A dragon.

“I wondered if people who grow up with great fathers don’t walk around with a subconscious sense they are wanted on this planet, that they belong, and the world needs them.”
-Donald Miller, To Own A Dragon


Pressure

It’s a pressure cooker. There is this room that sits two quiet people, myself and my father, and each of us are trying to figure out what went wrong… if the other really cares… if there is something that could change. What I am really wondering is when a good time to just stand up and leave would be in order that we might avoid one more second of the awkwardness. It’s kind of weird to feel awkward around the one who made you. The best part is that all of the feelings are barely leaked out as we try and make some sort of normal conversation.
“How have things been going?”
“It’s a really tough time at work right now you know? Very hard times,” he manages to mutter out in his thick Hebrew accent.
“Yeah.” It’s the same thing he answers every time to the same question I ask every time. Now it’s his turn.
“How is school?”
“Oh you know…it’s really hard but I’m sticking with it. Just had some big stuff due, but I got it done.”
“Good. Good. You know I am so proud of you.” Yeah right. “After this you go get a job that pays and then maybe after while, you go back and get your masters and become a doctor or a lawyer.”
What am I six? That’s just it. I want to scream in his face and explain to him that I am going to school for me, not for him. I am not a kid anymore. I am an adult now. Maybe I don’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer. Does he even know what a lawyer does? I just want to stand up and shake him and make him understand and have him realize all of this. This all the while hoping that when he says he’s proud he means it and I might actually be worth having a relationship with. But I simply answer, “Yeah…that would be cool dad.” And then silence. It’s a pressure cooker.