This is a story about two stubborn people: two people that stayed apart for almost twenty years due to stubbborness. It’s also about insistence on way of relating – or not – because it has become a habit.

Way back when in my teens, my father and I started having difficulties relating to each other. Difficulties that were, in large part, typical of a teenager and her father. These issues were not so serious or unusual in themselves. My friends faced similar ones with their parents, to varying degrees. The difference in my case lay mostly in the vehemence with which my father and I held onto our respective points of view. I would later recognize it as a family trait, shared between my father and me.

At that point in time, I yearned for more freedom to go out, date, and come home at a reasonably late time (four a.m. sometimes). I believed that my requests were completely justified. I could, after all, articulate exactly why I needed certain changes to take place. They were to go with the changes that were occurring in me.

My father, for his part, held onto his typical views: He believed in traditional values, especially in terms of how a girl ought to conduct herself. Ah, how I loathed the imposed distinction between the sexes, as if I so inherently more fragile and in need of preservation than a boy would be. (As my father would have it, he had two more daughters after me. And no son to test out his template.)

Frankly, I chucked my father’s opinions as indicative he was fool – and an idiot, chauvinistic fool at that – and I told him as much. He was furious at my petulance – a reaction that confirmed my (then) opinion of him.

Since my parents are divorced, I left my father’s place soon after our last argument. But I did not know that it would be another three years until we met again. My mother lived in California, very, very far away – a distance that was more than geographical.

During these three years, we talked on the phone maybe three or four times. That’s it. And none of these conversations were comfortable.

The next time we saw each other, I didn’t know what to say to him. Should I apologize for something I’d said or done years ago? Nah, he wasn’t apologizing for his chauvinistic opinions, I figured.

So it was that we started to see each other at increasingly long intervals. Once it was all of five years, during which our chats were sporadic and awkward.

A literal chasm had replaced our once close relationship. A vague memory of it still lingered and occasionally hurt. Hearing Pavarotti, Andrea Boccelli, Debussy and Yes stirred maudlin feelings. (My father is a fan of popular operas, classical music, and the occasional psychedelic rock.)

Anyhow, I had grown used to our separate, disparate lives.  It was just the way it was, so I had to accept it.

Years went by…

One after the other, with nothing but the occasional phone call that only served to reveal more of our distance. The awkwardness got so pronounced that I eventually stopped calling altogether. And so did he.

And then…

I came to my hometown, where he now also lives, to spend a few months. During the first month, we kept to our conditioned song and dance: He doesn’t call so I don’t call. I don’t call so he doesn’t call.

But then he called. And I called back. He wasn’t there. So I called back. He called me back. We met. Awkward still. We met again. Still awkward. A few weeks went by.

I called him. We met. Not so awkward now.

We meet often now. We met today for a fact.

Do we agree on everything and are we as close as we were when I was a kid? Not quite…

But I can say we are becoming unlikely friends of sorts, the type of friends who might disagree in opinion or differ in background but still share a fundamental affinity. For this affinity, I recently cooked him dinner – vegetarian fare, which he loved. In the background was Pavarotti, belting out our old song and dance.

Photo by Lucile Dizier