MEMOIR

I Was My Narcissistic Father’s Golden Child

In a dysfunctional family, everyone has their roles

I was a young teen when I found one of my father’s old journals hidden in the unfinished ceiling of our basement laundry room. It was slightly water-damaged but totally readable, if you consider reading someone else’s private thoughts readable.

He’d marked each entry with a date, naturally, and I was excited to see that these were old entries from the early eighties, starting a year or so before my birth and concluding a few years afterwards. I flipped through until I reached the date closest after my birth.

Anna Eliza — I don’t know how I could ever love any other person as much as I love her.

I beamed at the words. My father had written pages about his love for me, his newborn baby. The entries that followed said more of the same. Even after the birth of my brother and sister, the entries alluded to that same sentiment.

It seems that from the time of my birth, for no particular reason other than that I was the first, my father had decided that I would be his golden child.

I write about my mother a lot. After all, it’s her critical voice that I can’t seem to shake from my head. She was the parent who was always around. She worked from home as an artist, and being a woman in my conservative, traditional family meant that no matter how much money she made, she wasn’t considered our primary breadwinner. As the Woman of the House, she “naturally” shouldered all of the child-rearing responsibilities. She did the grunt work — doctor’s appointments and preparing meals and parent-teacher conferences and the family budget and all the day-to-day minutiae.

It was an event when my dad came home at the end of the workday. His arrival meant dinner time and family togetherness. He expected and always received a fully cooked meal with his family around the table. He’d tell stories from his workday, and I’d listen intently, not interrupting, laughing at the right parts, being good. I could feel the love when we were all getting along, and I craved more of that.

I learned early to keep the peace. I learned not to argue when my mom pushed me to finish every morsel on my plate, not wasting an ounce of the food she’d struggled to pay for and toiled to prepare. When I did dare to push back, my dad would sometimes support me, further earning my admiration, but other times he put his foot down and made it clear that I was to obey my mother. It was best just to acquiesce. I never knew how he was going to respond; his mood could shift at any moment.

I was afraid for my dad to see me as anything but perfect.

In first grade, I got in a fight with my friend on the bus. We both wanted the aisle seat. Or maybe it was the window seat. No matter — the point is that we squabbled about a seat to the point that one of us pinched the other’s cheek and then the other retaliated with the same move. Then we both sat there crying, drawing the attention of other kids who alerted the bus driver, who sent us to the principal’s office upon our arrival at school. The principal wrote up a “ticket” for me to bring back the next school day after having obtained a parent’s signature.

It seemed like my mother had never emptied my ballet-slipper backpack so quickly as she did that day, finding the ticket promptly upon my return home. I remember feeling mortified all over again, more so than I had on the bus or in the principal’s office. I begged her not to show or tell my dad. I couldn’t bear it if he found out.

From then on, I never made another misstep, but I watched my brother do dumb things all the time. He was constantly sent home from school with notes. His teachers would call the house just after dinnertime and relay his mistakes to my mother on what felt like a monthly cycle. His parent-teacher conferences left my mother wringing her hands, wondering what she needed to do to encourage him to be good.

My brother was prone to talking back and resisting authority, often sending my father into a rage. Sometimes the situation would escalate into a scene, my father chasing my brother around our house, his belt in his hand, at the ready. My sister and I would hide in our bedroom until it was over.

Like me, my little sister strived to be “good.” We both took our turns walking across the school stage at the end of every year to accept our honor roll certificates. We both made our parents proud, but being the oldest, my accomplishments and demeanor seemed to matter more than hers.

I was the responsible one. I was charged with getting up from the table after dinner every evening, before dessert, to fetch the pot of decaf coffee and fill my parents’ mugs back at the table. I was the oldest, so I was in charge of cleaning the kitchen after dinner every night, and I didn’t dare complain or suggest that my mom clean up her cooking mess as she went along. I restored that kitchen to a state of splendor.

When I was in junior high, my mother went back to college to get a degree. It was still of utmost importance that we eat together as a family, but neither of my parents would be home in time to prepare the meal for our set dinner time. The responsibility often became mine, but preparing dinner meant I got out of cleaning the kitchen afterwards. Instead, I’d spend many evenings helping my mother edit her college papers.

As I became a teenager, I always took my dad’s side. After all, it seemed like we had the same values, the same nonchalant attitude about finances and fine(r) clothes, at least compared to my mother’s frugality. My dad and I were more free spirited than her; she was more rigid with the rules.

In fact, my dad would always let me break her rules with his conspiratorial wink. I’d pretend to go to bed at nine and then sneak back into the family room at ten, after everyone else had gone to sleep, so that I could watch my favorite crime drama The Commish with him. I relished these moments — these validations that I was his favorite.

I told myself that of course he liked me best, of course he trusted me. I was so good — I never broke the rules at school; I rarely got in trouble at home. I never rebelled and I did all the right things. I got a job at age fifteen, but I didn’t grow up too quick. I didn’t date or go boy-crazy like the other girls. I happily donned my sweats and rocked out to the Counting Crows CD while I cleaned the house with my dad on Saturday mornings. I was the perfect child.

Of course that couldn’t last.

I started “going out” with boys during my junior year of high school. In the summer that followed, I found myself smitten with a boy named Paul from the neighboring town. We both worked at the banquet hall between our houses, and afterwards we’d park in one of our cars and makeout for an hour or so before heading home.

I didn’t have a curfew, in part because my dad said he trusted me, and also because it was always a toss up as to what time the banquet-of-the-night would end. So it was a surprise to me when I came home one night that summer to my father sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. I didn’t see him at first, so I jumped when I heard his voice say, “Give me your car keys.”

I argued at first, which wasn’t good. My dad doesn’t like to be argued with. I didn’t understand what I had done wrong; I wasn’t home any later than I had ever been before. Had he somehow known that I had been making out with Paul?

I stammered long enough for him to give me an ounce of clarity. I had a pager back then in the days before cell phones, and when he had paged me that evening, I hadn’t responded. Of course not — I wasn’t anywhere near a phone. I had indeed seen my pager light up with my dad’s number when I was making out with Paul, but I ignored it. It would be quicker for me to drive home than find a pay phone.

My father had made his point. I gave him the keys that night, only to receive them back again the next morning. No discussion ensued except a snarky reminder that I was always to respond as quickly as possible to his pages. I wasn’t sure if I was more ashamed or irritated.

Things like this happened occasionally now that I was dating. My father would blow up at some offense I’d committed that went against the rules he seemed to have made on the spot. I forgave him for all of it, convinced that he was the better parent. After all, it was my mother’s monologues that made me really uncomfortable as she preached abstinence, frugality, and Catholic ideals of morality every chance she got.

I started dating Jack — the boy who would become my husband — my senior year of high school. Jack and I fell in love, hard and deep, fast. From the start, we told each other everything. We also spent as much time together as possible, which included a lot of time with our respective families back in high school.

Jack was a fresh set of eyes on my family. He thought it was odd that my dad took all the absentee ballots and voted on behalf of not just him and my mother, but my brother and I, too. Jack called it “rude” when my dad went into my wallet to borrow money whenever he pleased. Jack noted that my mom babied my dad — he said it wasn’t romantic that she cooked him dinner every night — not if my dad got cranky and frustrated on the nights that she didn’t.

Jack and I grew so close that for a moment I hesitated about going away to college. Jack had one more year of high school, being the grade below me, and I didn’t want to be parted from him for a moment.

Yes, our New Relationship Energy was still raging; but really, I’d never felt so alive, so much myself before. Around Jack, I could be real. When I spoke my mind, he loved me all the more for it. I’d never had a relationship like this in my entire life, even with my best girlfriends. With Jack, I never felt like I had to hold anything back.

I was first in my family to go away to college, which made my father infinitely proud. It had once been his dream to go away, but his family was too big and too poor to afford it back in the 1970s. He went to community college instead, but he often talked about how different his life would have been if he’d went away.

When I was overcome with homesickness my freshman year, it was really Jack that I was missing. My mother didn’t care about the reason; she’d love me back home, she said, and she often talked about having me transfer to the local university. My father and Jack were actually in agreement that I should stay. Jack reassured me that he’d join me there in just a year, after all. My father simply refused to entertain talk of coming home with his signature scoff.

But then, when I made it back to campus after yet another weekend visit home, I would get a touching email from my dad. One such email detailed a night when my father had taken the dog outside before bed. My dad said that he had stood there under the stars, thinking about when I danced to the song “Somewhere Out There” at my first grade ballet recital. He said to remember that no matter what, we were all under the same sky. I was so touched that I would use that song as our Father-Daughter dance at my wedding just a few years later.

At the time, I felt like my father understood me, but maybe not. Maybe he was projecting who he wanted to be onto me — I was the smart kid away at college, living out the dreams that he’d wanted to achieve himself.

After Jack joined me on campus, I went home much less. Being away from my family at college meant that I was gaining independence and perspective. I started to see things that I hadn’t quite seen when I was younger. My interactions with my father were now few and far between, so they stuck out like sore thumbs whenever they were bad.

I found myself needing a car during my later years in college. I was grateful, at first, that my father aimed to help me. He came up with the plan — I would buy my own car using the money in my mutual fund, and he would work out the logistics. This was fine for me; I was a twenty year old who knew nothing about cars, let alone the process of buying one.

I did think, however, that I’d get to have a choice. Instead, my father chose the exact car for me — a ten-year-old Grand Prix that my mother’s coworker was looking to get rid of. The coworker would sell it to me for $2000, he told my parents. They were ecstatic about what a good deal it was — after all, it had power windows — but I didn’t want it. It was worn out and clunky, even if the engine worked (for now).

My father was furious at my sentiments. When I said no, he shut down, unwilling to engage in conversation. “Fine, do this yourself,” he said as he walked away. I was clearly ungrateful, and now I was stuck. I needed a car and I didn’t know how to get one. I didn’t even know how to withdraw my own money from my mutual fund; my father had set up all of my accounts.

I took too long to come around; by the time I acquiesced, my mother’s coworker had decided to up the price. Now he wanted $2500 for the car. Jack and Jack’s father both warned me that this wasn’t a good situation, but my father insisted that this was the car I needed to buy. He removed $2500 from my mutual fund and purchased the car on my behalf.

The Grand Prix lasted a year before it began breaking down on the regular, most notably on the morning of my first day student teaching. Now my father came up with a new plan — I’d leave the Grand Prix at home with my parents; my mother could drive it for her short commute and my father could keep an eye on its maintenance. I’d drive the car my mother had been leasing.

In this way, my father became the nice guy, the hero of the story, working out the car situation for his college daughter. I gave him a pass for the car debacle, thinking he’d righted his wrong with this trade. After all, he mostly treated me well.

Certain things in life don’t become clear until some distance from the events is achieved. It’s not like I figured it out with the car debacle and moved on with my life.

I told you about my wedding song; I still thought we had a special relationship back then. I didn’t tell you that he was one of the first people to hold my newborn babies, but I also didn’t tell you about how he later pummeled my teenage son in a rage. I didn’t give you the details on how bitter and bigoted he would become in old age.

It would take twenty years to gain the life experience and knowledge to identify my father as the controlling, insecure, arrogant, and entitled narcissist that he is. I feel bad for him. I can sense his pain. I know what it is to have low self esteem and depression.

I can forgive him, but I will not forget. I will not engage. I will name his narcissistic tendencies when I see them, if only to myself. And in turn, I will unravel my own identity. I will push past the perfectionism and people-pleasing; I will learn to speak my mind and not shy away.

I am no longer the Golden Child.