Last Saturday morning as we were on the way to Daddy’s office I was bombarded by phone calls and text messages from the mother re: issues with father at the bank.
After all that got dealt with I harumphed to Daddy that the banks haven’t yet figured out how to cope with the peculiar problems our nation’s ageing population is sure to present. (All I wanted was for them to have some measure in place so that persons who have been medically declared to have limited mental capacity won’t be allowed to withdraw their life savings and lose it in 7 seconds...)
He sounded like he was disagreeing with me, and it was the day before my period so I was a hormonal mess. I defended myself and my stance and he kept poking holes in my ideas so much so that all I heard was “Don’t expect the world to change for you just cause your father’s got dementia.”
That’s NOT what he said of course. Nothing even remotely close. But that’s the message I got. It felt like he was expecting me to come up with a solution for everything - what if someone says it’s my money why can’t I have it? What about privacy - anyone who looks at that person’s account will be able to see he’s mentally unsound! What about this and what about that?!
I lost it. “That’s not my job, I don’t have the answers but that’s why I said the banks need to come up with SOMEthing - get a panel or committee or something to look into it right?”
Ok, so maybe I yelled. Maybe I hollered. Maybe I raised my voice a few (thousand) decibels.
*Shrugs* but he should know better than to get into a thing with me first thing in the morning after I'd just dealt with the mother and BEFORE I got a chance to get some caffeine in me right?
I'm NOT a morning person. I was pre-menstrual. AND pre-caffeinated. AND I hadn't had my morning ciggy (with the morning coffee). AND I had to deal with the frenzied mother.
Still, I shouldn't have lost it. And if we had gotten into a fight I would have been better equipped to handle it. But NOOOOO. What did Daddy do?
He turned to look at me as he was driving and then in the calmest voice ever said "I say this with the greatest of affection ok? But don't bite my head off."
And then guilt. Fine. Great. Shit.
I DID explain myself - I told him (ok, whined) that I was upset because it sounded like he was attacking me! I told him how I felt like he was accusing me of being unreasonable and wanting the rest of the world to accommodate my father's illness. Which is when he took a deep breath and said that wasn't it at all. That he was merely asking what ideas I had to counter all the possible scenarios the banks might face - he was playing devil's advocate, as it were.
Of course the mood was kinda icky by then but that one line of his - oh the trouble it caused me. At that very moment it shut me up. And made me realise that I was out of line. But for the whole day after that, even after we had gotten some coffee into me and we had gone back to being normal, it nagged at me, at the back of my mind, in the pit of my chest. You know that feeling you get when you're feeling guilty or hurt and there's a physical ache in the middle of your chest? Surely I can't be the only one...
Anyway on Sunday night (yes, it took me a whole 36 hours to verbalise it) I finally texted him that I was sorry. For being mean to him. He replied that I wasn't mean. For being nasty to him then. He said I wasn't nasty, I was just tired. Well, for being tired to him then. 😕
And then I asked him for a spanking. A proper one. He must have known what I was after cos he said "We'll use the paddle".

Definition of penance :~ punishment inflicted on oneself as an outward expression of repentance for wrongdoing.
So after 6 years of saying we don't subscribe to the punishment theory, I realise that on some level I've always felt the need to repent and redeem myself through a spanking - what he always thought of as a 'reconnect' spanking was to me, at least, penance. An offering of submission. An act of contrition.
He did use the Christmas paddle. And it hurt. And then we cuddled. And there was no more pain in the middle of my chest when I thought about what happened in the car that Saturday morning.