That Damn Book.....

It's no secret that I love to read.....and sometimes a book, a single sentence will really hit a nerve and call up a memory. Sometimes that's a good memory....other times it's a moment best forgotten.

I recently finished a book for my book club....Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. It was a touching novel based on fact about young children taken from their poor parents in the 1930's and moved into a horrendous "orphanage" and then "given" (sold) to wealthier families. The parents did not give their children up willingly and many spent the rest of their lives trying to find them. The children, understandably, were frightened and lost. Siblings were separated and conditions at the orphanage were difficult if not abusive. The real-life scandal ended with the head of the orphanage was finally exposed, but died of cancer before she could be prosecuted.

So the story was sad and yet also the story of the young main characters who never forgot who they were and where they really belonged. As the author stated"...the heart never forgets where we belong."

It was a sentence in chapter three that hit me hard. "One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is let her know that she met his expectations." I read that and my memory instantly tunneled back to a day in the early 1970's....the last time I saw my father before he died of cancer.  I flew in from New Jersey to see him and we sat on the deck of his Chicago brown stone looking out at his back yard and just talking. I can't say we had a satisfactory conversation because we had a distant relationship....he was a very dominant personality and I was always shy and less-than-confident in his presence. He was never physically abusive in any way....but emotionally distant and harsh. My parents were divorced.....dad leaving when I was 16. He was remarried and facing this last health battle with his second wife by his side. He was only 49.

In the years since my parents separated and then divorced my father made many hurtful statements when I visited him.....comments only for my years and apparently never for my younger sister. I kept the comments to myself because there was no point in changing her memories. But I will never forget the very last thing he said to me before I left to go back to my mom's house in the suburbs. "You are wasting you life because you're just a wife and a mother." Period. End of sentence....his final judgement and "advice".

So I carried that comment with me for the years since....and always wondered what his judgement would have been if he'd seen the other things I'd done over the years. I'll never know....and it shouldn't matter. I'm 71 years old so why does that memory still hurt? I blame the book for this one.

Quoting again: "One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is let her know that she met his expectations." Mine never did....and I'll never know....