The other night, I made steaks and baked potatoes.
I made a wry, off-the-cuff joke on Threads, and it took off, with lots of men affirming me, my steaks, and my worthiness of praise and love. It was endearing and wholesome.
Highly recommend Threads, by the way—microblogging like Twitter, but without quite as much of the nonsense. If you start using it, I want to follow you! But I digress.
In many of the comments, the men didn’t express their own pride in me. Instead, they said things like, “Your father is proud of you,” or, “Your father would be proud of you.”
The thing is, I’m not sure that’s true. My father didn’t really like me all that much and demonstrated that for a great majority of my life. He did love me, and it pained him that he couldn’t show affection or affinity for me, his only daughter. I have compassion for this man who made me, even as I hold a more tender and loving space for my childhood self, who had to endure someone who loved her being cruel and unsafe.
We contain multitudes, I guess. Anyway.
That isn’t why I brought you here.
In that thread, in response to one of these men who said my father would be proud of me, I essentially replied that he probably wouldn’t be. But I’ve done a lot of work to remember the positive things he did contribute to my life.
There are five things I carry with me that I attribute to my father—pieces of advice that anyone could use. Well, maybe except the fifth one. They are:
- Always burn your headlamps (headlights) in a vehicle. đź’ˇ
- As soon as you use your spare key, don’t even open the door—return the spare key first. 🔑
- If you laugh in a theater and nobody else does, it just means nobody else knows what’s funny. 🤷‍♂️
- When you go to a new pizzeria, order the house pie, no matter what it is. 🍕
- Don’t drown in Puerto Rico. 🏝️
That fifth one needs some explanation.
When I got married in 2013, my father (along with his wife and their son) drove down to Atlanta to attend the wedding. This fact alone shocked me—I wouldn’t have been surprised if their RSVP had been a swift and concise “non.” But they came. He wore a bright blue shirt that I thought (and still think) looked like the neon swim trunks he wore on our family vacations to Kiawah Island.
At the wedding, we had a guestbook concept—yes, I was a Pinterest bride—wherein guests were asked to write advice to us, the happy couple, in six words.
A few weeks later, as I sorted through the wedding gifts, writing thank-you notes and packing things away, the guest “book” (a large wooden placard with nails in a heart shape, twine weaving through to create spaces to tuck messages) caught my attention.
When I read the messages, I immediately recognized one, even without seeing my father’s distinct engineer handwriting. Six words:
Please don’t drown in Puerto Rico.
We had traveled to Puerto Rico for our honeymoon because I was newly pregnant and couldn’t stomach a longer flight, but still wanted a rainforest. It was a lovely trip, though I didn’t realize pregnancy increases your chance of sunburn. My Scottish skin turned bright red, so I spent a lot of time in the shade of El Yunque or watching Arrested Development.
At the time, I couldn’t understand what he meant or intended with this statement. It felt weird and dismissive, and I burned with shame for hoping for something different. Something loving. Something that made clear how he felt—anything other than existential dread and self-loathing.
Of course, I wouldn’t drown. I was an adept swimmer and snorkeler, very active, and I had my newly minted husband to protect and care for me.
Now, with distance and more compassion for my father, I realize he said a lot in those six words. My inability to hear it then wasn’t his fault.
Please don’t drown in Puerto Rico means, I worry about you. It means, I don’t want to lose you. It means, I don’t believe your new husband can protect you. It means, I don’t trust you to him.
It means, Watch your own back, kid. You’re all you’ve got in the end.
If you’re going home to relatives this holiday season and they say things you can’t unravel, give it time. Give yourself permission to let it rest without making determinations or definitions. There’s a great song by Iris DeMent, and she sings, “No one knows for certain, and so it’s all the same to me / I think I’ll just let the mystery be.”
Let the mystery be long enough, and it won’t be a mystery anymore.
Hug your momma’n’em this Thanksgiving, and know that I’m thankful for you.
Love,
Margaret
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