Why does this have to be so hard, dad?

Today is my dad's birthday. So, being the good daughter that I am, I call him up to wish him a good day and see how things are going and stuff like that.

Turns out that I will probably be the ONLY one of his four children that will be calling him to wish him a Happy Birthday because my other siblings? Well, they've apparently blocked him from their phone and e-mail accounts. Due to a very long and drawn out situation that I may or may not get into on this blog. But damn! He's your dad, people! Am I going to have to get all wicked big sister on your ass? *sigh* This makes me so sad.

Anyway . . .

We're chatting it up because we're both really terrible communicators and only call each other like once a quarter. It's not a big deal to us, although it wierds some people out. I know he loves and cares about me and vice versa. Our family just isn't really long on good communication. Always been that way, always will be. So it always makes for long conversations when we do talk.

We're discussing things he's been doing and things I've been doing and then he asks it. The question. You know, the one about my weight and how things are going in that direction. I take a deep breath and take the plunge. I tell him that on July 19, I'm having the DS.

Needless to say, the reception to this news isn't the best that it could be. *sigh*

To give a bit of background, my father is a big guy. He's six feet, three inches tall. He was always big, but he was always a muscular big. He would ride his bicycle at least five miles every day to work and back, rain, sleet or snow. Then he retired, and the pounds started to creep on him. Then he developed diabetes. And sleep apnea. He got up to probably nearly 350 pounds. But because he was a big guy to begin with, it didn't look so bad on him, but it was definitely affecting his health.

Then the issue that will not be discussed at this point in time happened, my mother decided to divorce him and moved out of the house. This meant that for the first time in his adult life since marriage (32+ years) he had to make ALL of his own meals. Now, my dad's a fairly decent cook, it was just that my mother is a gourmet cook, and, well, gourmet cooks trump decent cooks most days of the week, except when the gourmet cook wants to take a day off.

As a result, my dad decided to follow the American Diabetic Society's diet for diabetics. To the letter. Measuring every. little. thing. And discovering foods that actually weren't working for him, so he cut them out. He has now lost all the excess weight and is back to being the slim and trim father that I see peeking out of all of my baby pictures. It's pretty impressive and he no longer takes medication for his diabetes. It's taken him three years to do this. Yay dad!

But anyway, he hears that I'm having SURGERY to help me with my weight and he kind of flips. Wants to come down and stay with us for a while so that he can present to me his diet. Because he knows that it will work for me. Because he's an engineer and engineers analyze everything and BY GOD they are right about everything.

Yes, dad, if I was single and had all the time in the world, yes, this diet would work for me. I have no doubt about that. But I'm not single. I have two demanding children, and an even more demanding husband; I work, I have a small ranch to take care of, and a bunch of other commitments. This means that I have NO TIME for food prep like you do. I know damn good and well that it is portion control that is my main problem, but going on a diet (and one that I have been on before as well) just doesn't work for me and never has.

You see, dad, I need a little bit of a push. A little bit of help here. The whole conversation that we were having about this, you kept pooh-poohing everything that I was doing to lose weight on my own. I know that you mean well. I know that you are trying to show that you care for me, but daddy, I'm not your little girl anymore. I make the choices for me now. And the fact is that I made this choice. I have read and studied and asked questions for EIGHT LONG YEARS. I have done my research. I have failed horribly trying to do this without surgery, making myself more and more miserable every step of the way.

It's not that I have given up. It's that I have realized that I can't do this with my body and my willpower alone. That I need help from something else.

In a way, this is almost like a religious experience for me. Sort of like finding God and who He is and why He does the things He does. I'm finally finding who *I* am and what I need to do to become that me.

Daddy, I love you very much. But I cannot and will not allow you to come visit me if all you're going to do is try and convince me not to do what I feel I need to do. You could have come visited before. I mean, I am the only child of yours to have presented you grandchildren. Please don't think that I'm blaming you or am upset at you because you haven't visited, because I'm not. My love for you isn't dependent upon things like that. That, plus I know that you're not the type of person who goes and visits other people just because. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, you know?

This will probably be like when The Husband and I ran off and got married in Lake Tahoe without any of my family and didn't have our marriage sanctified in the Catholic Church. I know that you were very upset at me - even angry about it - for a long time. You probably feel like I will be violating the body that God gave me. One of the reasons why I have held off on having bariatric surgery was just because of that reason - that I would be violating a God-given system.

But Daddy, I've grown up. I'm not Catholic any longer. Some people would say that I'm not even Christian any longer because what I do believe about God is so controversial.

But what I do believe, with every fiber in my body, is that God has said to me that this surgery is the right thing for me to have. I tell people that when I came across the information about this surgery that it felt like the doors of Heaven had opened for me, so great was my peace about it.

So please, don't try to disturb the peace that has been given to me, because I won't allow it. I don't often get this "right" feeling about things, but when I do, they are always correct. I know that your empirical knowledge about things is great. You have a wonderfully keen mind. But remember, you passed that same keen, analytical mind onto me, perhaps more than any of your other children.

It's okay, dad. You can let me grow up at long last. I know I've finally let myself do so too. I love you!