Father's Day

Father's Day is always hard for me. Losing my father when I was in high school, having reminders of dads surround me during this time of year just reminds me of what I'm missing. Dads are complicated, just like anyone else, and I've learned more about mine after he died that makes me see him in a different light. I worshipped him as a little girl, so having him fall from his pedestal just by being human was a hard lesson in reality.

Greg Wood, 1953-1998

One of the things that I find myself wondering the most is whether he would like the person I've become. He was fairly conservative, so the fact that I grew up liberal probably wouldn't have gone over super well. I have a distinct memory of arguing with him over something when I was a kid, and him glaring down at me and grumbling "You're gonna grow up to be a liberal, aren't you?" I had no idea what that meant, but hey, turned out he was right!

I also wonder if I would have turned out to be the same person if he had lived. I moved out west for college in large part because I wanted to get as far away from where I went to high school as I could. I wanted to run away from the immediate pain of losing him, and I'd never been out west before. I found a home in the Pacific Northwest, and learned how to let myself relax into the parts of myself that I'd been hiding for ages. Being autistic (though I didn't know that until just a couple of years ago) meant I was masking and trying to fit in most of my life; it was finding my tribe out here that allowed me to unmask and allow myself to grow more comfortable in my own skin. Would I have been able to do that if I'd stayed in Maryland? I don't know.

I hate that Dad never got to see me do anything important. He died before I graduated from high school, so he never saw me do that, go on to college, get married, write my books... There are so many things I've done that he never got to see. I think that's the part that hurts the most when I'm surrounded by Father's Day reminders - he didn't get to be proud of me.

Sorry for the downer today, friends! I promise I'll be back with more Discworld soon. In the meantime, if you still have him around and have a good relationship with him, don't forget to wish your dad a happy Father's Day!