Saturday night. I’m hanging out with my parents at a bland suburban bar. They are in Omaha for the night, having temporarily fled their small town due to its chronic microbrew shortage. I have joined them partly because I have nothing else to do, and partly because I truly enjoy their company. Also, they buy me beer.
I could tell when I arrived that my dad was spoiling for an argument. He and Teresa, my stepmom, were already seated, and I had caught them in the middle of a debate about watching Colbert before bed.
“I just want to watch Seinfeld,” he says. “I’m beat at the end of the day, and the punditry with Colbert and all of those, it’s tiresome. And, you know, I’m very Zen these days. I don’t let politics bother me anymore.”
I’ve been hearing about my dad’s flirtation with Zen Buddhism for about the past year, but I can’t remember an instance where he wasn’t at least partly agitated by something in the news. I make a face at Teresa. She laughs in her no-holds-barred way, but my father is not dissuaded.
“The great thing about Zen is you can just throw your hands up in the air and say pbthhhhh,” he says, his palms opening to the ceiling tile.
He leans back from the table and looks to me, testing whether I might have something to say about that. He’s daring me to step into the ring.
I briefly consider not arguing with him. We have an entire evening ahead of us. It would be pleasant to not debate a spiritual practice about which we know practically nothing. But then I flash to an overheard street conversation from earlier in the week, where a guy was explaining to his girlfriend about this Dalai Lama teaching that, like, really resonated with him.
And then, all on their own, my eyes begin rolling into the back of my head.
Though I’m dimly aware of the misery that’s now in store for Teresa, my full-body contrarianism is taking hold. My palms start to sweat, and my shoulders tense their way toward my ears. I need to tell my father how wrong he is. I need to tell him immediately.
“I don’t think that’s how Zen works,” I say.
He pushes his eyebrows together and clenches his jaw. This is the face he makes when he is about to tell me how wrong I am.
“Pbthhhhh,” he says.
And we’re off.
***
Our “debate” about Zen lasts a good 20 minutes – though our form is so sloppy, a high school debate student would chew off her cuticles in despair. His argument seems to be that with Zen, nothing really matters. I counter with variations of, “You’re doing Zen wrong.”
Not that I have any idea of how to “do” Zen. At this moment, my mental repertoire contains only a few nuggets from the thumb-sized Pema Chödrön book on my desk. I curse myself for having been, for the past 10 years, too lazy to attend 8 a.m. Sunday meditation at the local Zen temple. If only I’d gone to meditation a few times, I think, I could really get him.
My father urges me to read the Buddhism book he’s currently reading on his Kindle.
“If I buy you the Kindle version, will you read it?” he asks me.
“No, but if you buy me a hard copy, I will.”
He harrumphs.
“When are you going to modernize and get a Kindle?”
“I’ve told you a thousand times,” I sigh. “I read books on paper. The way they’re supposed to be read.”
But my sigh is just posture. Giddiness seeps in as I realize the potential for a subject pivot. This new argument that might be taking shape – about the format books should come in – is one I can get really into. I can really wave my hands around over this one.
Teresa flags down the waiter. Time for another round, and some snacks.
***
After informing my father that a book is not a book unless you can put the pages to your face and smell it, we have a brush with political debate.
Politics are our go-to when it comes to arguing, even though we share mostly the same views and end up chasing our own tails. Tonight’s political touchstone, however, goes nowhere.
“Wow, Congress, huh?” he tries.
I offer a sympathetic sigh.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a big fucking mess.”
How can you argue that?
***
Our waffle fries arrive. The fries themselves were a point of disagreement, of course, but I don’t want to get into it. Anyway, once they arrive, talk to turns to food, which leads to disagreement about, of all things, fruit.
“Apples, you know, are just exquisite. Do you eat apples, Melissa?”
Two beers in, and I’m feeling strident.
“No, apples are pointless. I’m into berries.”
“You know, apples, they’ve got these varietals out of Michigan. That’s the only place that breeds these kinds of apples. They’re crisp and sweet and juicy. Or grapefruit, what about grapefruit? I like a grapefruit every day. They used to be huge – remember that? Now they’re just normal orange size.”
“Grapefruit makes me nervous because they interact with some medications.”
“I’m not on any medicine, so I don’t worry about it. So, you eat berries, huh?”
“Also bananas. I like bananas.”
“You know, a lot of banana plantations exist because of slash and burn, so they’re terrible for the environment, and exploit the workers, too.”
Teresa presses her palms to the table and looks searchingly at my dad.
“How do you even know all that about the apples? Why do you know that?”
It’s the best question of the night.
***
Just when I think we are done with Zen, it comes back.
“Do you have a problem with me being Zen?” my dad asks. By this point, my energy is flagging. I craft a response that I think is neutral. We can have peace yet, I think.
“You use Zen to describe your worldview. That’s totally cool. I just use other language to make sense of the world. We’re probably not far off from each other at the core.”
There is a pause in which my own bullshit echoes back to me.
“I really respect you, Melissa. You’re insightful and I want to know your thoughts. What language do you use to describe the world?”
For a moment I can’t respond. Is this a sparring tactic, or is he asking in earnest? My thoughts turn to soup. I suddenly realize how underdeveloped is the thing that passes for my ‘worldview.’ As an agnostic, I don’t follow any particular faith tradition, but I do have a complicated belief system involving jinxes, pseudoscience, and advice columns.
But this truth will not do.
“Well, I like academic research. I make sense of things through reading about psychology, or sociology, or anthropology, or what-have-you.”
My father nods his head. What I do not tell him is that much of my reading about psychology, sociology, anthropology, or what-have-you is actually the product of hours of my life lost to a Wikipedia wormhole. Or that one of the most illuminating books I’ve read lately dealing with psychological theory is actually a graphic novel.
***
What are we talking about? God, I can’t even remember. I take a drink of water. All I know is that I’ve just said something that made him make a face at me.
“You’re being didactic,” he says.
I make his eyebrows at him. Is eyebrow-furrowing a genetic trait? Whatever. I figure if I glare well enough, it will cover the fact that I don’t know what ‘didactic’ means.
I make a plan to look it up later. But let’s be honest: I care less about what it means than whether he used it right.
***
The waffle fries disappear, and then so do their crumbs. Even Teresa’s patience has worn out; she long ago tuned us out to focus on the guitar player in the corner. My father and I stop provoking each other. We fall silent. For a while, all I listen to is the guitar player and his Counting Crows covers. They aren’t songs I would play, if I played guitar, I think. And then I stop myself from mentally arguing with the stranger on the barstool.
“Well, I suppose . . .” Teresa says. That’s our cue.
Dad pays the tab, and we set forth with putting on our coats and saying goodnight.
“Which way are you going to go?” He asks.
“Probably up 72nd.”
“The highway would be quicker, wouldn’t?”
God, even this? But instead of arguing for my route, I give him a hug. And shut my mouth. And get a little Zen.
“Pbfffffff,” I say.
Tags: ACTUAL PIC OF THEM, arguing, dads, family, melissa breazile, personal goddamn growth
Grapefruit/medication interaction makes me nervous, too, because I’m on, like, a zillion medications but a perfectly-in-season ruby red grapefruit is one of the most delicious things in the world to me and if I am sacrificing my health during the two or three months they’re available OH WELL.
And then, all on their own, my eyes begin rolling into the back of my head.
Though I’m dimly aware of the misery that’s now in store for Teresa, my full-body contrarianism is taking hold. My palms start to sweat, and my shoulders tense their way toward my ears. I need to tell my father how wrong he is. I need to tell him immediately.
I love these two paragraphs almost as much as I love perfectly-in-season ruby red grapefruit.
I enjoy hearing about people for whom arguing is as natural as breathing, because I’m not one of those people. In my family, arguing is angry, arguing means something’s wrong and people are fighting. I have a hard time even play-arguing with people because it makes me panicky.
i’m in the process of cutting off contact with my father because of our inability to have a conversation, much less an argument, so I feel you there. (I enjoy, but have a lot of difficulty relating to the Toast’s coverage of dads.)
I finally cut off all ties with that side back in June. It’s one of the more freeing feelings I’ve ever had.
I started typing out the whole story, but I realized just how long it was. I’m going to just do the TL;DR version: It was one of the better life choices I’ve made, and if you think it’s the choice for you, do it. I dragged it out for 10 years, and the only thing I would change would be to have done it sooner.
thanks for your support! It’s a bit difficult because my two sisters both have contact with him (and I’m a twin), but they are both supportive of me doing what i need to do. (I would love to hear your full story, but no pressure)
Super-quick version: He left when I was 4, came back and sued for full custody when I was 12/13 on grounds that my mom was a “bad parent”, didn’t win all but got visitation, proceeded to both ignore and verbally/emotionally abuse me in fits, realized when I was 18 that I didn’t have to put up with his shit anymore, so tried too little, far too late, and expected me to fawn over it. Went through the motions because I thought I had to, hating myself a little more each time, until I decided one morning that I was done. FUN FACT: he also tried to harass my mom after I cut ties, saying it was her fault that I am apparently an ungrateful daughter. Why yes, thank you, she did raise me to think for myself, and I am very grateful to her for doing so.
I’m sorry he acted that way, and I’m glad you’re mom is awesome (or at least seems so.) I think my dad might also think my mom poisoned me against him although she went out of her way to hide the ways he screwed her over financially. They didn’t get divorced until I was 18, but my father wasn’t really interested in parenting us once we got out of preschool and started developing personalities and opinions. The brunt of his anger always fell on my 6 years older sister (who was severely depressed, bullied at school, and didn’t want to wake up in the mornings for a REASON), but I’m sick of hating myself after every interaction with him, and I’m sick of my sisters being hurt by his carelessness and disregard for anyone but himself. (the political is personal. end rant.)
Chiming in to say that I spent more than year having no contact with my mother, which was one of the best things I ever did. After the initial shock of it, it was incredibly freeing, and during that time I was able to carve out my own relationships with other members of her side of the family that I wanted to stay in touch with.
We’re not still completely cut off, but we rarely talk or interact now, and it’s marvelous. I get to set the terms and operate within my own level of comfort. AND I can attest to the fact that it’s possible to have normal, happy relationships with other family members, even if they have different relationship terms with the parent/person in question. I’m with Lyzz13 – if you’ve come to the point where you know this is right for you, do it.
(Also, can totally relate to your feelings about the Toast’s dad stuff (also any and all mom stuff everywhere, which is obviously the more complicated relationship for me). I appreciate it because I know dads like that, but it doesn’t feel like it depicts my dad in any way. Dads! Not monolithic.)
This is why i fucking love the Toast. Random acts of kindness everywhere. Thanks, y’all, you’ve helped me through a hard week.
There can be something really deeply painful about reading about other people’s happy relationships with their fathers. Like an online father-daughter dance.
Mi 2 cents: I also cut off my father over a year ago and it was also a great life choice. My 3 sisters still have contact w/him and it is a little awkward but mostly fine. I did see him on Christmas and he acted like he was so glad to see me and then forgot my birthday (in January). The best part? I did not CARE!
I realize I make it sound easy. It was HARD, but the hard part was making the choice, once I did it I felt mostly great.
It’s interesting when you put families together with different approaches. In my family, a knock-down drag-out about politics is par for the course and has no worse outcome than maybe a slammed door followed by an apology and soon-to-be discarded promise not to talk politics anymore.
My husband’s family does not argue, so he used to get pretty alarmed about this method of interaction. I see it as a sign of openness and acceptance: My mom may think I’m a brainwashed socialist, but she still loves me, you know?
As a teen my best friend’s family was the arguing kind–she’d scream at them, they’d yell at her, it’d be okay in thirty minutes–but it was very stressful to be around because that’s definitely not how my family does things. It was NBD for them but for me, fighting means someone’s going to get hurt or someone’s going to leave.
I love to *argue* but get really stressed out by yelling fights (my family just doesn’t DO them, and Hamlet’s family does; thankfully he is not particularly prone to yelling). To me they’re very different beasts.
I agree, especially about them being “different beasts.” I only ever yelled at my brother, mostly while our parents were not home, and our screaming matches eventually turned into mostly-facetious arguing once we got a little older and realized we could actually be friends. I honestly cannot recall a time I raised my voice to my parents, or they raised their voices to me (around me, yes, but not TO me). Playful debate in my family is common, but it probably helps that none of us have beliefs that veer too far away from each other and our debates usually hinge more on a matter of degree than fundamental difference.
Absolutely. My dad and I argue all the time, but we don’t fight. Our whole family doesn’t, and my ex’s family did and it made me nervous as hell when it happened in front of me. Actually though, re: my family, we are so compulsive about not fighting and staying calm and using sensitive I statements and discussing boundaries that I think it comes back around to oppressive in its own way because we end up not properly expressing our actual FEELINGS for the sake of ~emotional literacy~ or whatever. Opinions we can express all day; emotions must be described and analyzed in words, especially the negative ones. This is what comes of everyone having been in therapy for a decade or more, and of having former consultants for parents.
I have a friend like this too, and the thing that always got me was the way she would talk to her mother – they had a terrible relationship. I would always sit there awkwardly and try not to imagine what would happen in my house if I used words or a tone like she did. I’m thankful that I have a non-arguing family!
Yeah, real arguments in my family are a pretty big deal, and I’m not very good at dealing with confrontation or arguing as a result.
Seconding the “fighting is how my family communicates.” Sometimes we decide not to discuss politics, then five minutes later my Dad will poke me: “So what do you think of this Obamacare situation,” and we’re off again. Rage is meat and drink to my father. With that and his diet, he should have the worst blood pressure on the planet and bizarrely does not.
My family engages in a lot of recreational arguing (though *generally* not about particularly important topics – if my father and I really genuinely disagree about something serious, he tends to get very dismissive). We are also a family of relatively short fuses, but it’s mostly just my mother who holds grudges, so anger is expressed, often loudly, and then blows over quickly. My boyfriend’s family is… not like this at all, and yelling and other overt expressions of anger and frustration make him very nervous and he takes things very, very personally, even when they are not even really directed at him. It’s taken us a lot of discussion and effort on both our parts to figure out how to navigate this – I try to tone down my reactions so he stops reading my 3s as 8s, and he tries to remember that I am more demonstrative about these things than he is and to try not to interpret my actions as if they were his.
Oh, hi, are we related? My husband makes fun of me because I have on more than one occasion told him to “stop yelling at me” when, he contends, he was speaking at absolutely normal conversational levels. I have explained to him that “yelling at” is not about volume but about tone and intention.
Oh Figgy, I’m with you. This lovely article was a perfect reflection of my dad and my sister. They loved arguing, and had a great time doing it. I somehow never could enter into that spirit (just like my mom).
And now I miss my dad like crazy, and wish I’d been able to argue with him more.
tinytext: I miiiiight have a crush on your dad. Argumentative men with hats and dimples are like kryptonite.
please note that the toast has a very strict no-sexualizing-dads policy
has that ever worked
“No, apples are pointless. I’m into berries.”
Do you truly feel this way, or were you food-trolling your father? I kind of hope it’s the latter, just because that’s hilarious.
Definitely food-trolling.
I would love to have these debates with my father but he still won’t get hearing aids. We’re missing out on good debates… he can be so selfish.
Huh, my father’s deafness has been fueling our arguments for decades! I wouldn’t call them “debates” though.
“Dad, shouldn’t you get your hearing checked?”
“What’re you talking about, I hear as well as a high schooler. Not my fault the sound on the TV is so low.”
My mom takes her hearing aids out when my siblings and I start arguing. I’m a little jealous sometimes, I wish I could silently but pointedly indicate when I was no longer interested in listening to someone.
Ahhhh is your dad my future MIL and are you my SO? Because this…..this is just THEM, always arguing but always either a) just to argue or b) arguing on the same side of an issue. Ahhhhhh
I need to hear more about this graphic novel about psychological theory.
It’s “Are You My Mother?” by Alison Bechdel. So good!
“Giddiness seeps in as I realize the potential for a subject pivot.” MY PEOPLE
I do not enjoy arguing, so I was trying to think of what my analogous conversational habit would be. I like to have comforting conversations with the same people about the same things. That’s it. That’s mine.
“a book is not a book unless you can put the pages to your face and smell it”
Way to be bigoted against those that can’t smell. :p
Check your olfactory privilege!
Was the graphic novel “Are You My Mother?” by Alison Bechdel? That book had way more psychoanalysis in it than I was expecting.
Yes!!!
Someone who understands me 😀
My family is crazy argumentative and also large. I didn’t really realize were unusual until my sister’s boyfriend (who is from the type of family where people don’t speak to each other after arguments) stayed for a few days over Christmas and found it very stressful. He said the worst was when all six of us argued about some routine family breakfast. When he brought it up three hours later I didn’t even remember it had happened.
One time I invited my college roommate home for the weekend, and after dinner, when we were alone again, she burst out laughing. I asked what was so funny, and she said, “That dinner.”
I asked, “What about it?”
She gave me a look. “You just had an hour-long argument about the nature of the Holy Trinity.”
“We did?”
So I don’t even notice it anymore, apparently, but several people have since made similar comments. The really funny thing is that my roommate’s family makes ME nervous because they’re those people who yell all the time, yell up the stairs, yell out the door, everyone is top volume all the time. My family isn’t a yelling family…we’re a debate family.
DADS! Did you tape my dad at a restaurant?
And then, all on their own, my eyes begin rolling into the back of my head. […] My palms start to sweat, and my shoulders tense their way toward my ears. I need to tell my father how wrong he is. I need to tell him immediately.
Yes hello, you have described a large part of my relationship with my father. Oh boy.
The didactic part was awesome because worrying about whether he was using it correctly… awesome.
This is so cute
This is obviously what daughters are for
I must now plan for daughters so that I can set them on my lap and bicker with them over whether the moon is actually an alien eye planning to kill us all
After all, it obviously is, I don’t believe in astronauts
My father and I once got into an incredibly heated argument over the intelligence of dolphins. (He and I have a very similar argumentative relationship, so I loved this article!)
I make a plan to look it up later. But let’s be honest: I care less about what it means than whether he used it right.
We join an actual fight I had with my first partner in progress, both of us yelling at the top of our lungs.
him: You are such a prig!
me: I AM NOT!
him: [snorts]
me: [pulls out the always-handy dictionary, looks up prig. Speaking now in low, dry voice.] Huh. “A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others; one who offends or irritates by observance of proprieties as of speech or manners in a pointed manner or to an obnoxious degree.” I thought it just meant prude. Nope, you got me; I’m a prig.
both; [nod slowly]
Fight over.
One time when my sister was visiting my house, my husband and I had what was, for us, a big argument in the kitchen. My sister witnessed the whole thing. 10 or 15 minutes later, we finished and my sister said, “Were you guys just arguing?”
Bottom line – we pretty much suck at arguing.
I recently told my therapist that in a fight I’d had with my parents I felt like I was actively trying to upset them, and she asked me how I went about that. I told her, “Well, I didn’t make any qualifying statements like ‘I know this is hard for you,’ and ‘I understand you may not see it this way, but'” and she just stared at me and said, “You think that’s being mean?” SIGH.
This is perfect my dad and I harass each other over e-mail about politics a LOT. It’s how we bond.
Also I am exactly like him which is slightly disturbing.
I love everything about this piece.
Becoming a lawyer cured me of all my social contrarianism. Look, I get PAID to be right all the time, why would I do it for free? *zen smile, change of subject*
I just sent this to my dad, and he responded “It is weird to see one of our conversations recorded so well. Thanks for this.” That actually made my afternoon as much as the actual article did.
In my house that's the way to lose an argument, because if you found it on The Internets it must be wrong. Just like GPS and google maps are automatically wrong. My dad owns a lot of ordinance survey maps and (often outdated) reference books.
My dad and I did something similar, but less arguing and more “Allow Me To Educate You On The Subject Of…” responded to with ” And Permit Me To Elaborate On An Element Of This Topic That You Have So Far Neglected”. Family members slipped away from the dinner table a good hour before we had exhausted the evening’s topic.
Oh Figgy, I'm with you. This lovely article was a perfect reflection of my dad and my sister. They loved arguing, and had a great time doing it. I somehow never could enter into that spirit (just like my mom).
And now I miss my dad like crazy, and wish I'd been able to argue with him more.
One time when my sister was visiting my house, my husband and I had what was, for us, a big argument in the kitchen. My sister witnessed the whole thing. 10 or 15 minutes later, we finished and my sister said, "Were you guys just arguing?"
Bottom line – we pretty much suck at arguing.
Are you me? Is your dad my dad? I could have written every word of this. If the other kind of conversation you regularly have with your parental figures involves extensive punversations – in which you are compelled both to roll your eyes at the sheer corniness yet continue upping the ante with worse and worse puns – then I am convinced that you and I and our families are the same people.
Ah, my dad. He is the worst mansplainer I have ever known. But I love him.
Are you me? Is your dad my dad? I could have written every word of this. If the other kind of conversation you regularly have with your parental figures involves extensive punversations – in which you are compelled both to roll your eyes at the sheer corniness yet continue upping the ante with worse and worse puns – then I am convinced that you and I and our families are the same people.
Ah, my dad. He is the worst mansplainer I have ever known. But I love him.
Yes! This is so me and my dad, though I don’t think enjoys arguing…