BLEEDING HEART

Phone conversations with my Dad are short. His conversation style can best be described as concise. Full sentences are often composed solely of the words “Huh?” or “What?” And while he rarely utters the words, “How are you?” he’ll always ask, “How’s the weather?” This presents a problem for me living in Los Angeles where discussions of the weather are, in a word, redundant.

It’s fine Dad, 80 degrees and sunny.

He’s also interested in politics, his in particular. Conversations with Dad consist of 20, 30-minute political monologues I stop listening to one minute in. To say Dad is conservative in his beliefs would be an understatement. Phone calls with him often leave me wondering if “close minded” should be the Third Party.

Dad and I have been disagreeing about politics for years, decades in fact since I moved to 80 degree Los Angeles from my native suburban San Francisco. We’ve been having the same conversation for so long that I take great comfort in the repetition. I’ll remember I haven’t called in a while and pick up the phone. Dad will answer, sound cautiously happy to hear my voice, the caution only released when he realizes I haven’t called to ask for money.

Quickly, we’ll pass over the weather in favor of politics. He’ll say something ridiculously conservative, maybe blaming the world’s problems on some minority group, referring to said group with a derogatory Yiddish slur. I’ll call him Archie Bunker while reminding him we don’t live in the dark ages, he’ll call me a bleeding heart liberal, and I’ll respond with a simple, “Thank you” knowing full well he didn’t mean it as a compliment.

I find the routine of it all reassuring. In a world where there is little to count on, I know that Dad and I can have the same disagreement about politics and the state of the world no matter who’s running the country; or in Dad’s point of view, no matter who’s ruining it.

But lately, a funny thing has happened to my Dad. At 76 he’s turned, how can I put this delicately, open-minded. I figure my Mom’s been keeping something from me.

Mom, have you been putting Prozac in Dad’s oatmeal? I ask in all seriousness.

“No, but your sisters both just called and asked the same thing,” she replies as if she’s the last person in on a joke.

Well, then what have you done with my Dad? And who was the man on the phone? I ask her imaging my Dad tied up in a chair “9 to 5” style, while being forced to watch large images of Liberals ruining the world.

“Funny,” she says. “Both your sisters just asked that too.”

I give Dad a few more tries, sure that maybe our last few phone calls had been a fluke. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t have the energy to be contrary. I mean surely he knows that children create their own social and political consciousness because of, or in spite of, their parents’. If he’s going to go on and continue listening and discussing, I might have to change my world-view.

After a few more calls I find Dad relatively easy to talk to, even interested. One time, after telling me that he knows how my husband I voted on a certain issue and I respond, “No you don’t because you never asked” he pauses, thinks for a second and then tells me I’m right. I call my Mom again.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY DAD! I ask, but she insists that phone Dad is my Dad and that she hasn’t tampered with the witness.

My relationship with my Dad is analogous to the Homeland Security Advisory System. At various points in my life, we’ve hovered in between Red and Orange, both states of emergency. We’ve gone through periods where we didn’t speak for months to attempts at closeness that usually fail after the first, “What?” or “Huh?”. Over the past few years, we’ve co-existed at a guarded Blue, accepting and agreeing that what we do best is disagree. And we’ve disagreed our way through my 20’s, into my 30’s, through my wedding and the birth of my first child. We’ve disagreed our way into a state of bliss.

But now the man who used to say to his three daughters, “Women and Chinamen should never get behind the wheel,” is considering voting for the first viable African American Presidential candidate. The gung ho 18-year-old who fought in Korea, wept on a recent flight upon seeing two GI’s on their way to Iraq, commenting to my Mom, “I can remember being their age, I know what they’re headed to.” The once die hard Republican, now so disillusioned by a delusional President has been backed into a corner, forced to do the unthinkable, forced either not to vote or to vote for a Democrat, a black Democrat no less. Dad’s been forced to change the way he thinks which has caused me to re-think.

My view of the world, my bleeding heart has been shaped by my Dad’s closed heart. His generalizations on the world, formed in part by his own exposure to the worst of everyone as a kid growing up in the Bronx, caused him to develop a protectionist’s way of thinking. I was never a wild kid, didn’t get piercings or tattoos so I rebelled by being open-minded. Liberalism was my smoking, being a Democrat my teenage pregnancy. But with less to rebel against, I question my own beliefs wondering what I really believe in now that I don’t have to bite my nose to spite my Dad.

Phone calls with my Dad continue to be brief. With so much to agree on, there’s less to talk about. I must say I miss sparring with Dad; the discourse was our connection. But it’s also nice to know that even at 76, an old Dad can learn a new trick. Dad called the other day to tell me he’d re-considered not voting after I “Chewed him out so badly.”

What? I respond.

“I’m going to vote for your guy, just like you said I should,” he says again.

Huh? I say in disbelief.

He repeats himself then asks about the weather.

It’s fine Dad, 80 degrees and sunny, I tell him before looking outside to notice it's actually a cloudy LA day.

Dad and I are at a Low Risk Green. Everything’s fine. Everything's sunny.