I was 35, still single, so it made sense that my father visit me in Seattle from Connecticut, to help me fix up the house that I had just bought. He was a bricklayer by trade; he knew a lot about construction. If I were having a baby, my mother would come but much to my parents consternation (particularly my father who had 3 unmarried daughters) we were not advancing our family with any progeny. We were on a branch of a huge family (10 sets of aunts/uncles and 31 first cousins) that was on it's way to extinction.
I took my first trip to Peru when my father arrived.... he got to play with my house and he played with more than that. He loved to dance and one might call him an "Italien Stallion" even in though he was in his 60's he was quite handsome in a Dean Martin way; and so, yes, he did go dancing and when I returned, he acted like a teenager, asking me to use the car EVERY NIGHT. It's clear where this ended up. After confronting him about his behavior, he admitted he had met a pert little women and was head over heels. Several months of back and forth East to West Coast, torn between the comfort and familiarity of home and this new world with a woman who had some extra money and liked to travel. Eventually, my mother asked for a divorce after 42 years of marriage, the only divorce in that older generation. It was devastating creating huge polarizations between him and his sisters and scorn amongst my mother's sisters and family and the community of their friends.
I was in the middle of this big family fissure. I was the only daughter dealing with my Dad and "her" in close proximity. They married within 6 weeks of the divorce; "she" cheerily called me a step daughter and I curtly replied I already had a mother and I didn't need or want another. My mother was quiet and never let any of us know the nights of sadness, tears and loss that resulted.
About this time, I was taking a writing class and I put some of my thoughts on paper (minor editing):
"I've been rethinking my relationship to my family. It now seems to take the shape of non existence. My father no longer exists. There is a man whom I see infrequently who talks of the color of my house, the repairs necessary for my garage. But his day to day existence is a mystery to me. The place where he stays has no shape or substance; the woman with whom he sleeps is a voice on the phone. I reeled at her intrusion - there was no permission granted by me for her encroachment upon another member of this broken family. My voice became stiff and formal. What right had she to reach in and grasp my father, pull him back to her? She did not exist except her voice, except her presence in my father's references, except in the misshapen family left by his departure.
I've thought or feared sometimes that my father has LIFE - that these women who seem so dominent and vital are mere illusions without his presence. It is not he who doesn't exist but we, all of us; we are lifeless manequins in a window as life outside passes by. Dad has taken his life back, having lent it for many years. We are the selfish ones fed by what he offers. Another one feeds and is given life and form."
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