When I was seventeen and a junior in high school, I fell in love for the first time. He was a year older than me, a senior, and on the swim team. A string bean with a wiry, long body and lean legs. Dirty blonde hair washed crisp by endless hours of chlorine. A young man with a quirky sense of humor who enjoyed science fiction novels and scuba diving. He lived on his mother's ranch where she boarded horses and kept cows and he was renovating a 60 something mustang that one day I dreamed I would ride shotgun in. He took me to the prom and he was just adorkable (yes, a-DORK-able) enough that I fell hard. I wrote him a list of reasons I loved him that ranged from ¨the way you smile¨ to ¨the way you play with your four year old brother¨ to ¨the way you bake lemon tarts.¨ When we did the dishes at his mom's house in the kitchen together, I felt so at ease and at home with him I imagined us, like many an innocent teenager girl, growing old together. I fell harder and harder.
I fell so hard I worried about what would become of us with his graduating and going off to college and asked him about this. He told me that we'd see what would happen. He boxed his things and took me out one last night before he left for school two hours away. We gazed under the stars and there was something so final and sad in the air it was nearly tangible. We said goodnight and his kiss was so tentative I could feel his recoil, if not physically. emotionally.
I gave him a week to settle in and go to orientation. I called him after that week to see how he was, and finally, when he didn't answer, I emailed him. Then, as do most if not all high school relationships, we ended. He did not have the courage to end it, only to tell me electronically that his sentiments had changed, and so I did what I had to do: I broke up with him.
I spent most of that week crying at night in my bed and working out my sadness by beating myself through hard, six mile treadmill runs. I threw myself into my volunteer work. I was bitter and crushed. My world seemed to spin out of control, hyperbolically blown out of proportion by my adolescent perspective.
But I survived.
* * *
It is said a girl's first real love is her father. That women seek to marry men who resemble their fathers, that we all in some ways pass through the Electra complex and want to bring home a man who reminds us of dear old dad. But if this is the case, I do not know who my first real love is: my biological dad, or my stepdad?
My bio dad and my mom divorced when I was six. He left my mom for another, older woman whose kids were grown, who did not like me, and whom I never felt comfortable around. I greeted her with stiff, horrible hugs and I hated the scent of her overly strong perfume. On weekends, I made the trek from my hometown to the SF bay area where I stayed with my dad and tip-toed nervously around the house to avoid the Dreaded GF as much as possible. Wrenching a smile from her was like tightening the screws on an already over tight hubcap. I did not enjoy her company.
As I grew older and became busier and busier with school activities, I went less and less to my father's house. Partially because of increasing extra-curricular activities, partially because I felt out of place there.
Then, one day, my dad was stolen from me. I was sixteen and I was out to a lecture on the American Constitution one October evening--it was for a scholarship competition in which I was taking part--and I returned home that evening ready to start my essay. I had just entered the house when the Dreaded GF called.
It was not good. My dad had a heart attack. He'd been rushed to the hospital.
I do not remember much because the rest of that night is a blur. I think my memory has attempted to block it, or at least smear the images I have in my head like a wet watercolor painting in order to protect me. But I do remember this: getting into the car with my mom and brother. Wanting to puke the whole way to the bay area. Worried as all hell. Listening to this song to try and keep calm. Looking out the necklace of car lights winding along the altamont that would lead us to the edges of the Pacific Ocean and a deep of night where I prayed I would find my father recuperating in a hospital gown.
That night never came.
* * *
My father died of a heart attack the night of October 7th, 2004. I was sixteen. I had a short ten years with him. I remember few things, and my memories are fading quicker than sepia photographs kept in stale, cold attics. I remember his love of food and NASCAR and rock and roll and the way he made me hot chocolate on rainy winter weekends. I remember his curly hair and his sense of humor and his easy going temperament, which I have inherited along with his curls and his smile. He was not particularly intellectual, though he was not dumb. The best word I have for him is this: simple. He loved to cook and make me laugh and play the drums on the steering wheel in the car and call me ¨Mouse¨, which was his nick name for me.
Then again, I admit I did not get the chance to know my father on a deeper level. I never had, and never will, understand who he was the way adult children come to an eventual understanding of their parents as real, flawed human beings.
* * *
Several weeks before my father died, my mother and he had gotten into an argument over how to split costs of my driver's license and car and insurance. I was angry with him and I remember furiously announcing in the kitchen to my mother that I didn't feel like my father was my father and that when I envisioned who would walk me down the aisle when the big day comes, I pictured my stepdad and not my bio dad.
Now I won't ever have to choose between these two men, or, as I had originally envisioned, ask them both to walk me, which in some ways saddens me deeply, and in others does not. The night my dad died, I was a bloody train wreck and my eyes were puffier than the Michelin man. But my stepdad knocked on my bedroom door--it was around 7 am in the morning on October 8th, we'd returned from the bay area a few hours prior, and I'd slept like hell--took me in his arms, stroked my head, let a cascade of tears soak his work shirt, and told me that everything would be alright. When he said it, I felt like it was true. He has always known how to anchor me through the storms.
When it comes to stepdads, I have been beyond blessed. My stepfather Michael means the world to me. I would not be half the woman I am today had he not been by my side for all these years. He has taught me so much of what I know about the world. He has jokingly said since I was little that we are both the ¨140¨s of the family (regarding our minimum level of IQ), has watched countless civil war documentaries and films with me, taken me grocery shopping on Saturdays with him, bought me my first car, seen me off to two proms, shipped me to college, moved me into my first apartment, and put me on more than one plane flight to France. Recently, these plane flight departures have left us both teary eyed.
If I had to pick what man in my life to model my future husband off of, I would pick my stepdad in a heartbeat. I would pick him because I--for better or worse--knew and know him better, and because he has been a steady rock, alongside my mother, in my life. My stepdad is my real dad, and I want someone like him by my side for the long run.
* * *
Eight years my dad has been gone, and my memories are withering like dying flowers in a too-warm room. I knew they would with time, but to see them go saddens me. Eight years ago I was a teenager and a different person and innocent. Now I am nearly twenty-five and my love life isn't so simple anymore. I cannot deny that should I meet the right person, I could get serious. That I could and will eventually get married, and more within probably the next five to ten years than--oh, say--the next 15 to 20 years of my life. My youth and the expanse of time before me used to protect me from these matters, but they cannot any longer.
In all honesty, I am scared of being serious. I do and do not want it at the same time. I am terribly afraid of picking the wrong person, and more afraid of having ¨daddy issues¨. I would rather be overly, than underly, cautious. This is probably one of the real reasons I hesitate so much to get involved with anyone. I cannot help but ask myself, with each passing date, if the gentleman in question is more like my bio dad or my step dad? I do not always have the answer, nor is an answer always necessary.
But I know this much is true: both are proud of me. And that neither my dad, nor my stepdad, would want me to spend my life alone out of fear of what is in my past. And both, I am certain, are watching over me.
So dad, I hope you've got my back from up there in heaven. For the first love, but most of all, for the last love, of my life. Make sure he's a good one, ok?
I love you.
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