High Anxiety

Actually, I'm not that anxious, but I will be by Friday. The FoilDad (a/k/a BigGrampa to the FoilKids) will be visiting. While I love my father, he really isn't the most self-aware (or other-aware) person on this planet. He is always good for a few really heinous sexist assumptions about life, and can make me feel quite small. I normally spend a lot of energy resisting being small and resisting the societally imposed with to shrink and take up as little space as possible, but when FoilDad is in the house, I'm a shrinking violet.

I didn't always act like that. But in those days, we used to have screaming fights. Of course, that was during my adolescence. I'd like to think that by age forty-six I would have accepted my soon-to-be-seventy-year-old father's foibles, and in a way I have. I know I'm not going to change his world view. I'm not going to teach him anything. He's going to arrive, tell me how I'm feeling, tell me what my situation is, explain his view of politics, and expect me to agree. Since I don't want to spend the weekend debating with him, I will inform him when things relating to me and my life aren't as he assumes, but otherwise let him think that his statements about various groups and political beliefs are news and informative. Or at least not curl my lip in scorn.

However, I will make several predictions, and may even play a game of "Expected Parental Dicta Bingo." It would be more fun if instead of playing for Bingo, I could drink a shot of whiskey for each expected statement I hear. But no.

Expected statements:

(1) "Things must be so much easier now that the divorce is final."
(2) "Financially you must be getting to the point where you're starting to feel comfortable again."
(3) "It's good you stepped off the fast track. I don't see how a woman with small children can work the way you did."
(4) [After asking me to tell him "who I'm seeing"]: "You're still an attractive woman. Some man will be happy to have you take care of him."
(5) "Nancy Pelosi [insert horrible thing she did that is somehow much, much worse than anything Newt Gingrich or Dennis Hastert ever did]."
(6) "Now, don't become a bitter divorced woman, now*; nothing could be less attractive to a man.**"
(7) "You might not want to be quite so straightforward with men, honey. The male ego is a fragile thing."

There are several other truly delightful phrases that I am sure will make an appearance. Throughout this, I will be reminding myself that this is, indeed, my father, and that I actually know that he loves me. He's just not that good at it, sometimes.

He's not all stereotypes and bombast, but it gets in the way. And it hurts to hear. I'll still enjoy seeing him, and his visit is welcome, but aieeee.

*Too late, Dad.
**Like I give a shit.