All of the sudden, all of those Draconian financial lessons became lessons taught in love and with my best interest at heart. This song represented a great love letter from my dad to me and actually forced me to re-evaluate my interactions with my dad in a different light. And then I listened to it… While listening to the song, with tears in my eyes, it suddenly became clear to me that my father truly loved me and that despite the fact that he was not warm and fuzzy on the outside, he was warm and fuzzy on the inside. The song, “Father and Daughter” was written and performed by Paul Simon for the Wild Thornberrys movie, and when I heard this, I wasn’t so sure about his song choice.
I asked him at one point what song he wanted to dance to for the father / daughter dance because we really didn’t have a “song.” To my surprise, he declared that he had already found a song and shared it with me. Because my dad was not warm and fuzzy, many of these lessons, while well intentioned were interpreted as Draconian.Ī few years after graduating college, I got engaged and began the wedding planning process, which was also a financially challenging exercise with my dad, but we worked through it. The “Bank of Dad” had a zero tolerance policy where financial debts were concerned. I made a few financial “mistakes” over my four years of college and I was always forced to repay them. While my dad gave me the greatest gift of paying for school, he made it abundantly clear that any “fun” was going to be on my dime and once I graduated I could not expect to find a home with him. He was definitely not afraid to be the disciplinarian and from his kid’s perspectives, often gave some pretty harsh punishments.Once I started attending college, I received some of those harsh punishments, especially where money was concerned. My father will be the first to tell you, and his four kids will confirm that he is not the most “warm and fuzzy” person on the planet. It was not ideal for any of us, but it was just life and the only life I knew. My parents divorced when I was two, and I grew up living with my mom and would visit my dad during school vacations.
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