My problem with writing about my Daddy? I just can’t think what to say. Well, not the traditional tributes, the American Greetings salutes to fatherhood.
We buried my father on February 2, 2009. When the lid to the casket closed, a panic
swooped over me. I would never, ever see
him again this side of Heaven. Never. And with the closing of
that lid, everything I could have, would have, should have asked him about
himself was sealed forever. No more
chances to “get to know him better.” I
had my chance and all I could do was hope I had learned enough.
But before a thought speeds to your mind, thinking how
callous I am, let me explain.
I grew up in an era when so many dads were---well---just
dads. They married our mothers and
became fathers. Simple. Having kids was just part of being married
for so many men in this era. Part of the
job---just went with the territory.
Oh, sure. There were
the exceptions. And sometimes, as a
little girl, I seethed with jealousy toward my friends whose fathers were the
exceptions. The dads who called their
daughters “Princess”. I honestly
convinced myself that my dad would have been a better dad if he would have only
called me “Princess.” But he
didn’t. Oh, well, I survived the beastly
abuse of not being the little princess of my daddy’s eye. I somehow managed to shoot to adulthood as a
fully functional, well adjusted woman in spite of this atrocity.
The beauty of it all? I now realize he couldn’t have been a better father. Even considering the fact that he never had a
pet name for me, that he didn’t take me fishing, that he didn’t play games with
me---he still couldn’t have been a better father.
He supported his family on $2.15 an hour with his Post
Office job (before it was union and before it was called Postal Union) and
pushed a broom at a junior high school (in the days before they were called
‘middle school’) after work to make extra money.
Times were hard, money was short. Suppers consisted often of pinto beans and
cornbread or, on Sundays we ate scrambled eggs (never knew the Sunday egg
connection---have made a mental note to find out from my mother). But we ate. We didn’t want. We were happy. We were a family and our house was a warm
sanctuary.
I thought I knew my daddy as well as I needed to. He wasn’t my best friend. He was my father. The man who raised me. In the world I lived in (this is the world
before time-outs replaced spankings), your daddy was just your daddy, and that
was all he was supposed to be. What more
did you need to know?
Well, I had a startling revelation that he might be a little
more than that when I got married. The
morning I was scheduled to leave my girlhood home to move to Alabama as a married woman, I got up early
to say ‘good-bye’ to my daddy before he left for work. He hugged me so tight that I couldn’t break
his hold. When he finally let go, he’d
been crying. Tears were in his
eyes. How dare he? This man who was supposed to be as
indifferent as I was? Crying? Yes.
From then on I realized he was more than just my father, but
was a man with feelings and a personality I hadn’t gotten to know. He was a man who had a whole life before I
came along, a man I never knew.
Thank God for revealing this to me while he was still
alive. For letting me learn about my
father---the man who served his country in World War II in the Eleventh
Airborne and earned a Purple Heart. The
man who did double duty and served in the Navy on The U.S.S. Wasp. The man who sort of looked like a
combination of William Holden and Paul Newman when he was young. The good looking man who married my mother
and conceived me and my siblings.
The man who had a fascinating life, but who to me was just
Daddy.