I remember the first time my dad took me fishing. My grandmother was not pleased. I was the only girl on the entire trip. I was in grade school. My brother was really young. I'm fairly certain we were five and three.
We just moved to Illinois. I hadn't yet started school. It was our first trip. My mom allowed it because we had been living in Indiana. That's where my dad's family is from. We moved to Illinois because of her job.
It was kind of Dad's thing to take my brother and I fishing during breaks and in the summers. One of the things that he really enjoyed doing was inviting his new friends from his new job in Illinois as an accountant. I know this just killed my dad. Accounting was not his first love. But he did love numbers and he was really good at it. He made a lot of really good friends at that job. But I'm on a tangent.
First trip. My brother was there. My cousin was there. A bunch of kids were there. None of us had really been fishing before. My dad and the other dads were showing us how to bait our hooks. I remember everyone being very eager to just grab a worm or grab a cricket and put it on the line to start fishing. Until of course, they tried it. That was just not fun for a lot of the guys.
Me? I was a tomboy and I was invincible and fearless for the longest time. It didn't bother me to bait my own hook. It didn't bother me to fish. It didn't bother me to fish in the rain. I liked fishing in the rain. It was the best time to catch fish because they all came to the surface just as the rain stopped. It didn't bother me to reel in my own fish, take them off my line, put them on the stringer, rebait my hook, and reset my line.
People thought I was weird. Even that didn't bother me at the time. My Dad encouraged me. He taught me how to fish, shoot, camp, whittle. I fit in, away from the rest of the world.
I suppose what stuck with me after all these years is hearing that I wasn't normal from other adults I respected and that unshakable wave of emotions that went along with it. I remember overhearing I wasn't a real girl. Real girls don't behave the way I did. It was hurtful. I can forgive the person. I can forget the precise wording. I can't seem to shake the feeling and that look of disappointment and disapproval. Its been decades.
It always made me proud when my children pushed their boundaries. It's not that I didn't. It's that I hurt inside when I did. My children have a strength I never had. I smile when my granddaughter asks for toy cars or my grandson wants a doll or a princess crown. I love that they aren't forced into gender roles. Gender roles are damage over time. They'll eat away at your sense of self worth and your self confidence. Oftentimes in irrecoverable ways.
My Dad and I didn't always see eye to eye. However, when I was a child, he always encouraged me to be myself. He always gave me the freedom to try. He told me it was alright as long as I liked doing it. It didn't matter what anyone else thought. He punctuated his point with several videos and photos of himself in costume when he was younger. My Dad was a dancer.
After all this time, I've finally stopped looking for your approval. There are somethings you should never chase. You'll never receive it. When I learned to believe in myself for who I am, I realized I don't need to change for people to like me or for someone to love me. I just have to let people in.
No comments:
Post a Comment