I hated my father once. I still can’t decide who had been more selfish at the time: me, with my sixteen-year-old mentality, or him, a nearly middle-aged man with a simple plan for happiness.
Sixteen was a tumultuous age. My world was like a snow globe back then, fragile and easily disheveled. A simple frizzing of the hair I had so pained myself to straighten was enough to ruin the entire day. If things fell out of order, that is, if they did not occur at my convenience or liking, tunnel vision took full effect. It would only be a matter of minutes before I would break into what some used to call “Nikki fits:” whiny tears or bouts of shouting (often both), followed by an immediate slamming of my bedroom door. [Incidentally, I still have these fits sometimes, only now they are much more lawyerly: well-worded, deliberately enunciated and masked by apparent civility].
I was . . . you know. A brat.
Most people would have aptly called these outbursts temper tantrums. I liked to think of them as powerful exits that left me with the last word. I certainly felt as if I was handling things maturely. For God’s sake, I was sixteen. No one knew more about life than I did.
My father would often be at the root of these tantrums. His incessant nagging about me not being a “good citizen” of the household because of my inextricable attachment to “everything but our family” was really beginning to get on my nerves.
“You treat our home like a hotel,” he had accused me one morning over breakfast.
Arching my eyebrows in annoyance I had replied, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the way you’re never here on weekends. All you care about is your BMW, your phone, your beeper and your friends. You eat and sleep here and then you leave. And you never spend any time with your sister! What is your problem?”
He was like a mosquito, persistent in his attack and impossible to ward off. Accepting criticism was not something I’d yet learned to handle, and besides, I was not yet aware I could do anything wrong. So I would roll my eyes, mutter an unmistakably insincere, “Sorry,” and push my chair back from the table and storm away.
In grand tradition, I would go to my room and lock my door (but not before giving it a nice, hard slam), bent and ruffled and steaming from the head. Not once did it occur to me that I had probably ruined my parents’ breakfast, nor did it occur to me that I was doing exactly what my father had accused me of: pushing my family out.
Never did I stop to consider that my behavior had stung like a slap across his face.
When Daddy would talk about living in Chile, I never believed he was serious. I think I was in fourth grade the first time he mentioned it.
“Niks, wouldn’t you like to live in Chile?” he had asked, prompting a positive response from me by smiling and wiggling his thick, apricot-colored eyebrows.
I had looked at him skeptically. “Where’s Chile?” I asked, carefully spreading butter on my bread the way he had taught me.
“South America,” my mother replied. “That’s where Daddy was born.”
“Oh yeah.”
“South America?” My sister’s eyes widened and she stopped chewing. “Daddy, do they have food there?”
“Monica!” I had scolded her in my big-sister-know-it-all voice. “Of course they do.” I paused. “Right, Daddy?”
He laughed. “Yes, they do. They even have ice cream sandwiches.”
I had liked that. “Sure. Chile sounds like fun.”
The second time he mentioned it I was already 12 years old, and very settled in my hometown of Coral Springs and the all-important world of middle school. I remember the sharp churn of my stomach at the thought of having to start over someplace new.
“But don’t you want to learn how to speak Spanish?” Daddy had asked, as if this would somehow make the move an even exchange.
I had gaped at him, incredulous. “Um, no, Daddy! I’m in seventh grade! My whole life is here.” I crossed my arms over my chest and pouted. He had to be certifiable to think about taking me away from my friends and my school.
But he continued to fiddle with the idea so I was forced to begin preparing for the destruction of my life. [Can’t you just hear the violins?] First on the list was to notify each and every one of my five best friends of this unforeseen tragedy. I decided that I would break it to them at the next meeting of The Wild Cats, a secret club comprised of the six of us. I was the secretary.
I stood up that Friday night at our weekly sleepover, which took place at the home of my best best friend, our Vice President, Marin, and announced dramatically, “Guys. I have the most . . . awful news.”
They had all leaned in closer.
I blinked hard and took a deep breath. “My dad wants to move.” I paused. “To South America.”
The room had erupted into a series of tween gasps. All five of them began talking at once. I remember how surprised I was by all the attention. Secretly, I kind of reveled in it, because deep down I didn’t believe that Daddy was doing any more than speaking his mind, which was entirely different from taking action. As far as I was concerned, we weren’t going anywhere outside of Broward County, much less the country.
Almost fourteen months later, at the beginning of my last year in middle school, Daddy confirmed this notion one night at our round dinner table. I always sat next to him, opposite our mother, and Monica sat to my right.
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to move to Santiago,” he had said, folding his napkin across his lap. His blue eyes held a disappointment I refused to acknowledge.
“Really?” Monica piped up. “Why not?”
“It’s just not a good time,” Mommy answered for him. Neither of us really knew what that meant, but my mother had just become head administrator for the dialysis clinic she worked for and Daddy had been promoted at Motorola. “Besides, Daddy will get to travel to Chile all the time now anyway,” she said, referring to his new position as Director of Sales for all of Latin America.
“No argument here!” I replied. I happily spooned a mound of peas into my mouth as Daddy looked past me into the dark evening beyond the window at my back.
By the time I was in eleventh grade, I was a splinter embedded in the skin that was my high school. Every day there was a day looked forward to—not because I necessarily enjoyed my academic career (although I was a nerd at heart), but because I enjoyed being socially elite. I was very close to reaching my peak in the world of high school popularity, and I was still climbing.
[Photo by Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock (5883440p) Alicia Silverstone Clueless – 1995 Director: Amy Heckerling Paramount USA Scene Still Jane Austen]
It truly mattered what I wore every day, because people knew who I was and they noticed me. I had taken to keeping a journal of my outfits so that I would be sure not to repeat one in the same month. [It’s ok. You can laugh]. I didn’t “make plans” for the weekends. I was automatically invited to party. I had messages on my answering machine when I got home. My beeper was constantly vibrating with tales of a new phone number. And finally, I had met a boy who was date-worthy.
Actually, Jeremy was the center of my universe. My first everything. He was attractive in a way that set him apart from my usual crushes, and when people saw us together they noticed the contrast of our physical features. He had hair so light orange it was almost blond, and it looked even more so when my own dark-haired head was leaning against his shoulder. He was fair, as red-heads tend to be, the opposite of my tan, olive skin. His eyes were bright green and mine dark brown.
He was everything deep inside of me I wished I could be. He was fun, incredibly outgoing and so easy to talk to. He could even dance!
Now I see that he was just like Daddy.
Everyone at every party knew who Jeremy was, and it did me nothing but good to be seen with him all the time. He had given me that extra boost in the social world at school, and although now I feel ridiculous making the admission out loud, at the time it had been of vital importance to me. I soon began to lose interest in the important things in life—my family, for one—and it was at this time that my father and I began to argue incessantly.
“You’re so selfish,” he snarled at me once.
But wasn’t everyone at that age?
Truly, though, I didn’t care. I was freshly sixteen with an amazing boyfriend, car, friends and social life. What did I need family time for?
It’s obvious to me now that Daddy could have snatched it all away from me at any moment if he’d wanted to. Eventually, he did.
Read what happens next in A Phoenix’s Spirit Animal Is the Butterfly: Part 2.