My favorite father and daughter
Who can say why we fall in love?
A shrink who once helped me become a little less crazy said the attraction that we think of as love starts in a place he called our “lizard brain,” the seat of our most primitive and deeply rooted instincts and responses to life.
The last time I fell in love, here’s what my lizard brain saw and responded to: a devoted father.
Strong, admirable father figures had been in short supply in my life. I didn’t even know it mattered, didn’t know I cared. I see now that the lack stunted my life, starved me emotionally and drove behaviors that ultimately left me even more empty and even more emotionally hungry. There have been times in my life when I even railed against the idea of a Creator who seemed like little more than an absentee father to a hurting and broken world.
Then a father and his daughter came into my life. They shared their life with me and, in doing so, gave me the kind of family that had been my lifelong craving. In doing so, they made me a better person than I ever expected to be.
We are now living out our own quirky version of happily-ever-after that has even transcended our divorce eight years ago. But no matter what else has happened in our lives, he has always, always, been the kind of father I would have ordered for myself if we could build our lives from an a la carte menu. He always loved his daughter unconditionally, even when he could have been excused for wringing her neck. When she was little, he knew how to gently but firmly use the Daddy Voice to let her know beyond a doubt when she was approaching the limits of acceptable behavior. He treated her with respect in all ways, at all times. He understood that she was his to protect and to teach, but not his to control or live through. Time and time again, he tossed out everything he believed about himself in order to become a better man, a man worthy of her respect and love.
When Elisabeth was two years old, the two of them were in the car one day and he fired up one of the cigarettes he then smoked at the rate of three packs a day. She looked at him and, with all the authority a two-year-old can wield, said, “Daddy, throw that out.” He did. He quit cold turkey.
That was about the time they came into my life.
Who can say why we fall in love, except perhaps in retrospect.
