Father Figuring

Daphne Merkin, writing in the Times magazine today:

I am not nor have I ever been a daddy's girl, one of those lucky women who grow up convinced of their daughterly adorability. The kind of woman, that is, who is always tilting her head in expectation of male attention and might be found girlishly sitting on a man's lap when the party heats up — like the writer who recently admitted that because she was raised by a father who thought she was "gorgeous" ("not just pretty or attractive," she added, "but perfect"), she sees herself as incontestably (and unobjectively) desirable.

I suppose you could say that I am a--I hate to use the phrase, so I won't, and will say instead that I have always been my father's daughter. Meaning: work-fixated, ambitious, solitude-desiring, (fairly) stoic, emotionally detatched though violently sentimental when the occasion arises. But I do not tilt my head in expectation of male attention, and you will never find me sitting on someone's lap when the party heats up. My father's love allowed me to go about my business: being a tiny grind who, until eight years ago, would have no idea when someone was flirting with her, and had herself no idea how to do it. My father never made my sister and I feel that we had to be anything other than what we were. Many of my friends were and are loved dearly by their fathers, and it has not made them vain coquettes. In fact, just the opposite. Actually, even if they weren't, they're still wonderful women. In the end, I think, we raise ourselves. My mother and her sisters were all daddy's girls (now I can use the phrase) and it just made them, I think, gracious and hilarious women and talkers. Or perhaps the ease with one's female self imparted by a loving father is what Merkin is getting at, only she's unable to talk about how else that confidence might express itself other than flirting.

I think I'm writing because I think a lot about my father, and fathers and daughters, and am proud to be his daughter, and I feel that, as usual, Merkin has it all wrong. She is making a generalization about the female based on her own specific cold-father experience. Her and Maureen Dowd, with the blind assumptions and tiny focus groups. She doesn't say anything of use about the topic, and the damn piece seems like it's 4,000 words. She goes on at length about her own experience, and name checks a few famous father-daughter duos, but doesn't bother really thinking hard about any of these examples. She could have meditated on: King Lear and Cordelia! Or Miranda and her father in The Tempest. Or Austen's fathers, sometimes dotty and hapless, sometimes wise. Emma and Mr. Woodhouse! Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse--there's something there, but it's been ten years, and I can't remember! Forgive me. I read the piece last night, quarreling with it, and this morning I heard Loretta Lynn on the radio singing "Coal Miner's Daughter," and thought, now there's a story about paternal love. It's just not all about being able to flirt. Sometimes it's about making sure things don't fall apart, and that there will be shoes for the kids to wear come fall, after they spent all summer in Butcher Holler going barefoot. I think my argument is breaking down because I'm about to get the flu.

What I woke up to this morning was this song by Tanya Tucker called "The Man That Turned My Mama On." From 1974. I thought it was the Dixie Chicks for a minute. It was surreal: who sings songs about the mystery that is parental romance? And actually uses the hair-raising phrase "turned my mama on" to do it? Here are the lyrics. Get some Kleenex.

I wish I'd known the man a little better
that turned my mama on
he must have been a heck of a man
'cause mama was a lady don't you know

Mama was no prude but she was proper
never wore her dress too short
she didn't care if you did
but she'd have never taken a drink
Grandma Kate did the best she could
To see mama grew up right
so she'd be fittin' one day for courtin'
and to wear some gentleman's ring

Chorus:
I wish I'd known the man a little better
that turned my mama on
he was always laughing
and singing the right sweet song
I wish I'd known the man a little better
the turned my mama on
He must have been a heck of a man
'Cause mama was a lady don't you know

I hear he came to town one day
in a rusty old '49 Ford
selling lady's shoes and assorted greeting cards
he was killing good looking
and easy to like
and turning all the ladies' heads
but he saw mama first
and Lord knows how some of them travelin men are

Chorus

Mama seemed to forget the things
that Grandma Kate had always told her
she ran away one night with a traveling man
they bought gas at Rita's truck stop
and drove to Dasota County
but he brought her home with a ring upon her hand
mama's told me how the fever took him
when I was barely five
but I remember him pitchin' me up
and catchin' me
and I love to sit and listen to her
tell me about my daddy
she says he thought the sun would surely
rise and set in me

I wish I'd known the man a little better
that turned my mama on
he must have been a heck of a man
'cause mama was a lady don't you know
I wish I'd known the man a little better
the turned my mama on
He must have been a heck of a man
'Cause mama was a lady don't you know