Tonight’s post is from a guest blogger: my daughter, Michal.
Tonight, despite it being a stressful and physically painful week, I am grateful for many things. It is a good problem to have when I have multiple things I could choose to write about in this space, but today, I would like to focus on my father.
My relationship with my father has stretched across years, many different states, various platforms of communication, and difficult memories. It has not been easy growing up largely apart from my father, as many children of divorced parents know. But, as I have told him and will share with you, I am grateful for his continued role in my life, and I know others that have not been so fortunate. How blessed I am to have two parents who support me in many ways despite the physical distance between us.
I have always been a “mama’s girl” in the sense that my mother and I have always been very close – she primarily raised me and has dealt with me at both my best and worst. But lately I have come aware and grateful for the fact that I, in many ways, am much like my father. My eyes, my height, my introverted and reflective nature, my aptitude for music, my depth, my (at times) short fuse… the list goes on. The things that frustrate me about him are the same things that frustrate me about myself. For all the distance and years that could have separated us, we are often one and the same.
My father and I used to (and rarely still do) bicker – I have often resisted his notion that he knows better than I do or knows what’s best for me because I am young and don’t know much about the world. And, perhaps because I am older and (slightly) less headstrong, do I understand that he was and is always trying to do what is best for me. And, as I grow older and consider advice more humbly from both of my parents, I know more and more what is best for myself while also knowing that they have paved the way for me in so many ways.
Next Sunday, I leave for a much needed break to spend in St. Louis with my father, stepmom, and half brother, Jaden. The longheld tradition of me staying up and prepping the greens with my father has been standing for at least a decade, and shows no signs of ending. My father stands and I sit alongside him and we talk about life – my work, his work, my feelings, his feelings. It is beautiful and has changed – I once enjoyed apple cider during this tradition and now prefer beer or wine! And although I have not believed in Thanksgiving since learning more about its true history and significance, this time between my father and I is some of the most valuable I have been given.
I am grateful for my father in all of the truth he speaks through his words, his eyes, and his music. We have never had a “perfect” relationship – what is that, anyway? – but we do the best we can. And that is more than enough.
