I am awake at 3:40 am, and researching random trivia on the internet as my iPod plays a mish-mash of songs in the background. (They say you can tell everything you need to know about a person based on their playlist; if that’s true mine would tag me as a 25 year old gay man, I’m sure.) Then, suddenly, my heart recognized the music before my mind, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I wanted to tap the skip button, but oddly, my fingers remained curled in on themselves. “Butterfly Kisses,” flowed from the speakers, and I could do nothing about it.
Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why such a charming, sweet song would send me into a fugue state; I would if I were you. You see, it was the song my father chose for our father-daughter dance at my first wedding – you know the marriage that should have found us swinging together in a hammock 20 years from now, smiling because our lives had meant something. But, alas, that was not to be.
No, instead, now whenever I hear that song, I feel Gorilla Glued to my spot, just waiting for the melodic misery to be over. And, eventually, it always ends, but not before it leaves me a sopping, nasty mess. Not a pretty crier, this girl. (How do they do that in the movies – a single tear rolling prettily, poignantly down a perfectly made up face?) Nope, I’m a hot-mess when I cry. Sad but true.
That marriage ended horribly. I think I’ve written about that. So, why the tears? I’m pretty sure they aren’t for B, maybe not even for me. I think they’re for my father – my father who only ever wanted me to be happy. And when my heart broke, his tender heart fell apart as well.
When I was a very little girl, Daddy would wake me up long before anyone had even opened an eyelid, carry me to the living, where we’d both lie on the floor and listen to an old Jimmie Dean song that was our “special” song. It was Jimmy Dean’s “To a Sleeping Beauty.” ( L had her own special song, “Daddy’s Girl,” though the artist eludes me.) And, each time our song, he’d have tears in his eyes because, I think that was how he really saw me, as something precious he only held for a moment in time until it was God’s will to send me on His way to tread His path and do His will.
And Daddy, like everyone else, thought B was my perfect match, that we would be happy for the rest of our lives. Where I failed, B complemented. Where I wanted to give up, B wanted to fight – strangely, this did not apply to our marriage. B loved with a loyalty I’d never felt before – known before, and he taught me how – well, he did at least until he left. (Boy, did I read that one wrong!)
I want so much to tell my father that none of the dragons that I have faced down in my life have been his fault. In my head I don’t blame him, but, in my heart I have laid the blame at his feet for oh, so many years. Rational? I think not, but then I never claimed it was. I want to scream at him, “Isn’t a daddy supposed to protect his little girl, no matter old how she is? Isn’t a daddy supposed to swing in and save his little girl when she’s being destroyed by the man (in this case men -remember 2 marriages) to whom he gave his blessing?”
But maybe that is just asking way too much. And maybe I’m requesting protection and even salvation from the wrong Father. After all, the men (women, too) we’ve been blessed (mostly) with by our Father God to raise us were given a monumental task – raise my precious child in my image and likeness, teach them love me, to know me, and to know and adore their Savior.
My parents did their jobs. I was raised well, with love and strength, much more strength than I even knew I’d need. But when I did need it, God opened the cover to the well. And, I was, of course, raised to know God.
No one’s family is perfect. And everyone has that one moment where they wished they’d been found under a rock and that their real family would eventually find them. But your family is a direct gift to you from the Lord, and whenever I’m even slightly tempted to take a Valium before going on a family outing, the vision I see is my father’s hands as he lies with them folded in front of me, crying freely as we listened to, “To a Sleeping Beauty.”
I know nothing and no one in my life is by chance or by accident. And as my father grows older, I’m faced with the knowledge that eventually the roles will be reversed, that I will be his caretaker, and that even dancing to”Butterfly Kisses” will be a memory I cherish.
The Unexpected Life 