Dad
I had a nice chat with Elena at 1:30 AM yesterday. Grandmother has been sleeping in our room, and so Elena had to move to a different one. So out of solidarity I moved with her to her new room.
Obviously that means chatting for a long time to talk about TOUT LE MONDE! We discussed our relationship with our parents, dad to be specific. My Father always wanted us to be extraordinary; he always put a great weight on this point. All through our lives my parents put so much effort and sacrificed a lot for this purpose. For my parents’ social and financial circumstances, they did almost the impossible, definitely more than what others is their social circle did. They had to fight family and society to give us the chances that were given to us. Unfortunately after all that effort, we turned out to be quite NORMAL! We made different choices than what my parents expected or were hoping for us to make, we live the lives of ordinary people and we have the very same problems and difficulties of everyone else
Which is apparently a taciturn disappointment for my dad.
Through my life, I had a difficulty making friends, simply because it was very difficult for me to find people who meet my very high standards that my dad instilled in my brain. Everyone seemed very silly and shallow for my taste; I always felt I was more advanced or better. Once I was talking to Natasha (who also has high standards for people) about someone and I said this person is silly and Natasha surprised me by saying that the person is actually quite smart and not silly at all… that made me realize that my standards might be too harsh because they don’t have room for human spontaneity.
Many of our friends are getting married, and both Elena and I spent some time talking to these people. We gathered from the ladies, that many of their husbands actually can’t afford to be married and so they take some allowance from their parents! This was actually SHOCKING. This is totally unaccepted to any of us. We also realized that these ladies do not cook, because it is either not cool to know how to cook or they don’t have time for it, and for both of us, this is bullshit! All three of us (Hania, Mariam and Elena) are either looking into higher degrees or doing one, for all of us it is absolutely rejected to ask anyone to pay for that, even though it is so damn expensive….
We could not reach a conclusion whether my father’s strict requirements are fair or not, if they are actually good or bad, I mean after all I am quite Happy to be who I am, and I really don’t wish to be like anyone else or any different.
Mariamov,
No need to introduce myself, you know who I am.
You say “taciturn disappointment”, implying you tried to discuss this issue with your father and he was unexpressive. I wonder, though, if you are not seeing yourself through his eyes, but as you would see yourself. I suppose, in some ways, a child may become a disappointment to her father. But what are those expectations that were not met? To be disappointed, one must have been failed by someone else. A promise broken, an injury done, and so on. What then, were those promises made when first you saw the light of day? Was your father seeing a future doctor, or writer, or whatever, the day you came into this world? Was he seeing the potentiality for something that day, that years later was not fulfilled, leading to disappointment? I think people are much simpler than you think they are, dads included. That long look he gives you that you interpret as disappointment, probably is nothing more than his wonderment at the child he still sees in diapers in his minds eye, now grown up and become a woman.
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Great words of wisdom … simplicity counts.
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