is like Laura Ingalls Wilder for grown-ups. In this book, a young musician from Colorado struggles to make a go of it back East. At one point, she gets sick during the winter and recovers only when she spends the summer resting in the heat of Arizona.
When I was a music major in college, I got sick one winter and didn’t fully recover due to my heavy class load, piano practice schedule, part-time job, and many accompanying gigs. I sniffled and coughed until spring break, when my dad said he thought what I needed was a week in the sunshine of Padre Island, off Texas’ Gulf coast. I agreed.
He picked me up when classes let out, and we drove from Abilene to Padre Island where he’d rented a condo just a short walk from the beach. We sat silently on the beach for days, breathing in the salt air. In the evenings, we’d eat silently in local restaurants that he found and silently play cards (he loved Uno) in the condo until bedtime. It was exactly what I needed. I got my health back and returned to Abilene to finish the semester with energy and interest.
These days, the courts and social workers seem to have figured out that the Thursday evening/every other weekend schedule isn’t ideal for most divorced families, and the parents have a more equal share in their children’s lives. In my day, however, that wasn’t an option and I didn’t see much of my dad. Because of his reclusive nature and my shyness, he was difficult to get to know.
When we traveled, however, it was different. It’s ok to be silent when you’re watching the landscape go by, commenting occasionally on the scenery. It’s permissible to sit silently in restaurants, chewing, when you’re eating something new and interesting, and a local band is filling up the air. It’s fine to play cards silently at the end of a busy day, because you’re tired from doing something nice.
We may not have had many conversations, but we had those shared experiences. I’ll take it.
This all came back to me this morning while reading Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. Cather is like Laura Ingalls Wilder for grown-ups. In this book, a young musician from Colorado struggles to make a go of it back East. At one point, she gets sick during the winter and recovers only when she spends the summer resting in the heat of Arizona.
When I was a music major in college, I got sick one winter and didn’t fully recover due to my heavy class load, piano practice schedule, part-time job, and many accompanying gigs. I sniffled and coughed until spring break, when my dad said he thought what I needed was a week in the sunshine of Padre Island, off Texas’ Gulf coast. I agreed.
He picked me up when classes let out, and we drove from Abilene to Padre Island where he’d rented a condo just a short walk from the beach. We sat silently on the beach for days, breathing in the salt air. In the evenings, we’d eat silently in local restaurants that he found and silently play cards (he loved Uno) in the condo until bedtime. It was exactly what I needed. I got my health back and returned to Abilene to finish the semester with energy and interest.
These days, the courts and social workers seem to have figured out that the Thursday evening/every other weekend schedule isn’t ideal for most divorced families, and the parents have a more equal share in their children’s lives. In my day, however, that wasn’t an option and I didn’t see much of my dad. Because of his reclusive nature and my shyness, he was difficult to get to know.
When we traveled, however, it was different. It’s ok to be silent when you’re watching the landscape go by, commenting occasionally on the scenery. It’s permissible to sit silently in restaurants, chewing, when you’re eating something new and interesting, and a local band is filling up the air. It’s fine to play cards silently at the end of a busy day, because you’re tired from doing something nice.
We may not have had many conversations, but we had those shared experiences. I’ll take it.