And the Cat's in the Cradle

It’s been a while since anyone bought me a pair of shoes.

But yesterday my dad – who’s never been to a shoe store with me in my life – bought me these Tisza Cipo sneakers in Budapest, and it was sweet.

Because I was with my dad, I’d skipped a lot of the kind of places I’d go if I were on my own or with a friend. But I couldn’t pass up the chance to get some commie chic sneakers.

The trip to the shoe shop reminded me of when my sister and I were about 11 or 12, when my father – who wasn’t around much – would once in a while decide to spend a weekend day with us. He loathes shopping and can be an intellectual snob, so only now can I begin to appreciate what a good sport he was to take us to whatever distant cool mall my mother would never drive us to (we didn’t try on clothes with him – we just liked to walk around).

My father’s done several things in recent years I still haven’t quite forgiven him for, and our relationship since I graduated from college hasn’t been a close one. I know that’s because of me. In the past few years, he’s taken to behaving as if my sister and I are much younger than we are – almost like he wants to go back to all the years he missed while he was off working or avoiding my mother or whatever he was doing when he wasn’t home. He refers to my mother as “Mommy,” something he never did when she was alive. My mother used to do all the sending of birthday cards, and the ones he sends now are the Daddy’s little girl type, more appropriate for girls of single digit age.

I don’t know if it’s wishful thinking or something a bit more sinister – the desire to be seen as the “good, cool” parent coupled with the knowledge that my mother isn’t around to correct him or state events as she remembers them – but this weekend my dad also engaged in some revisionist history. When we visited the Central Synagogue, the largest synagogue in the world besides Temple Emanu-El (and the most beautiful synagogue I’ve ever seen), Dad started talking about how he’d been married at Temple Emanu-El.

“Dad, I’m almost 31 years old and no one has ever said that in my life,” I finally said. “Plus your wedding album has pictures of the service taking place at the hotel.”

“Oh,” he said.

On Saturday, as we walked around the Castle District, the subject of my travels when I studied at Oxford came up. I remembered how hard my mother had fought the idea of my backpacking – she forbade me to buy the Eurail pass before I left the U.S., and I ended up having to get someone else to get it for me.

“I think you’ll remember that I supported you,” my father said.

That was too much.

“Dad, if you’d supported me I wouldn’t have had to fight to do it,” I said.

He finally backed down, saying, “Well, maybe I was worried about the cost of it.”

Dad’s on a plane back to the U.S. as I write – he was in England on business and felt since he’d already been to London once or twice he’d “done” London. Two and a half days of unmitigated Dad is a lot for me and though I got visibly irritated with him several times, he never once got visibly irritated with me. To have him gone isn’t unmitigated relief, though. There is guilt (see the sentence before last), and there is plenty to think about – mostly how badly he seems to want us to have a close relationship, no matter how clumsy he is in his attempt to make it that way.