this moment after midnight

I don’t even know how to start this post. I drafted it as a faux Dear Margo letter, but that was yesterday, before the email. No matter how you slice it, this is a long one.

Night before last my father called me to thank me for the very belated Christmas package that I sent to him and NW, which had jam, homemade jewelry, and the Ken Burns Civil War documentary in it. He then asked me some hedging questions about the wedding, including money questions. I put my head down and barreled ahead with my budget and plans, explaining how reasonable we were being about it, and tentatively asked if that was okay.

He muttered a little bit, and then said that he was likely not going to attend.

I asked him what he was talking about. He said he was in a special circumstance. This is true; NW will be having his son in June or July of this year, and that’s a little awkward since my mother does not know they are married. (I don’t want any kids at the wedding, so that’s not the issue to me.) I think he also doesn’t want to not invite NW to come, because that is an awful insult to NW, but he also doesn’t want to bring her, because he is petrified of seeing my mother and what she might do. He then explained that he worked 11-12 hours per day at his garage every day, and couldn’t just leave that for a weekend. I will skip right over this particular reason. He also explained that since flights to Vegas are expensive, going from a small airport to a small airport, he will be driving, from Kentucky to Las Vegas, and that would just take an awful lot out of him to have to do.

I know you are thinking this is absurd and terrible. Stay with me.

I reminded him that I was only planning on marrying once, and that I was his only daughter. He said he was aware of that, but that he had a lot of balls in the air right now. We changed to other topics.

I had a very bad evening, processing this information. BF was very supportive and appropriately angry for me, and I was so shocked I didn’t know what to feel. I knew that probably a big part of the reason for my dad’s resistance is my mother, and yes, he should grow the fuck up and accept being in the same room as her for a day, but I am telling you: he is an avoidant personality, this is the worst possible concept for him, being in the same room as her. I have a little sympathy. Not much, but a little. I can’t believe that this was his solution for when this day came, that he’d just not go. Of course, he probably didn’t plan on having a tiny baby and a just-getting-started business when this day came.

Okay, so the next morning I got up and I felt hurt about it for the first time. That why did you do that? kind of feeling. I went to work, and I spun my tale to a co-worker who has parents who are also challenging (similarly manipulative and neurotic mother, former alcoholic father who is dying rapidly of cancer and using that to talk her into taking in her deadbeat asshole brother and supporting him). She told me she thought I won the Challenging Parents Sweepstakes. Yay. I am teh winnar. I went through my day, did what I had to do, tried not to think about it, and came home a good bit late after an appointment.

I checked my email and found that my dad had written me. In Gmail, you can see the first written line of the email, and he had written something about how he’d done a lot of thinking about what we had talked about… and I thought, good, he’s come to his senses.

“The bottom line is that I simply cannot pay for a wedding and seriously doubt that I will be able to attend one in Las Vegas.”

Now, it’s not that I’m some brat whining for her daddy to pay for her princess wedding. We are talking modest wedding. And it’s also not that I insist tradition must be upheld and it’s his absolute duty to pay for my wedding. There are other things that bother me about this. The main one is that, as J put it, he’s known that this was coming for 28 years, and how he could be not ready for it, since BF and I have been together for four of those years, is quite the question mark in my head. The other thing is that this is just another example of money being the central axis for every way in which he reacts to me, something that has gotten awfully old in 28 years.

He went on, then, to reel off an itemized list not only of his current income and expenses, but of all the ways in which I have been an appallingly expensive daughter to raise. He told me to the penny how much of his retirement money my mother gets every month (due to the divorce contract, I think). He reminded me of my college expenses, of my high school tuition expenses, of paying for teacher training for me (and here I thought that was his first wholly generous gesture, since it’s been four months and I haven’t gotten grief about it yet), of other ways in which he’s paid for my care and keep, and of the amount that he paid for my mother’s Ph.D., which she’d obtained “against his wishes”.

He said he’d been working for other people his whole life, and he thought it was about time he did something for himself. He said his garage hasn’t yet broken even since he started it in October. (Um…it’s a new business.) He said NW is going to get hardly anything if he dies, and he only has twenty years left to spend with the new baby. All these things he said to me, to explain why he won’t pay for my wedding and probably won’t come.

As TB said, “Gee, sorry I was such a bad investment.”

I called BF, and he said he’d be home as quickly as he could (he was stuck in a very bad traffic jam), and then I sat on the kitchen floor for a while. The fan on the stovetop was on and I didn’t notice for about 45 minutes. I thought about all the things I wanted to say, all the things I wanted to do. I wanted to instantly write back and tell him to go to hell. I wanted to call my mother and tell her everything she wanted to know. I wanted to rob a bank so I could pay for my own goddamn wedding. There was so much running through my head, but it was mostly the pure idea that he would do such a thing, explain to me in currency why he didn’t want to be there for one of the seminal moments of my life.

BF came home, and he listened, and talked, and held me while I cried just a little. “He’s a bad father,” I gasped. “I haven’t wanted to think that yet. But it’s true.” I was thinking about my coworker’s father, an alcoholic – not a punchy one but still an alcoholic – and how she said I’d won, anyway. He’s never laid a hand on me, and he never tried to fuck me, and he didn’t walk away from me, but I can think of so few sweet moments in my life that are due to him, and so many ugly ones, like this one, in the kitchen.

The solution to the practical question (which of course made my brain go “No, we’re not going to fucking do Stone’enge!”, which made me feel a bit better) is that we will explain the situation to his parents, and to my mother, and see what can be done. BF’s aunt and uncle have offered us up to $4000 for our honeymoon, and we may just ask if they can spend it on the wedding instead. In any case, we will find a solution to the no-payment-from-Dad problem.

But, God. BF’s parents are going to be livid. My mother is going to be inconsolably livid. (Guess who’s going to bear the brunt of that?) The rest of BF’s family is not going to understand. This is such an enormous insult, for him not to come to the wedding, that I’m not sure it can be forgiven.

I mean, we can buy him a plane ticket. If he had just said he wasn’t going to pay for the wedding and didn’t know how he’d afford a ticket (which is bullshit, anyway), we’d find an answer for that. But for him just to throw away the possibility of attending is…atrocious, was BF’s word.

The thing that gets me – and this is something, in a twist of irony, that I strongly recognize from an awful conversation I had with my mother last year – is his inability to take responsibility for his choices. He chose to do all the things that have led to him spending so much money on me and my mother. (Whether or not he should be complaining about spending money on his wife and child is another matter entirely, one we’ll just have to table.) He chose to sign the divorce contract as it was, rather than holding out for something better. He chose to pay for my mother’s Ph.D. He chose to have unprotected sex with his childbearing-age new wife. He chose to send me to private school and pay for that. Part of being fucking adult is understanding that you take responsibility for your choices, good or bad, regrettable or not. I kind of can’t believe that he doesn’t understand this at 55, when I understand it at 28. I have made bad choices, and spent lots of money on bad gambles. But that money is gone, and it’s no use wishing after it.

So what I do in reaction to his email is what’s still up in the air for me. I told myself I’d sleep on it before doing anything, but if you look at the time this is posted, you’ll see how well that’s working out so far. I would also like to get MM’s advice, because due to her family background she is a much more forgiving person than I am. (About some things. But she does have a line that does not get crossed.)

I want to write to him and ask him to think long and hard about this decision before he makes it. Does he really think this will be an event he will not regret missing? Does he really want to join our family with BF’s with this sour opening riff? Does he really want to give my mother this kind of ammunition, which she will then use to shred me to pieces for the rest of her life? Are those the things he wants, to hurt all of us so badly and turn us all irrevocably against him?

But instead of that thoughtful, questioning answer, the response that keeps running through my mind is this:

“I’m sorry our relationship is defined by dollars and cents.
Take care.”

And that will be that. It’s only his heart surgery that has brought us back to having a relationship, anyway, and I have really had it with the selfish and miserly way he’s lived his life in the last decade. Frankly I’ve begun to wonder why he had me in the first place, since he obviously resents the money he spent on me, he didn’t attend my college graduation, and now he plans not to attend my wedding. What’s the point in having a child if you’re going to be there for her so sporadically? So I can just take care of that for him, and he never has to worry about me again.

But that’s probably a bad idea. He may relent. His wife may tell him what a complete asshole he’s being. His mother may do the same. Hell, BF’s mother and my mother may end up with some words for him, if I know them.

I just can’t think beyond what a horrible thing this was for him to do. I can’t think to a time when this will not matter to me, that he put his wallet before his daughter. I can’t imagine forgiving him for telling me he doesn’t want to attend my wedding because of a motherfucking plane ticket. So I’m thinking, right now, at this moment after midnight, of just walking away. If he thinks it’s about me pouting because he wouldn’t pay for the wedding, fine, whatever. As long as I get away from this attitude.

I’m going to try to sleep again. If I think of the generosity in the room whenever I’m around BF’s family, I might just make it.