Have You Met My Dad?

I’m excited to be linking up again with Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop! This week’s prompt I chose was: What celebrity Dad would you have picked for yourself as a child?

Image from collegecandy.com

I used to love watching the Cosby show when I was younger, even though it was a family I couldn’t relate to in the slightest. But was there anyone who didn’t love Bill Cosby in the late 80′s and early 90′s? Actually, don’t answer that, I’m sure the show wasn’t loved by everyone but I never missed an episode.

I will admit, one reason for my loyalty to the show was Lisa Bonet.

Image from askactor.com
Being a young, light-skinned mix girl, Denise Huxtable was the cool girl I looked up to. Always appearing in these amazing, funky outfits and usually sporting a new hair style, I wished I was as cool as her. Once Lisa Bonet got together with Lenny Kravitz and went all out hippie, complete with dreadlocks and nose ring, I only loved her more.

But more than anything, I loved watching the show for the family dynamic and loving humor every situation was handled with.

Remember when Theo came home and told his dad he didn’t have to worry about getting good grades because he’d decided he was going to just get a job after high school and move out? As upset as his father was, Cliff played along, giving Theo monopoly money and then charging him for rent, food, transportation, etc. thus teaching him some realities about life on your own at eighteen.

Anytime there was conflict in the home, especially between the kids (and there always was), situations were managed with kindness and care. Cliff and Claire would get mad at times and let the kids know they’d pushed too far or that they were disappointed with a decision one of them had made but nothing was ever settled without the child knowing they were loved and deeply valued.

In my memory of the show, the Huxtables worked to instill the importance of family and friendship, education and intelligence, fairness and sense of charity or willingness to help others in need.

Yes, the show was cheesy at times but what I still love is, they showed the imperfect side of parenting as well. They had serious conversations and worried about their kids. They wondered if they were doing the right thing at times and occasionally, one of them would get really frustrated and lose it.

Cliff Huxtable was not a perfect dad but he appeared as an open, loving, funny, compassionate one.

Now, a little about my real life dad.

The father I knew was a sad, quiet and often angry man. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about him to this day. I think he loved me but often struggled to show it. Anything that caused him discomfort or irritation was reacted to with either immediate anger and impatience or complete, blind ignorance and was simply ignored.

I believe he loved my mother passionately and completely. She got very sick when I was about ten years old and died two years later. It left him a shell of a man. He was unable to process his own sadness and grief, completely and utterly clueless and unable to deal with or care for a daughter coming in to her teen years.

For weeks sometimes, he would barely speak. Looking back, I think just trying to get out of bed and function each day took all the strength he had. And my mother took care of everything, especially the house and me so he was ill prepared in every way possible. I think if he could have been able to deal with some of the pain in his own life, knew how to deal with situations other than shutting down or getting mad, I could have gotten to know him so much better.

I moved out as soon as I was eighteen and then moved across the country when I was twenty years old. I never moved back home. But the space did allow us to at least become friends. It allowed me (and possibly him as well) to forgive old hurts and heal our relationship. We would eventually become closer, calling and writing often. He got to meet my husband but not my young son. He died back home in November of 2008.

Have you met my dad? My t.v. dad that is. His name is Cliff Huxtable. He’s on OB with his office in the bottom half of our brownstone here in Brooklyn, NY. He’s kind of strict and can be a little embarrassing, I mean don’t even get me stared on those sweaters he wears sometimes….but he can also be really funny and don’t tell anyone I said this but, he’s cool in his own way. More than anything though, he takes good care of his family and I know he really loves us.

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