My cantankerous father

Yesterday I had an argument with my father. For a stupid reason. My mother has been ill for over two weeks, complaining as if she were dying even if she just caught a cold, and maybe we were all a little nervous. Anyway, the reason for this argument was a thermometer. My mother has been regularly taking her temperature, until two days ago, when she broke the thermometer I don’t know how – she managed to say it was my father’s fault, because it is never her fault. Anyway, she sent me to the pharmacy to buy a new one. The new one was in a green box. 

Yesterday, I noticed that my mother was taking her temperature with a thermometer contained in a red box, so I asked her why she was not using the new one but an old one who was likely not to work anymore. My father asserted that this was the new one, the one I bought the day before. I tried to explain him that no, the one I bought was in a green box. He started getting nervous and angry. He replied in a surly way that I was talking nonsense and he had thrown away all old thermometers, including the one in the green box, because it was no longer working. 

The discussion about this trifle went on for a while, until my father got so angry that I decided to call the pharmacy and ask which color was the box of their thermometers. I spoke to the pharmacist himself, and he said to me that the box is green. My father did not accept this answer. He turned so furious that I lost my temper myself. He started swearing and then, he screamed to my mother and me "I swear by God that the thermometer in the red box is the new one!". So I told him, "You are an old cantankerous fossil.". He replied that he did not allow me to insult him, and he never gets insulted in his own house. I let him notice that he regularly gets insulted by his wife. My mother was so astonished that she did not say a word. 

Eventually, my mother found the brand new thermometer I had bought the day before, contained in a green box, in her cupboard in the bathroom. All that discussion for nothing. My father then said "This is the new thermometer!" and I just said, "Now tell me which color is the box.". 

Many things go this way with my father. He is an old man, but he lacks the wisdom old people often have. He is very much self-centered, sulky and selfish. Well, if I take a closer look at my life with my parents, I notice that he has always been so; it is not just his old age making him rather a difficult person to handle with. Sometimes I even think he had me at 60 just because he wanted a child to look after him when he would be old. Maybe I do not accept him being so old? I ask myself this question very often. I am not a daughter to him, I am a sort of daddy-sitter, nurse, caregiver. I have to be almost motherly with him, which is ok for me, but it should not be my role. My father does not have a clue about being a parent. He was not a father to my brother, and he never was a father to me. I was raised by my mother, and he never lifted a finger to set limits to my mother’s omnipotence. As long as he has clean clothes, three meals a day, a bed where to sleep, and a clean house, everything is ok, nothing else matters. 

Doctor Livio and I discussed this topic many times during therapy. There was a time I had a sort of romantic crush on Doctor Livio, at least I thought so. It was nothing sexual, though. He is very attractive in my opinion, and his mind appeals to me in many ways. However, what I look for in Doctor Livio is not a man, but a father. Someone who helps me go through life, someone who supports me, someone who opens my eyes on my mother’s obsessions and says to me "It’s not you, she is the crazy one". Doctor Livio is a guide, and the way I love him is the way a daughter loves her father. 

I love my dad, and I am overly happy that he is still there in spite of his being so old. I am thankful to God that he is still quite lucid, on the whole quite independent and that we can be a family together. As I was saying in my last entry, my mother, my father and I are a dysfunctional trio of people who love each other in spite of hating each other sometimes. It’s like switching from one thing to the other within seconds, but eventually always ending with loving each other. It is not easy for me to become independent in such a structure, because I am stuck in my role as a daughter. Thus, nobody considers the idea that I could become a mother and a wife myself one day. I am here to serve the family. Things change, but they are changing so slowly that I can barely see them change… it’s like a scene on slow motion. This is one of the reasons why I need to feel the fire of enthusiasm whatever I do, and be sure I am aiming at something great in my life. Great for me, which does not mean I’m going to change the world or save the planet. Just being successful in what I want to do, without harming others and achieving what I want to achieve. Amen on this, right? 

Well, since I am supposed to be studying now, I’d better end this entry here and stop ranting… take gentle care everyone!