Today my father asks me, for his birthday, to either buy or make a card and write down three of our best memories. I look back in my mind, shuffle through as through a deck of index cards, searching. I find good memories, sure, but they are all bittersweet. For example there was the time when, after he had already left and my mother had left, we went to the Black Sea. This had been a family tradition that fell apart once my parents tried to flee communism. My father had been gone a year and come back. The year that he was back, my mother had gone to meet him in Bloomington, Indiana. She stayed there and he came back "to get me". But when he was back, he was often gone late at night, leaving me alone at 8 and I was anxious and terrified because I had already lost my mother. He also had affairs.
So the good memory about us being on the bus together, when he came back, going to the Black Sea is also dripping with deep sadness, because my mother wasn't there and because I felt so betrayed by him.
I remember other good memories, like the time we went hiking in Laguna Mountain. But he was angry at my mother and said she was like the dog who got spooked by him and then lunged to bite him.
Or the time we went hiking in Penasquitos canyon and he talked about how much he had to give up to have a family and to support my mother and I and how he had never been able to follow his dreams because of us.
When Dr. Gibson said that they were still treating me like a child, I wasn't exactly sure what he meant. When he said they were people who should have never had children, I was sometimes hurt. And finally when he said, they were emotionally manipulative and controlling, I wasn't so sure. But that was over 6 years ago and over the years I have seen how this is all true. As an only child I had no one to corroborate the evidence, except the daughter of my father's brother, who also grew up with similar parents. But because there was a divorce and my father had a second marriage and divorce, little by little the truth is illuminated. There is a Flamenco letra that says:

Por las cosas mas oscuras el tiempo tiene la clave y con la corta o la larga con el tiempo, todo se sabe.

For the things most hidden time has the key and whether you take the long way or the short way, with time all becomes clear.

So when my Dad asks for three good memories, I have a hard time picking out some that are just good. But will I tell him this? No. Will I be authentic and say, dear Dad you did a lot of things poorly and you did some things well, here they are. No. He wants me to feed his idea that he's not that bad of a father, his delusions that he didn't really mess up that bad when in his heart he knows differently. What's important is that he tries to fix it now, but he's not truly all that capable of having an honest and transparent relationship. But he tries. And for that, I won't hold this semi-dirty laundry up for him to see. On his deathbed it will be between him and God. It's actually none of my business.
Recently I shared with him some things about the PPD I have been experiencing and his response was to want to sit down with me to resolve it. Maybe he thinks that's what a concerned father should do. Maybe there are others out there, without fathers, who would want nothing more but for a concerned father to want to sit down and solve things with them. But to me it is belittling and controlling. I want him to say what, ironically his mother, my grandmother says to me, which is that I am a smart and capable girl and that I will find a way through this.
I know now why the control, the gripping. When we have no faith in ourselves to roll with the punches, to have cognitive flexibility and adaptability, we control, oppress and force others to comply. And that is never the way to a true relationship. Then we convince others that it's their fault, unwilling to look at our part in it.
So good memories, yes there are some, but there are very few that are without a dark cloud just because that's how my father and my mother rolled. They didn't love or respect each other and found no peace with each other. Yes I know they loved me but they just could not show it in a way that was visible.
So let's see, good memories, without a dark cloud, dear father, for your 59th birthday.
I must have been five and you woke me up by tickling my face with a long piece of grass. That day was full of delights. We went for a picnic in the grass with mom and you took photos. I don't remember ever feeling so happy and loved, except for the time I would beg you and mom to mummy me in a blanket just one more time, each holding one end and swinging me in it like a hammock. It was delightful to be in between my two parents, because I loved them.
The third good memory is not specific, it's just general times I heard you play your guitar, there is a classical piece I will always remember as you.
Beyond that, most of my memories are of yelling, cruel words and forced intimacy, criticism, rage and control.
I wish it was different, and perhaps you can get away with pacifying yourself into disillusion but I have long learned to have strong boundaries and there is very little that is safe to share with you. We are not close.

Love, your daughter