stirred by the familiar frustration, the pain of not finding my place. When my mom finally came into the kitchen in her robe and poured water into the coffeepot, tears started sliding down my cheeks.
“Mom,” I said, trying to be quiet.
“Mmm…hmm?” she asked, studying the faucet.
“They’re so mean to me,” I said. “I hate them.”
“Just ignore them, honey,” she said, spooning coffee grounds into the filter.
Just then my dad walked in, wearing his bathrobe, his knees crackling. He sat down next to me and opened the paper, then lit a cigarette.
“It’ll make you tough,” he said, then exhaled a stream of smoke across the breakfast bar.
* * *
—
GROWING UP IN a house with two older brothers who had their own demons to fight, and who weren’t the least bit interested in me, did make me tough. And guarded. And very angry. Though they were just kids themselves, they were bigger and stronger than I was, and they regularly, and sometimes viciously, told me how much they hated me. They harassed me at school, seeming to take pleasure in embarrassing me in front of my few friends. Their marked lack of interest was humiliating. What kind of person is rejected by her own brothers? Sometimes I worried there was something seriously wrong with me. The rest of the time I dreamt of beating them up, even though I didn’t stand a chance. So I turned to myself and fantasies of revenge, of a future when they would rue the day.
And it wasn’t just my brothers who made me feel painfully awkward within my own family—self-conscious, like a ghost floating around the periphery.
My dad also made me uncomfortable, and I felt ashamed of my discomfort. Once, he took me for a ride in the vintage Jaguar he couldn’t afford and went speeding down the country roads where we lived, ignoring my cries of “Dad, please slow down!” His nonresponse made me feel as if it was my fault I felt unsafe, and that I was ruining his good time.
Another time, we were visiting Ann Arbor and he yelled something at the skinhead neo-Nazis distributing anti-Semitic materials on a corner. Then he flipped them the bird. His rage made me nervous, but it was nice to feel protected by him for once—a strange brew.
Another time, I was taking a bath in the bathroom at the end of the hall with the yellow-and-silver foil wallpaper. I was old enough to be left alone in the tub, but young enough to still need checking in on. He poked his bald head into the steamy bathroom and I instantly responded with “No. Get Mom.”
As a therapist I used to see once said to me, “Little girls aren’t born not loving their daddies.” I thought something must have happened to make me not love mine. For many years I believed that the clue to that something, and the difficulties that followed, could be found in that bathtub memory.
I mean, what has to happen to a little girl to be so rejecting of her father? What kind of relationship leads up to such a clear and resounding No?
* * *
—
WHEN I WAS PREGNANT, I dreamt about Azalea a lot. I wrote in my journal every day, wondering what she was going to be like, cataloging my growing belly, how difficult it was to walk, learning more about myself and my body as I wrote and reflected. I wrote about how much I loved Thayer, and how being pregnant made me feel vulnerable. I wrote about where our little girl, whom we had already named Azalea, might sleep, and how we might try “sleep training,” though I wondered whether she would become “attached” if we did.
I needn’t have worried that Azalea wouldn’t become attached. Even my 1970s mom and dad were attachment parents. There’s no other kind. We’re all attachment children, too.
But how could I have known?
When I was pregnant, I just wanted to be a good mother. Better than my own—more attentive, a better listener, a true—a fierce—protector. I couldn’t bear the thought of my unborn baby feeling as