mama3girls-phnig

My father and I were sitting in his room—the one that somehow feels part bunkhouse, part workshop, part philosophy department. There are old radios, stacks of books, electrical diagrams scribbled on paper towels, cowboy art, half-finished projects, and enough tools lying around to either build a house or lose a finger.

In other words: Charlie.

But Charlie is not just Charlie. Charlie is Texas. Not performative Texas. Not boutique rustic décor from Magnolia or whatever version of Texas suburban people like to purchase on purpose. I mean old-school, independent, mildly feral Texas. The kind of Texas where self-sufficiency is not admirable so much as assumed–and you get excited if it’s raininig on an auction day.

The kind where you fix what breaks, build what you need, “educate” people who talk too much without knowing anything practical, and only call a professional when the blood loss becomes inconvenient.

I grew up in a strange little pocket of that mythology.

We didn’t have air conditioning. In Texas. My mother was an herbalist before that became trendy, which meant commercial cleaning products were viewed with suspicion and tea tree oil, echinacea and probiotics had a decent chance of being prescribed before Tylenol.

My grandfather, my dad’s father, was a quirky physician. He had “Melenyzer Rub”—invented as the common cure-all strong enough to still make me miss him when I found a twenty-five-year-old bottle the other day at my aunt’s house.

My father believed most household problems could be solved with wiring, wood, rope, and always with creative profanity. “You bitch!” was the only time my father cussed. At electrical wiring. That was not being easy to get along with.

Do NOT get me started on plumbing.

Nothing in his space feels accidental. Even the clutter feels ideological. Everything says the same thing: build it yourself, fix it yourself, think for yourself.

And do not ask if you can take it home with you. Even if you are his daughter…

These things are his. Also, these things have been relegated to “his space,” which is fine by me. I like being surrounded by my dad’s quirks. I do not like being surrounded by the spider webs attached to them, but that is for a different writing assignment.

My dad is “intentional’ with his art. Some I know would call the concept of “intentionality” annoying. But my dad is an artist. He would say, “horse-shit” and “dumb ass” and then move immediately past that philosophy.

And yes, you got me. Maybe he did cuss on other occasions. Come to think of it, he also loves a well placed cuss-word in a joke. And when people make bad choices. He’s intentionally practical, that one. And direct. And honest. Things that are distressingly hard to come by these days.

But he is also funny. Very, very funny. The kind that saves him from a lot of hot water. And smart. Like, as a whip.

Like as in,

Do you want a whippin’ with my best robe belt, again?

No, sir.

How about time out instead?

Yes sir. May I read upstairs?

Father side eyes me. I think he caught on at about age 9. Or 10.

So, I was not surprised when a simple story from his childhood turned into a dissertation on philosophy.

It started with my grandfather. Dad told me this story at our Father’s Day lunch, where I took him to his favorite Italian lunch spot in Canyon Lake. This year my mom was sidelined due to an inconvenient complication involving toilets.

I said, “Tell me about my grandfather. I don’t know the stories.”

Dad said, “Which story?” I said, “One that my aunts haven’t already told me.

That’s where all my grandfather stories originate.

You lived under the same father, correct?”

He thought for a second and said, “Okay. When I was twelve, your granddad woke me up at four in the morning and asked me, ‘What’s your philosophy of life?’”

I stopped him. “Wait. At four in the morning?” He said, “Yes.” I stared at him and said, “Okay, that explains… a lot.”

Not every family passes down heirlooms. Some families pass down land. Some pass down trauma. My family appears to pass down existential interrogation at unreasonable hours.

Dad kept talking. “And then it took me twenty or thirty minutes to explain why I didn’t deserve detention for whatever made-up bullshit Mr. McCarty had on me.” I stopped him again.

“Hold on. I’ll be the decider of whether or not it was bullshit.”

He seemed skeptical and maybe slightly wounded. Don’t feel too sorry for him. He was eating lobster ravioli.

This is our rhythm. Dad tells stories with built-in conclusions. I interrupt conclusions. He supplies certainty. I request evidence. He continued, “It was bullshit.” I said, “According to you.” He said, “No, according to reality.” I said, “Those are not always the same thing, Dad.”

That is another thing you should know about us. I love my father. I also cross-examine him frequently.

The story, as best I could understand it, involved school, detention, Mr. McCarty, and a girl. It also involved the auditorium—or gymnasium, because in these stories the rooms matter but the labels sometimes shift. Dad remembered the date as November 18, 1963, which is such a specific date that of course I had to stop him again. “Wait. You remember the date?” He did.

Apparently, there had been some reason they were all supposed to come to the auditorium, or the gym, or wherever schools gathered children in 1963 when something official was happening. But what I wanted to know was not merely where they were. I wanted to know what Mr. McCarty had allegedly done that earned the title “bullshit.”

I think he may have even tried to distract me with a presidential assassination. A big one. But my dad is sneaky.

“Yeah. That seemed like a sad day. I’m sorry you had to experience that.

…So what made it bullshit?” I asked–again. “What did he say about you?”

Dad tried to move quickly past the details, which is always how I know the details are important. Something about this teacher deciding a boy and a girl should be a couple.

I think he I said, “How old were you?” He said he was twelve. I said, “Okay, and were you attracted to her?” He immediately resisted the framing. “That wasn’t the question.”

I said, “It is now. I’ll be the decider.”

Dad explained that Mr. McCarty would do things like make a boy and girl hold hands if he thought they should like each other. I stopped him again because the transcript of my childhood is apparently me interrupting grown men who think they are making sense.

“He would make hands with a girl?” Dad clarified that he meant the teacher would make them hold hands, or force the situation, or push the story that two children belonged together because an adult thought it was funny or cute or socially useful.

That is where the story changed for me. It was no longer just a funny childhood complaint about detention. It was a story about an adult using power to assign meaning to a child’s life. It was a story about a boy who knew, even then, that someone else did not get to decide the truth of his interior world. Dad may have wrapped it in “Mr. McCarty’s bullshit,” but under the profanity was a principle.

He did not want to be handled.

Which is funny. Because this is the same man who had the back of my former employer who used “intentionality” sideways. “Honey. You can’t blame him. Look at you. I wouldn’t stop complimenting you either.”

“Dad. He was married. I can absolutely blame him. It’s disrespectful to me. And his WIFE.”

At that point my dad was glad my mom was sidelined on a toilet. My dad can tolerate danger–just not from his wife. Or, even sometimes, a very passionate daughter.

Other things he can tolerate: discomfort, pain, wiring things hot, roofing a dome, shooting a staple into his own thigh, and will just keep on, keepin’ on.

But he cannot tolerate being manipulated. He cannot tolerate an authority figure deciding what reality is and expecting everyone else to play along.

Unless that authority figure is his wife. And sometimes his daughter.

And in those cases, he doesn’t really have a lot of choice because we feed him.

I, however, try to respect him. Mostly because I do. My dad is my favorite person (with a couple of obvious exceptions).

I think that may be one of the deepest organizing principles of my father’s life: not freedom in the abstract, but freedom from coercion. Freedom from being managed. Freedom from being assigned a role by someone who has not earned the right to speak into your life. Freedom from somebody else deciding what your story means.

And because inheritance is rarely tidy, I got that from him. Deeply.

It explains why authority impresses me less than integrity. It explains why charisma without accountability makes my skin crawl. It explains why I “ask too many questions”, why I struggle when someone tells me what I am feeling instead of asking, why coercion—emotional, spiritual, relational, institutional—registers in my body almost like a physical threat.

Maybe that is why the four o’clock in the morning question matters.

“What’s your philosophy of life?” is not really a question about opinions. It is a question about structure.

What holds when pressure comes? What tells you when an authority figure is wrong? What governs you when the room agrees with the wrong person? What lets you stand there, twelve years old, in a school auditorium or gymnasium, and know that something being repeated by an adult is still not true?

Apparently, in this family, philosophy is not academic. It is survival.

The answer my father gave for his “Philosophy of Life” was to fudge what he could remember about my grandfather’s philosophy of life. It’s an interesting and highly useful skill set to turn a questioner into the answerer of said question.

I imagine this as highly creative problem solving and stubborn resistance. I imagine it as a kid who knew how to fall asleep with his eyes open. Genius level.

But no, my dad retained zero memory of what my grandfather’s philosophy on life was in 1963, nor did my dad have one of his own back then.

What I do know is that my grandfather thought a twelve-year-old boy should be able to answer the question. Can you think? Can you reason? Can you defend your conclusions? Can you withstand pressure without surrendering your mind?

That is a dangerous thing to teach a child. It is also a dangerous thing not to teach a child.

Maybe that is the philosophy, if I’m honest: ask questions because your answers matter. Not performative questions. Not weaponized questions. Real ones. Questions that cost something. Questions that may rearrange you. Questions that force you to confront the distance between comfort and truth. Questions where the answerer will simply not care to adapt your argument and change their behaviors. Even if it costs relationship.

Grief. The most complex and hardest of all the emotions.

What remains when the questions don’t have the answers that we want.

My grandfather asked a twelve-year-old boy for his philosophy of life at four in the morning. Decades later, I think I finally understand why. Sooner or later, life asks every one of us the same question, and eventually we have to answer.

And if someone calls something bullshit in this family, they should be prepared for someone else to say, “I’ll be the decider of that.”