Daddy

I love my father.

When I was a little, bitty girl, nothing made me feel safer than that he was somewhere nearby, ready to spring into action should the need arise. But, alas, it seldom did, at least for me. I was a pretty straight arrow. (We won’t discuss my siblings.) But then my father also travelled for work A LOT!!!!! He missed birthdays, and those I remember keenly, though, I’m not sure at all if he does. We’ve never discussed it, and, frankly, I wouldn’t want to hurt him by asking.

When I was a child my father was the tallest, strongest, most handsome man alive. I remember all of this distinctly. He was my champion, and he would and could slay any dragon threatening harm.

Sometimes he used to wake me before the rest of the house and lying on the living room floor play James Dean’s “Sleeping Beauty” and tell me as tears streamed down his face that that’s what I was to him. I think even then he was trying to tell me that while he loved me he didn’t understand me in the least. (My sister’s song was “Daddy’s Girl.”) But those moments spent in that quiet bubble isolated with him meant warmth, and love, and acceptance. They meant I wasn’t going it alone.

Well, my father is in his late 60s now, and it would be difficult to find a day that he and I didn’t find something about which to disagree. I don’t know quite when or how that happened. I don’t know when the bitterness took root settling into this spot between us, but there seems no reaching across it without the long, dagger-like thorns, wounding one of us. So, besides the bloody scratches and nicks, what’re the limitations? Perhaps fear of rejection, fear of a hardened heart on the other side, fear of a truly conditional love.

Our parents are supposed to love us unconditionally, right? I mean, wasn’t that the guarantee? Well, I can think of a whole host of other “guarantees” of unconditional loves that ended at the steps of courthouses. Maybe parenting is no different. Now, I’m not saying my father doesn’t love me, just that he’s not quite sure how. Who’s job is it to teach him? Is he even teachable? Does he care enough to be taught? Or, for that matter, do I?

Daddy had surgery this week, and as I sat by the bedside I watched my mother flutter around him fluffing pillows, spooning ice, scratching his back, and I thought, I want that, too. And I had to leave the room, because I refuse to envy my parents their lifetime of a loving, committed marriage. But I do wonder how growing up in that environment still left me clueless on how to reproduce the same.

If you have that sort of love soul-deep, “You-complete-me” love, it is simply a gift, and hold on to it white-knuckled with both hands. If you feel it slipping away, dig; dig deep if you have to to recover where you lost its kernel. But find it and plant it where it is safe, where you can nurture it, water it, feed it, freaking sing lullabies to it if you need to make it grow. But don’t loose it, because once the tie is broken, once you look away even for a second and loose that hard-fought concentration on something you didn’t understand to begin with, how will you ever deign to retrieve love (of any sort) it from it’s thorny, cracked shell?

I love my father.