Emerging Esteem

In 2009 my honey and I vacationed in San Francisco. I wrote this long entry about meeting my cousin on my dad's side there for the first time. I just happened upon it today on my flash drive while I was doing some classwork. It resonated with me suddenly because of a conversation I had a while ago with my friend and fellow blogger over at soulsistah4real about the effect that fathers have on female self esteem. I hope I haven't posted this before. I don't think I did. But anyway. Here it is.

Emerging Esteem

            This summer I went on vacation in San Francisco with my fiancée and met my cousin D. on my dad’s side for the first time in my life. She is dark skinned with locks, fifty or so but I couldn’t tell by looking. I liked her even before I met her. I just liked the way she sounded on the phone when she called me at the Hotel to find out what my plans were.          

            She picked us up in Glen Park and drove us to her mother’s huge house. All three of us, me, D. and F. ended up talking for hours. We were out in the yard for a bit but then we came in when it got cool. We sat in a large lounge area in the basement  that she said was designed and built by her father, my uncle, a man I’d never met and never would but heard a lot about from my dad since I was a girl. My dad called him “Brother.” They had has an unfortunate falling out and stopped talking. If there was ever the possibility of reconciliation it didn’t happen before “Brother” died of a heart attack. This happened when I was still young but old enough to feel the impact it had on my father even if he never talked about it in detail.

            D. said that this room her father built was her favorite room and I could tell by the way she talked about him that she really cared for him, very similarly to the way I feel about my own dad, her “Uncle George” whom she loves as well. Somehow we ended up talking about how her father would give her some of the best advice she ever got on exactly what the perfect age was for her to have sex. This was when she was a young girl! I was stunned. I could never have had conversations like that about sex with my father when I was young, never!  It seemed a radical and frankly icky notion to me. But then D. said something I’d never heard before. 

“Woman get their self esteem from their fathers.”

            Well at first I was kind of resentful of that statement, especially considering what a strong and progressive woman my mom is. I watched her boldly face down so many obstacles for my brother and she was always encouraging me to love myself I that I always felt I must have gotten my self esteem from her. Aren’t mothers the main role models for their daughters and vice versa? But I didn’t protest too much because I started to feel like she was onto something,

            She went on to say that women who have good relationships with their dads don’t freak out so much about men in later years. They tend not to place too much meaning on a definition of their worth as seen through other mens opinions. That was something worth thinking about. 

            And let’s look at me. I’m a classic daddy’s girl, been best friends with my dad since I was born. We’ve always shared a special relationship. He was my protector and my hero. Of the two parents, my dad picked me up in his arms the most, so I went to him more often because I knew he wouldn’t mind carrying me. My mom wasn’t so much into that and I’m glad she wasn’t. My dad spoiled me enough. I needed balance in my life. Plus I also had my brother around who played with me all the time and that made being comfortable around men a lot easier to this day.  So maybe there is something to what my cousin said. I certainly get an unconscious feeling of entitlement with men from my dad. I guess because I knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me he could.

I remember once walking in Prospect Park in Brooklyn with my dad. I guess I had gotten ahead of him a bit and in trying to cross the road got hit accidentally by a biker who couldn’t figure which way I was turning and was maybe going too fast to stop. I was around five years old or so. I don’t remember getting hit but I know it was bad. I was scared and all I remember was balling my eyes out in shock.  My dad was so angry he took the guys bike and through it over a bridge at the overpass we were on. That was the end of that bike. That was the end of that period. That man knew better than to retaliate.  I’m not saying my dad was right. But this incident sent a little girl a very affirming message about how her dad felt about anyone hurting her, and that’s something that stays with me in one form or another for life among countless other protective and supportive things my dad has done for me and still does to this day.