Lacking, but maybe grieving, too, the truth.

I do not speak to my dad.

For all the internal conversation about it, the trying to be fair to a person I thought I knew, the "why" is not special. It's the same story you've heard a billion times, but now you'll want to know it because I've said too much. My dad is an alcoholic, and probably has been for one whole and one-half of a lifetime. And three little lifetimes. But this story is not about why I do not speak to my dad, but how I speak to my own children about how I feel about that.

"Do you have a Dad?" My eight-year-old asks over the dinner table. Her older brother and sister are quiet, and self-consciously grinning, as if waiting for me to deliver a punch line that involves them. They all look at me. My husband looks hard at his dinner.

"Yes."

"Well, do you know him?" She's trying to figure this out.

"Of course, I know him." The last time I saw him, you were hours old. He came to our hospital room unannounced and took you out of the bassinet to hold you. Like it was his right. He was drunk, and what I learned later was that he had been fired for punching his boss in the face.

"Did he die?"

"No, honey." Well, sort of. I used to pick up my phone to call him and tell him some mundane thing. And then I would remember we don't speak, and why we don't speak, and put the phone down. I don't do that anymore, but you do that with dead people, too, right? Most of the time, I am just relieved that the suffering is over and we've all moved on. This "missing" is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like cancer or something.

"Well, I don't remember him." Yes. It's all about you, dear.

That was unfair.

"Honey, what you need to know is that he is alive and loves you very much, even though he doesn't live with Gamma anymore.”

The truth is that I remember him. Or some version of him that he wanted me to know. It is not all about me, but I feel duped, embarrassed, shown up. All in the verb sense, as if these are things he did to me. I carried water for this actor, for this story, for this legend, and all along, he knew the play. He let me defend it. I wonder if being this person he wasn’t, for so long, was the reason; like he was faking it for so long, hoping to make it, but he missed. He lost it.

Scintillating inner conversation. So original.

But the missing is original. To me. I miss having a parent, someone in charge. Now I understand that someone is me, which of course is part of growing up.

She eats some broccoli; considers things. Normally, her brother and sister cannot abide her uttering complete sentences without interrupting her to the point of driving her to, well . . . But, they are quiet. They are thirsty to know more about this negative space. They all prepare, making room for the answer to the next question.

I await the logical, and obvious: “Why, Mom?”

But it never comes. She goes back to eating, having tested this limit. She is satisfied for now.

I know that I will not be so lucky soon. Nature, families; we abhor a vacuum. They will want to know. And I will have to figure out what to tell them. A few thoughts:

“Adults sometimes have disagreements.” Lame. They’re too smart for this.

“Sometimes people say things they don’t mean. Sometimes they say exactly what they mean.” Vague. Like, what?

“I don’t speak to my dad because we had a fight so terrible that, even though we both are painfully sorry, there were words said that can never, ever be taken back.” Scary. Like, if I misstep, will Mom do that to me?

I foresee a conversation with our middle child, my son, in the mid-range future, when he is a teenager, driving a car. It will involve a cautionary tale of alcohol use and its myriad destructive ways. To drive home the point, I will personalize the story graphically and intentionally, in a way that I hope is dramatic enough for him to understand that we do not get behind the wheel after drinking. Ever.

I will lay it on thick.

But, then the legend grows and mutates. And I exploit the story so that his side is missing. I will justify this play. I will tell myself that I will use him and what he took to keep my children safe from all this nonsense. I will do whatever I have to do to ensure they do not know this lack. Childish, yes.

But, I am no longer a child. I have quit looking around for someone to be in charge. It’s me; it’s my responsibility. But, I was a child once, and I do not want to forget all of that. I was someone’s child once. Children will fill a void with the thing they know best: themselves. Even when a thing does not begin with them, children think that they can end it, or fix it, or repair it. They think they can fit that missing piece. I do not want my children looking to complete me.

Failing the fix, I’ll just close the door on that thing and never deal with it again. Or, until the next dinner time. In the meanwhile, my prayer is that my children will not judge so harshly as their mother judged her father.