broken ovens, womenhood, and luther vandross.
I promise this is all related
Happy new year 🥳 This year, you should listen to the Sheer Creativity podcast, a creative, laidback space for creatives to talk about what’s important to them🎙️Listen to interviews with special guests and personal development to inspire and motive you along your artistic path. And we’re social media free baby! This will be a source to learn about new episodes and fun releases.
I’d like to start the new year by apologizing to the late Luther Vandross, whose smooth voice has graced numerous wedding days and grass dance floors at cookouts. Sorry Luther, but as much as I love you, every time I hear the intro piano to “Dance With My Father,” I skip the song faster as Sha'Carri in the summer of 2023.
It’s nothing personal. If my car could talk, it would complain about my car concerts when I belt “Superstar,” “If This World Were Mine,” and a seasonal rendition of “Every Year, Every Christmas.” But this song, I just can’t relate. Even skimming through the comments under this music video, I feel far removed from the emotions that these listeners feel. I read the stories of lost loved ones and cherished memories they yearn to relive, and I find myself grasping at their view of their fathers hoping to replace the resentment I possess for mine. Listening to “Dance With My Father” is a reminder that my father never danced with me, not due to untimely loss but of his own volition.
I shrink to Ant-Man size when I hear the phrase “daddy issues,” which if you fall into the camp of fatherless people like myself, you may not want to search that term in Google. You’ll find a list of symptoms like WebMD, diagnosing you with abandonment fears, jealousy, emotional unavailability, and much more. To seal the deal, they try to soothe your mind with this popular song by The Neighbourhood, and the music video capitalizes on “daddy issues” through the image of a woman vandalizing a car with a baseball bat as lead singer Jesse sings, “Go ahead and cry little girl/Nobody does it like you do/I know how much it matters to you/I know that you got daddy issues.”
As much as I love this band, no.
Maybe it’s because this is my lived experience, but saying I have daddy issues feels like a form of victim blaming that is rarely acknowledged, an indictment on myself rather than the failures of my father. Anytime I hear “daddy issues,” I’m transported back to seven or twelve or sixteen year old me, listening to folks tell me what’s wrong with me without acknowledging any wrong on their part.
You’re just reacting that way because of your dad.
She’s just sensitive because of the situation with her father.
Us fatherless children are believed to react extremely because of unresolved feelings toward a man who abandoned or failed us in some way, rather than the situation at hand. But I’ll humbly admit, I haven’t grown up unscathed from my lack of a capable father. However, “daddy issues” could really benefit from a rebrand, a more encouraging outlook and a less gaslight-y response for the victims in question. I’ve considered renaming it a father deficiency, but that just sounds like I need to take vitamins in the morning like it’s iron pills. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple of a fix.
I’m really open to suggestions.
Even at an age where I have accepted many facets of my life, I still get angry when I enter situations that would be simpler with a father. I don’t allow myself to think about how different I would’ve been if he was more involved or how different life could’ve been. If I did, I’d probably find my father to cuss him out whenever Luther or Jesse start singing. My usual coping mechanism is to believe that anything he can do for us, I can do it as well, and maybe even better than he ever could.
Until my mother’s kitchen oven broke.
Well actually, the oven never really worked properly since she bought it almost two years ago. Currently, most ranges are set for natural gas, a commodity that not every household has. At my mother’s home, we still use propane, so when my mother got her range, my uncle and grandfather installed it partially, but the oven needed to be converted to natural gas. Without the special parts to convert the oven, the range operates but with an “eternal inferno” in the words of the receptionist when I called the gas company. Inside the oven, flames flanked each side of the range, extinguishing for a few minutes before sparking up again. The smoke from the oven filled the house with a strong aroma.
A tad bit frightening.
Of course we were going to fix it, yet nobody knew how. Everyone we asked said that the gas company (the same one as ours) converted their ranges for them, but every time we called, our gas company said it was something they no longer do. We looked online for local professionals, but the search was unfruitful. And busyness ensued, and fixing the oven fell further and further down our list of priorities. Soon we learned to adapt to the inferno, using the oven as sparingly as possible, but when it was necessary, opening windows and warning each other when we’re making a meal. The oven became the inside joke we had to explain for every guest who has witnessed us use it. We opened the oven door and watched their eyes widen when the eternal inferno encased aluminum wrapped pans that grew more and more blackened with every use.
Everyone listened to our plight and offers their opinions that we should get it fixed (obviously), yet nobody offers their time or effort to help. And I don’t fault them. It truly isn’t their problem. Once they leave, they have their own home with their own set of responsibilities and grievances. Our oven isn’t their issue, but when you don’t know how to fix something and work is time-consuming and you figure you’ll fix it soon but then it becomes Christmas Day and you’re scrambling to explain why your oven smells so strong and why you’re constantly switching between soot-covered potholders, something has to give.
I watch fathers in other families fix problems and I wonder why my father can’t fix my mother’s or mine. Of course not every man is great with his hands, and not every woman can wait (or should wait) for a man to fix her problems, but what if my dad knew who to contact, or how to get the ball rolling? I watch other fathers and wonder why I wasn’t given the same courtesy. And in my anger, I was determined that 2024 would be the final year that we explained the faulty state of our oven. I was determined to buy my mother a brand new range. But because we still use propane, I still had to buy a natural gas range and find someone to convert it.
I found myself wandering Home Depot asking about conversion kits, delivery dates, and nodding in understanding even though I’m scrambling to assemble the meaning in my mind. I felt like my mother, providing while unsure like walking blindfolded without knowing when you might run into something, but knowing you must keep going. However, the internet would have you believe that it’s an undesirable trait for women to step into roles that have been neglected, to get things done. Every day, there’s another post or podcast episode led by men who want to be revered for the basic requirement of being a man, and those same men will shame women for having anything deemed “masculine,” like ambition, tenacity, and independence (?).
There’s truly no way to win as a woman. In the infamous Katt Williams interview that broke the internet, he said something about independent women that made many self-proclaimed alpha men rejoice. In this clip, Katt says women can’t find men because they’re acting like them, and now they want subservient husbands.
I’d argue that the blame is attached to the wrong person. My independence did not evolve with my adulthood. I wasn’t given the choice to take hold of my independence when I felt ready. My independence was the only inheritance my father could leave me. I’m now unbelievably rich in making things work and being an overachiever, something I never thought I was until it was pointed out to me. I never thought I was a perfectionist until I realized I was working for the approval of a man who would never respond in the way I wanted (and needed) him to respond. My personality of deflecting through humor, awkwardly stumbling through ordinary banter, and struggling to express emotions in any way other than writing an essay about it is because of who failed me.
Sorry, I have a father deficiency, and apparently now I’m acting too much like a man.
Was my mother acting too much like a man as well? The one thing I look forward to seeing when my mother retires next year is for her body to be upright. She’s worked thirty years on rough cement floors, constantly lifting and bending, and now her body bends outside of work as if it’s her natural state. I look forward to see her walking instead of limping around the house. Is it “acting like a man” to provide for your family? Please, for the sake of me and women everywhere, quit this outdated and ill-informed analysis of women. If the argument is that women are acting too much like men, then shouldn’t the solution be that men start acting like the men they claim to be? Actually helping instead of hurting? Truly, if you’re describing yourself as an “alpha,” it’s a clear indicator that you think way too highly of yourself.
After a day of range shopping and being a so-called alpha woman by these men’s standards, I made the Hail Mary play of calling the gas company one last time, and I finally got in touch with a woman who gave me the number of a company a few towns over who converted her range. The company only had a phone number, no email or website living on the internet. I called and told them when the range would be delivered, and they told me that they would come after Home Depot delivered the stove.
I coordinated the delivery and conversion during a 5-hour car ride to another state. My mother and I kept in constant communication, and I was scared to end up in the same predicament. When I fail to fix anything, I become a six year old girl crying in the fetal position begging for someone to mend her wounds. I think you can guess now why that is.
Once Home Depot successfully delivered the stove, I called the company and he said he’d arrive in an hour. Later on, my mother texted me, typos and all, “He’s here on the floor installed.” I’m not sure what she meant, but she called after to say the range was converted and she was going to bake some chicken.
Long story short, I’m a resourceful, capable woman, and if a daughter blesses my future, I’ll teach her the same regardless if her father is present or not. I can step into neglected roles. I step in because who else will? And if I can, why not me? Recently, my mother and sister drove up to one of my unmarried aunt’s houses to find her on the roof of her home cleaning the gutters. Apparently multiple people over time, mainly men, told her to get down, to which she responded, “Well, who else will do it?”
One of my favorite short stories is Beauty When the Other Dancer is the Self by Alice Walker. In this work, Walker recalls the childhood accident which caused her partial blindness, and how it affected how she felt about her image. After losing sight in one eye, she keeps asking people if she’s changed, if she’s still pretty, if she’s still worth it. I asked myself questions as well, after I realized I would never have a dedicated father. Am I too scarred by my father’s actions? Will I ever feel detached from his deficiencies? Am I too independent? Am I not independent enough? Will I always be angry?
I want to embody the final paragraphs, where she discovers “there is a world in my eye” and dances to Stevie Wonder’s “As” with the other dancer she met in the mirror.
As I dance, whirling and joyous, happier than I’ve ever been in my life, another bright-faced dancer joins me. We dance and kiss each other and hold each other through the night. The other dancer has obviously come through all right, as I have done. She is beautiful, whole, and free. And she is also me.
Yes, Alice. I also have come through all right. I am also beautiful, whole, and free, without any man to cosign my freedom. I guess I do have something to thank my father for other than my features.
His absence made me believe in my own freedom.
What does Laraya like this week?
What I’m listening to 🎧: “Anyone But You” by Still Woozy. His songs aren’t ever long enough for me, so I just listen 58 more times to make up the difference.
What I’m reading: New year, new reading goals! I’m shuffling between a few choices to start the year, but I borrowed In Five Years by Rebecca Serle and Moonrise Over New Jessup by Jamila Minnicks from the library. I also have the urge to read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston again.
Also, in case you missed it:
See you next time 🧡