Daddy's darling

(I never said I would not do this again, did I? I wrote this for our paper to celebrate Father's Day. I would have preferred to be more my usual acid self, or even nicely funny, but this is what they wanted. And between Small Cat being obstreperous and fabulous weather, I do not feel like starting something new from scratch. So, voila...!)

Over the past few months, many of the Hollywood paparazzi have been focussing on one young target: Lindsey Lohan. Apart from her own alleged problems with substance abuse and the various angsts of being a young woman who has managed to get too much, too soon, she also has a major family issue to deal with – she is estranged from her father, Michael, because of his ‘self-destructive’ behaviour. Other big stars like Halle Berry, Tatum O’Neal and Angelina Jolie have also had well-publicised problems with their male parents, for assorted reasons. And, during any crisis or major event in these celebrities’ lives, that father, who is not really considered to be part of their lives, has surfaced – or been dug up – to tell the world and the eager readers of the gossip press, just what their darling daughters are really all about.

I find this distance easy to believe, but very difficult to identify with. After many years of battle, pitched, armed and occasionally dangerous, my relationship with my own father has stabilised to more or less even keel, one with few highs or lows but lots of mutual caring, sharing, love and, most of all, tolerance, like most father-daughter relationships are, or should be. We both give each other space and, now that I am ‘grown up’, talk about everything – from bad elevator maintenance to a cantankerous boss, wardrobe malfunctions to fiscal responsibility – and try and sort them out without lost tempers, sulks, silence and an occasional thrown dish. It is not ideal, but it works. Perhaps it does because my father figured out his role fairly early in my life. I was his responsibility, apart from being the apple of his eye.

So he did his best and stretched himself to do more, like all good daddies are wont to do. As add-ons, he taught me how to be a girl and yet never feel the need to be a boy. So during the frequently painful process of becoming an adult, I learned how to change a tyre and clean a carburettor, rewire fuses and explore the insides of a washing machine, deal with recalcitrant Internet service providers and carry my own overloaded luggage across miles of airport terminal. All this, without losing my innate taste for silks and diamonds, stiletto heels and scarlet nail-polish. And somewhere along the way I also found out how to hotwire a car, unlock a door without keys and see the difference between a man with long eyelashes who flirts very nicely and one who has solid worth and that I could actually introduce to Father without being furtive. Those are, however, aspects of my life that the pater was not privy to while they were in progress and will probably glower at me about even today.

Perhaps that is why it has never been easy to find a suitable boy…man, actually, since that aforementioned ‘growing up’ happened some moons ago. And I am not the only one struggling with this dilemma; many of my friends bumble along with their non-happening relationships, each one looking for someone that they cannot describe, but somehow know is very familiar. Just as research has discovered, only children of the female persuasion tend to look for mates in the mould of their own fathers. They crave that same caring-sharing-nurturing-generous-loving (ad infinitum, as nauseum) ilk of person that they have grown up with and are used to. And, at some strange and self-tortured level, they sometimes get lucky and find that individual, but only after some masochistic trail and error that the father watches with a certain horror, anger and helplessness. And if they never do, it’s fine; Daddy will be there for a long while, after all!

For me, without any trace of the rather unfortunate Elektra in my make-up or attitude, my daddy is indeed the best. It could be because I know no other. It could be because I cannot possibly have any other. And it could also be because he is. And I don’t need a special day to celebrate that fact.