Father's Day

It's the day before Father's Day
and facebook has become the latest display case of the nuclear family
where everyone posts their father as their profile picture.
I have two fathers. How to choose? I refuse.
Besides neither one really counts.
It's this half life, half lie, half truth that's always haunting me, daddy.

On accident, I just saw a picture
of my biological father holding his (other) daughter.
It's the only picture I've ever seen of him where he doesn't have grey hair,
where he's a young man with black curls and bulging biceps and a smile
so devilishly gorgeous that someone as smart as my mom would fall for it. 
It's the only picture I've ever seen of my father, fathering.

And I feel like screaming at the picture and screaming at him.
FUCK YOU. HOW COULD YOU? 
I feel like making him the scapegoat for absolutely everything,
every struggle,
every love lost,
every staining abandonment episode,
every stinging inability to participate in healthy intimacy.

But I am in love too.
In love with this idea of him. This idea of my father, fathering.
Isn't it love that spikes the initial yearning for him? It is, yes.
And so I imagine it's me that he's holding.
Imagine it's me that gets to feel his hands on my 2-year old belly,
Imagine it's me smiling from ear to ear in between his sturdy black boots.
I imagine he is elated to be with little me
and that little me can't imagine a life without
this towering, tenderly holding him.

...and when I'm done imagining and done sobbing
because the contents of my imagination are always more generous than this life...

i pray for a world where dads can be dads to all their children,
where women don't fall for the bullshit,
where men don't believe their own hype,
where love can flourish in multiplicity without shame, guilt, fear or minimization of its power.