Daddy Daughter Dance Off

As of late, numerous amounts of father and daughter singing and dancing videos have surfaced on the internet and have gone viral. It is a delight to see these videos because of the captivating collaborations that they are, yet there is one thing that will never leave me.

And that is my disconnectedness with my own father. My family is not a broken one, nor is it more than a little dysfunctional. My parents have always supported me in my academic endeavours alone and I am rather grateful for that. But one essential thing that I am missing is the failure to forge the broken link between my father and I, and I am afraid that it is something that has always been there, that will always be there, and that will always be irreparable.  

Seeing these videos make me feel rather jealous. I am jealous not of the amazing skills portrayed but of the connection I see and feel that I lack. I both admire and envy the videos of this type that I come across. If I had had that connection with my father, I think things would be a lot different for me. I think that all of the general 'boy' knowledge that he has on hold would have been mine - he abides by gender constraints and therefore has not ever taught me the basic tricks of the mechanics of cars, nor has he taught me the basics of fishing, or anything else that exists outside of our household. 

I am sorry for my father for not being able to liberate himself from the gender constraints which bind his thought processes. I remember distinctly one time when my mother told me about why he does not help her with any housework. Back in Lebanon, he once was washing the dishes for her when one of his friends walked past the window and yelled a derogatory term at him which is along the lines of the excessive loss of masculinity due to partaking in 'a female's activity'. "Ever since that moment," my mother told me, "he has not helped me." 

His own father is partially to blame for this. My grandfather is the epitome of what makes an 'absent father'. He has been throwing away his money his entire life on gambling, and he has never learnt his lesson. To this day, he watches horse racing channels on full volume, and zones out of the world so as to focus on yet another loss. To this day, he walks into the nearest Tattslotto agency and revels in every two-dollar winning after spending hundreds to acquire that little winning, though I would hardly consider it a 'winning' in the first place. When my father was younger, my grandfather would take him to the horse races and on several occasions he would lose him and not care.

In fact, the main reason as to why my family emigrated from Lebanon to Australia is because of my grandfather's debt to various people. He had borrowed so much money to place bets back in Lebanon that he had to flee along with his family due to his inability to pay it all back, otherwise he would have had to pay with his life. One would think that that would have taught him to perform otherwise, but one is heavily mistaken. 

I suppose it pains me moreso that my father had not learnt from the absence of his own. It pains me how despite my efforts he has not improved all that much, and how I have to find and watch videos such as the one above to feel some sort of feeling that most daughters all over the world feel, to pretend that I have such relationship with my own father. It pains me but it teaches me how not to treat my future children. Count your blessings, right?