Daddy's Girl

Image from Donnabellas.Com

I've had a serendipitous morning.

For some reason I had been thinking about my dad over the last few days. I don't know if it's the rain or because my son's angel date is coming soon (June 3). The other day, Noemi and I were talking about marriage and eventually the conversation moved to our fathers. Oh I know. We had been comparing notes. She was telling me about the differences between her and Butch and I was telling her how I was the "kalat" one compared to H's OC-mindedness. She mused that perhaps it was the creative creature in me that made me prone to ADHD-like moments which I do not deny. I told her that I guess we always try to find in our mates what we lack in ourselves.

Then a thought bubble struck me. Hey, I hadn't admitted that until now.

It took me a long while to understand the differences that H and I had. I told Noemi that because I had lost my dad at a very early age and at an important stage in my development as a child (yes, you are technically still a child at 16) I found myself looking for my dad in my subsequent relationships with men as I was growing up. I tried to look for parts of him in my boyfriends - the mestizo looks, the brilliance, the perfect enunciation and diction, the passion for films and reading, and sometimes even the fiery temper :( So when sometimes a boyfriend did not live up or fell short, I would chastise and I now realize that it wasn't a very fair thing to do.

I suppose this is the same reason why I married H who is a decade older than me. I was still looking for dad when I married him. For many years I brought that dynamic into our relationship and it really, initially made the adjustment very difficult. The "plus" if you can call it that when you lose a loved one, especially a parent, at a very young age, is that you become an "old soul" of sorts. When you allow that loss to transform you, you really become a more compassionate and wiser person because you become cognizant of the brevity of life. The downside of losing a parent so young is that you get emotionally stuck for a while and often it takes years, sometimes even decades to unravel the intricacies, to understand the implications of that early loss. But thank God it eventually resolves itself and somewhere down the road, like me, at 42, you finally admit that you are with whom God wants you to be and that differences, no matter how glaring they can be, can really be a wonderful thing if you celebrate it.

So now H and I understand our solitudes and respect our boundaries and we have become, by God's grace, through the testing of time, and the ravages of loss, come to a place where we are happy and at peace. It's been a long journey and we continue to evolve (we hold more animated discussions now!) We make sure to place God in the middle all the time and find that the journey that is marriage does become easier to navigate when there are three of you on the road. And yes, I finally stopped looking for my father, when I finally, found myself.

This post was inspired by my blogmate, Riz, who blogs at Guitarchic a young, talented and compassionate 24 year old whose writings remind me so much of a younger me and not coincidentally, lost her daddy too. This one is for you :)

If at all, how much is your partner like your dad? And what differences do you celebrate?