Perfect To Me
Decide You Had Enough
I lay wide awake in my bed with my head resting against a sleeping Harry’s chest, I knew he was sleeping because of the snores coming from him. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep because I kept thinking about my gramps request, to at least forgive my father. Why not my mother too? And what did my gramps mean by my dad used to be different before he met my mom? There were so many questions I had running through my mind that I hadn’t been able to sleep. Deciding I wasn’t going to fall asleep anytime soon I tried to peel myself away from Harry but he held onto me tightly as I moved.
“Where ya goin’ love?” Harry sleepily mumbled, I smiled as I rested my hand on his cheek.
“To the bathroom,” I told him and kissed his nose as he let me go. I climbed out of bed and pulled on one of Harry’s hoodies and exited my room. I quietly fleeted down the stairs and walked into my gran’s spacious kitchen, knowing exactly what I needed. I walked over to the fridge and looked in one of the drawers, there sat a carton of vanilla icing, my weakness. I grabbed it out the drawer, shut the fridge door and got a spoon out of the dishwasher, I took a seat on one of the breakfast bar stools. I peeled the icing lid off and tossed it on the counter, I’ve been doing this since I was little, eating icing on nights that I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know why but icing is so addicting and it just tastes so good when I can’t sleep. I pondered what was keeping me up again, I never really did hear stories about my dad’s childhood, I saw photos but they were the standard kid photos, you know school portraits, the classic kiddy soccer photo, and so on. How could my dad be different than how he is now? Now, in the present time, my father is a strict lawyer that cares about his reputation and how people see him, he wasn’t the dad that gave his daughter information on the birds and the bees, or the father that would lecture any boy she brought home and he wasn’t the father that had a ‘daddy’s little girl’ because he was never close with me. Growing up I used to think I was always doing something wrong to not deserve his approval of me, but I would grow frustrated when I couldn’t figure out what it was that I did. All a kid ever wants is to please their parents and do as they say, and that’s all I ever did, I never acted out and brought any bad to my family name. As I ate the icing I played with my hair, something I did when I was deep in thought when I heard a pair of familiar footsteps coming down the stairs. My gran appeared around the corner in her pajamas, glasses over her eyes and a smile on her face.
“Hi sweetbaby, can’t sleep I take it?” My gran said, motioning to the container of icing sitting in front of me.
“No ma’am,” I said as I shoved a spoonful in my mouth and watched as my gran began to boil water. “What are you doing up?” I asked, spinning around in the chair I was occupying.
“Can’t sleep as well. What’s bothering you Jet?” My gran asked, not turning around to face me, she always knew when something was bothering me.
“What makes you think something is wrong?” I asked.
“Jet, I’ve known you for your entire life and I know when something is bothering you. You don’t eat icing for no reason and you don’t play with your hair for no reason.”
“Okay you caught me, you know how Gramps wants me to make amends with dad?” I asked and my gran nodded in understanding. “Well, why not both of them?”
“Because, whenever I tell you your parents call it’s always your father calling. He wants a relationship with you sweetie. Your mother on the other hand, she couldn’t care less about you and it’s sickening,” my gran spat as she prepared two cups of tea.
“Why did he wait 3 years though?”
“Hun, he realized right after you dropped out of college that he messed up and that he was never there for you. He felt that if he would have supported you, he would still have his daughter in his life, he loves you, he really does. He just isn’t good with confrontations and when he walks away from something it’s hard for him to go back, just like you. He’s all about pride.”
“I guess that makes sense, I just don’t understand what my mom did to make dad change,” I said as I scrapped up some more icing. “I don’t even know how my dad used to be because he never told me stories about his life before mom.”
“Come on, let’s relocate to the living room and I’ll tell you everything you want to hear,” my gran said as she walked towards the room with me right behind her. We both sat down on the couch and set our items on the coffee table, Gran pulled me into her arms and played with my hair. “Where should I start?” She asked.
“What was dad like as a kid?” I said as I let my eyes close while she played with my hair.
“Wild. He never took naps because he always had so much energy but boy was he creative. Growing up your father used to make so many things out of the most random objects he could find. His favorite thing to do was make these little stick figured out of those really long and narrow leaves. He was one of the funniest kids I’d ever heard, always saying the most random things and just doing the weirdest acts. One time when we signed him up for basketball, when he was eight years old, he felt like the game was really boring and needed a little excitement so he went up to his coach and pulled his coaches shorts down and then pulled his own down and started to dance around like a chicken! It was the funniest thing ever and needless to say we weren’t allowed to come back,” I couldn’t help but giggle at the memory as mental pictures floated through my mind of dad when he was a kid. “He was also very free spirited, much like you, he did his own thing and he always loved it. He used to never care what people thought about him, he would come home and when I would ask how his day went he would be like ‘got called a loser today, no big deal’ or ‘got called a homo today,’ and he used to say it so nonchalantly because he truly didn’t care. He was living life and enjoying it. He played a ton of sports because, like you, he has ADHD and the best way for him to exert all that energy was by playing sports and he was darn good at them, how do you think he went to Stanford? I remember your gramps and I were so proud of Phillip when he was a boy, we were always smiling with him,” Gran reminisced and when I opened one eye to look at her I saw her staring off into space with a smile on her face.
“Do you miss the old him?” I randomly asked.
“All the time sweetheart,” she said as she patted my hair.
“Was he close with Aunt Emilia?” I asked, already knowing I was going into deep waters as I brought up my late Aunt. She passed away when she was 22 and my dad was 19. I knew the story of my Aunt Emilia because my gran had told me they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Emilia and my dad went down to some concert that Gran didn’t want them attending because they wouldn’t get out til late but they snuck out and on the way home a drunk driver smashed into Emilia’s side of the car and she passed away at the hospital.
“The closest, you couldn’t get those two to leave one another alone. It got so bad that at one point they shared a room because they ALWAYS had to be near one another. You could say they were best friends, her friends were his friends and his friends were her friends, they rarely got in arguments and when they did your father was the first to apologize because he always hated upsetting her. The whole reason your dad went to school in California was so he could be closer to Emilia while she was at school, Gramps and I always said those two would live together when they graduated but they never got the opportunity,” Gran spoke as a single tear slide down her cheek.
“Yes they did Gran, Emilia lives in your heart” I told her as I grabbed her hand and squeezed it as a sign of reassurance.
“You remind us of her so much, it’s a shame you never got to meet her,” Gran said as she looked down at me with a smile on her face.
“Really?”
“Yes, she loved travelling, each summer she would venture off to some place new, it was her goal to visit every country in the world. That’s mainly why she went to school to be a reconstructive surgeon, so she could travel and help kids in poorer countries that have cleft lips and other stuff like that.”
“I wish I could have met her,” I told my gran as I shift my position so I was more comfortable.
“What else do you want to know Jet?” I thought about her question for a second when I came up with a response.
“How did my mom change dad?”
“Well, she was always a stuck up woman and when your father met her it was a year after Emilia had passed and your mother somehow convinced Phil to be more mature because being immature will always get you in trouble. That pissed me off because that isn’t true, then your father hardly came home anymore, hardly had fun, he was always studying and doing schoolwork, he got wrapped up in your mother’s charm. The thing that made it worse though was when your father got her pregnant with you, that’s when he really changed. Now we love you dear and you are the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time but we were so mad at your father because he knew he had to marry her now, so he could be in your life like he should be. We were mad because we didn’t like her and didn’t want her being a part of this family but we had to accept it.”
“She’s still a conniving bitch,” I mumbled and Gran laughed at me all while nodding her head in agreement.
“She always will be. But I do remember when your father found out he was going to be a dad he was so excited, he always loved kids, it was even better when he found out you were a girl, he called me up at 2 o’ clock in the morning screaming ‘IT’S A GIRL IT’S A GIRL IT’S A GIRL!’ he was so thrilled, and for a couple of minutes I saw the old him come out just by hearing what gender you were.” I smiled at that because it kind of gave me hope that my dad did care about me, he just let the wrong person get to him.
“I wish he was still like that, excited for me,” I blurted out and my Gran looked down at me with sadness in her eyes.
“Jet, he loves you. He can be excited for you he just needs you to give him the opportunity to be happy for you. That’s why Gramps wants you to reconnect with him and make everything alright. Your dad needs you right now,” Gran said as she started to braid my hair.
“What’s he going through?” I asked.
“Now that isn’t any of my business to tell, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”
“Fine,” I grumbled as I sat up. I stretched my arms out and let a yawn escape my mouth.
“Go get some sleep,” Gran said as she pushed me off the couch, I smiled at her and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“Goodnight Gran, I love you,” I told her as I walked back upstairs and into my room. Before climbing back into bed to cuddle with a still sleeping Harry I grabbed my laptop and powered it to life. I pulled my email up and typed in the familiar email that I would never forget, after hitting enter the email address auto-corrected into the person’s contact name.
To: Dad
From: Abby
I’ve thought a lot about you wanting to check up on me. I’ll be coming to San Diego soon, I’m not sure when. Do you think we could meet up and discuss things? Just you and me, I don’t want mom there. Gran told me it’s only you trying to contact me. I’m sorry for being so rude, I’m ready to push my stubbornness to the side and give you another chance at being a dad.
Love Always,
Abigail
I re-read the message and when I finally felt it was good enough I pressed ‘send’ and let out the breath I was holding the entire time. That was it, I would be connecting with my dad again…about time. I put my laptop up and crawled into bed next to Harry, where he pulled me against his chest . I inhaled his aftershave and quickly fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.
“Where ya goin’ love?” Harry sleepily mumbled, I smiled as I rested my hand on his cheek.
“To the bathroom,” I told him and kissed his nose as he let me go. I climbed out of bed and pulled on one of Harry’s hoodies and exited my room. I quietly fleeted down the stairs and walked into my gran’s spacious kitchen, knowing exactly what I needed. I walked over to the fridge and looked in one of the drawers, there sat a carton of vanilla icing, my weakness. I grabbed it out the drawer, shut the fridge door and got a spoon out of the dishwasher, I took a seat on one of the breakfast bar stools. I peeled the icing lid off and tossed it on the counter, I’ve been doing this since I was little, eating icing on nights that I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know why but icing is so addicting and it just tastes so good when I can’t sleep. I pondered what was keeping me up again, I never really did hear stories about my dad’s childhood, I saw photos but they were the standard kid photos, you know school portraits, the classic kiddy soccer photo, and so on. How could my dad be different than how he is now? Now, in the present time, my father is a strict lawyer that cares about his reputation and how people see him, he wasn’t the dad that gave his daughter information on the birds and the bees, or the father that would lecture any boy she brought home and he wasn’t the father that had a ‘daddy’s little girl’ because he was never close with me. Growing up I used to think I was always doing something wrong to not deserve his approval of me, but I would grow frustrated when I couldn’t figure out what it was that I did. All a kid ever wants is to please their parents and do as they say, and that’s all I ever did, I never acted out and brought any bad to my family name. As I ate the icing I played with my hair, something I did when I was deep in thought when I heard a pair of familiar footsteps coming down the stairs. My gran appeared around the corner in her pajamas, glasses over her eyes and a smile on her face.
“Hi sweetbaby, can’t sleep I take it?” My gran said, motioning to the container of icing sitting in front of me.
“No ma’am,” I said as I shoved a spoonful in my mouth and watched as my gran began to boil water. “What are you doing up?” I asked, spinning around in the chair I was occupying.
“Can’t sleep as well. What’s bothering you Jet?” My gran asked, not turning around to face me, she always knew when something was bothering me.
“What makes you think something is wrong?” I asked.
“Jet, I’ve known you for your entire life and I know when something is bothering you. You don’t eat icing for no reason and you don’t play with your hair for no reason.”
“Okay you caught me, you know how Gramps wants me to make amends with dad?” I asked and my gran nodded in understanding. “Well, why not both of them?”
“Because, whenever I tell you your parents call it’s always your father calling. He wants a relationship with you sweetie. Your mother on the other hand, she couldn’t care less about you and it’s sickening,” my gran spat as she prepared two cups of tea.
“Why did he wait 3 years though?”
“Hun, he realized right after you dropped out of college that he messed up and that he was never there for you. He felt that if he would have supported you, he would still have his daughter in his life, he loves you, he really does. He just isn’t good with confrontations and when he walks away from something it’s hard for him to go back, just like you. He’s all about pride.”
“I guess that makes sense, I just don’t understand what my mom did to make dad change,” I said as I scrapped up some more icing. “I don’t even know how my dad used to be because he never told me stories about his life before mom.”
“Come on, let’s relocate to the living room and I’ll tell you everything you want to hear,” my gran said as she walked towards the room with me right behind her. We both sat down on the couch and set our items on the coffee table, Gran pulled me into her arms and played with my hair. “Where should I start?” She asked.
“What was dad like as a kid?” I said as I let my eyes close while she played with my hair.
“Wild. He never took naps because he always had so much energy but boy was he creative. Growing up your father used to make so many things out of the most random objects he could find. His favorite thing to do was make these little stick figured out of those really long and narrow leaves. He was one of the funniest kids I’d ever heard, always saying the most random things and just doing the weirdest acts. One time when we signed him up for basketball, when he was eight years old, he felt like the game was really boring and needed a little excitement so he went up to his coach and pulled his coaches shorts down and then pulled his own down and started to dance around like a chicken! It was the funniest thing ever and needless to say we weren’t allowed to come back,” I couldn’t help but giggle at the memory as mental pictures floated through my mind of dad when he was a kid. “He was also very free spirited, much like you, he did his own thing and he always loved it. He used to never care what people thought about him, he would come home and when I would ask how his day went he would be like ‘got called a loser today, no big deal’ or ‘got called a homo today,’ and he used to say it so nonchalantly because he truly didn’t care. He was living life and enjoying it. He played a ton of sports because, like you, he has ADHD and the best way for him to exert all that energy was by playing sports and he was darn good at them, how do you think he went to Stanford? I remember your gramps and I were so proud of Phillip when he was a boy, we were always smiling with him,” Gran reminisced and when I opened one eye to look at her I saw her staring off into space with a smile on her face.
“Do you miss the old him?” I randomly asked.
“All the time sweetheart,” she said as she patted my hair.
“Was he close with Aunt Emilia?” I asked, already knowing I was going into deep waters as I brought up my late Aunt. She passed away when she was 22 and my dad was 19. I knew the story of my Aunt Emilia because my gran had told me they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Emilia and my dad went down to some concert that Gran didn’t want them attending because they wouldn’t get out til late but they snuck out and on the way home a drunk driver smashed into Emilia’s side of the car and she passed away at the hospital.
“The closest, you couldn’t get those two to leave one another alone. It got so bad that at one point they shared a room because they ALWAYS had to be near one another. You could say they were best friends, her friends were his friends and his friends were her friends, they rarely got in arguments and when they did your father was the first to apologize because he always hated upsetting her. The whole reason your dad went to school in California was so he could be closer to Emilia while she was at school, Gramps and I always said those two would live together when they graduated but they never got the opportunity,” Gran spoke as a single tear slide down her cheek.
“Yes they did Gran, Emilia lives in your heart” I told her as I grabbed her hand and squeezed it as a sign of reassurance.
“You remind us of her so much, it’s a shame you never got to meet her,” Gran said as she looked down at me with a smile on her face.
“Really?”
“Yes, she loved travelling, each summer she would venture off to some place new, it was her goal to visit every country in the world. That’s mainly why she went to school to be a reconstructive surgeon, so she could travel and help kids in poorer countries that have cleft lips and other stuff like that.”
“I wish I could have met her,” I told my gran as I shift my position so I was more comfortable.
“What else do you want to know Jet?” I thought about her question for a second when I came up with a response.
“How did my mom change dad?”
“Well, she was always a stuck up woman and when your father met her it was a year after Emilia had passed and your mother somehow convinced Phil to be more mature because being immature will always get you in trouble. That pissed me off because that isn’t true, then your father hardly came home anymore, hardly had fun, he was always studying and doing schoolwork, he got wrapped up in your mother’s charm. The thing that made it worse though was when your father got her pregnant with you, that’s when he really changed. Now we love you dear and you are the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time but we were so mad at your father because he knew he had to marry her now, so he could be in your life like he should be. We were mad because we didn’t like her and didn’t want her being a part of this family but we had to accept it.”
“She’s still a conniving bitch,” I mumbled and Gran laughed at me all while nodding her head in agreement.
“She always will be. But I do remember when your father found out he was going to be a dad he was so excited, he always loved kids, it was even better when he found out you were a girl, he called me up at 2 o’ clock in the morning screaming ‘IT’S A GIRL IT’S A GIRL IT’S A GIRL!’ he was so thrilled, and for a couple of minutes I saw the old him come out just by hearing what gender you were.” I smiled at that because it kind of gave me hope that my dad did care about me, he just let the wrong person get to him.
“I wish he was still like that, excited for me,” I blurted out and my Gran looked down at me with sadness in her eyes.
“Jet, he loves you. He can be excited for you he just needs you to give him the opportunity to be happy for you. That’s why Gramps wants you to reconnect with him and make everything alright. Your dad needs you right now,” Gran said as she started to braid my hair.
“What’s he going through?” I asked.
“Now that isn’t any of my business to tell, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”
“Fine,” I grumbled as I sat up. I stretched my arms out and let a yawn escape my mouth.
“Go get some sleep,” Gran said as she pushed me off the couch, I smiled at her and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“Goodnight Gran, I love you,” I told her as I walked back upstairs and into my room. Before climbing back into bed to cuddle with a still sleeping Harry I grabbed my laptop and powered it to life. I pulled my email up and typed in the familiar email that I would never forget, after hitting enter the email address auto-corrected into the person’s contact name.
To: Dad
From: Abby
I’ve thought a lot about you wanting to check up on me. I’ll be coming to San Diego soon, I’m not sure when. Do you think we could meet up and discuss things? Just you and me, I don’t want mom there. Gran told me it’s only you trying to contact me. I’m sorry for being so rude, I’m ready to push my stubbornness to the side and give you another chance at being a dad.
Love Always,
Abigail
I re-read the message and when I finally felt it was good enough I pressed ‘send’ and let out the breath I was holding the entire time. That was it, I would be connecting with my dad again…about time. I put my laptop up and crawled into bed next to Harry, where he pulled me against his chest . I inhaled his aftershave and quickly fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.
Notes
Ahhhh, 15 minutes before Christmas is over!Sorry folks, had a busy day but like I promised, ANOTHER update today! <3
Merry Christmas.
Leave me lots of comments!
xoxo.
Jade
teressa conroy said the quote
3/2/15