Daddy’s Little Girl
My dad and his wife are visiting Mr. Monkey and me here in Asheville for the Christmas holiday. There’s one thing I always forget about him (and always remember as soon as we’re together), and that’s how much we have in common vis a vis having business on the brain.
Like me, he’s always seeing an angle, or marketing option or business idea wherever he turns. Like me, he talks incessantly about these ideas when he gets them, fleshing them out as he goes, creating trademark and branding concepts, mulling over potential markets, etc. And like me, the potential inherent in a new product idea, new marketing angle or new “value add” fires off deeply-seated emotional fireworks, making him exuberant, excited and wide-eyed at the possibilities. And it makes me wonder if this sort of mindset is heritable.
I’d have gotten it from him, for sure. My mom has a few ideas for things she’d like to do now and then, but they’re just that - ideas. Neat, cool to think about maybe. But they’re just dreams, not reality. And they’re certainly not the shiny new puppy with extra wiggles that they are for Dad and me. He an I were born to work for ourselves, and to spot the angle in any situation that we could leverage to do so if we chose. Mom was born to dream about it. Subtle, but important, difference.
Of course, some might suggest that this inheritance is nurture rather than nature - that childhood exposure to his entrepreneurial leanings filtered in by osmosis and that Daddy’s Little Girl takes after him because he taught her to do so, rather than because of any genetic hocus pocus.
But that’s because most people don’t know that until just a few short years ago, I didn’t know my dad.
My parents split up when I was very young. I don’t remember how young, exactly, but I was certainly not much older than 5 or 6. Aside from perhaps a few short visits (I only actually remember one), I didn’t see him again until three decades of wondering finally came to a head and I reached out to reconnect with him. Considering that we’ve only had a handful of weekend visits over the last few years to get to know each other, and although we’ve been carefully picking our way toward building something akin to a relationship, he’s still all but a complete stranger at this point.
But this freewheeling entrepreneurial spirit is one of the first things I picked up on. And it was so amazing to see it in someone else related to me. I felt like the Ugly Duckling, finally finding someone who looked like me and who considered the way I lived and thought to be normal, after a lifetime growing up around people who thought I was dangerously deluded and who hoped I would come to my senses before something horrible happened to me.
It was all there: The automatic, always-on eye for the angle. The love of spinning out newly-conceived business ideas that strike us almost fully formed after just a brief glimpse of some inspirational spark. The palpably electric excitement we both exude when discussing our mutually favorite topic.
At first I just sat there, listening to him go on about his latest ideas for retiring into a side business flipping real estate, amused and pleased to see we had so much in common. Then it suddenly hit me like a punch to the gut.
Oh. My. God.
Here is a man who sounds just like me. And he’s happy. He’s nicely, normally successful with a nice, normal life and a nice, normal, loving relationship. He’s not cynical or distrusting of life or beaten down by visions of a life never lived. He’s not afraid of trying something new, or hesitant to strike out on his own.
And - Holy Paradigm-Shifting Realizations, Batman! - he’s half of my genetic makeup.
Huh. I’m may not be crazy after all. I might even be…gasp…normal!
This realization was so startling and so overwhelming that it shook me to my bones, shook me to finally see someone sitting across the family table who considered my way of thinking - that I could build my own life the way I wanted it and make it come true by the work of my own hands, without anyone else’s permission or sign-off - to actually be a normal, reasonable way to think. I reeled from the insight. Years later, I’m still reeling.
It was like coming home. Actually, no. It wasn’t. It was more like finding a doorway in the home you’ve lived in all your life that you’d somehow never noticed before, which, when opened, leads to an entirely new and extensive wing full of cool rooms, amazing vistas and interesting furnishings that you never knew existed, yet that are all nonetheless strangely familiar and delightfully far more suited to your tastes than the dull and ill-fitting hand-me-downs you’ve been getting by with this whole time.
As far as I’m concerned, entrepreneurial spirit is in my blood. It was passed down on my father’s side and fought like hell for purchase in the thin, hardscrabble soil of a hostile environment. Denied any encouragement or support, and indeed considered to be something of a toxic and pernicious weed, this innate drive nonetheless managed to send roots clear down into my soul and grow into a vibrant, flourishing vine that no one in my family knew how to deal with or understand.
Until, that is, I met my father. Whose gift of allowing me to see myself reflected in him has acted like the happy identification of a previously ill-considered weed as a rare and beautiful flower, freeing me from what I felt was a constant struggle to find my place in a world that didn’t fit and letting me see that I was exactly who I was supposed to be, where I was supposed to be, the whole time.
In finding him, I found myself.
Merry Christmas, Dad. And thanks. For everything.