My Dad

I had a charmed childhood.  I was the middle child, first born daughter and my mom used to say I was just a twinkle in my daddy's eye until I appeared, then I was the apple of his eye.

I loved my dad so much and wanted him to approve of me.  He was an engineer for the Army Corp of Engineers for the US Government and inspected dams.  He called himself a "damn Engineer".  He also had the nickname of tricky Dick especially during the Nixon era.  He was funny, he was kind, he was so incredibly smart and he loved technology.  He would talk about what the future would bring and I know he'd LOVE everything that's come on the scene since 1975, much of which he predicted would happen.

I'll never forget the first time he brought home a calculator and told us it would cost $500 to purchase. The very item that you can now pick up at a dollar store.  He also brought home a newfangled machine that he inserted our corded phone into and he told me about how it connected to a "computer" that was as big as our house via our phone line and held a bunch of information.  He also told me someday we'd have one in our home and it wouldn't take an entire room. He was right.  He was often right.

He valued education and when we drove to our cabin from Maryland to Idaho each year we would travel via Moscow and he and my mom would announce "This is where you kids will go to college."  3 out of five of us attend the U of I and of those 3, two graduated from there.  Thanks Dad.

When he looked at my grades, he would ask me, "Are you proud of your grades, did you do your best?" And if I answered yes, he blessed my effort.  If I said no, we had a talk about working harder and he'd ask where I needed help.  I hated when he helped me with math because I just wanted him to tell me the answer and that never happened.  He made me think.  It was tedious and hard and when I got it I felt really good, but I still wished he'd just tell me.

We traveled from Maryland to Idaho every summer in a car with 5 kids, two parents and two dogs. It took us a week one way there and one way back.  That left us 3 weeks at the cabin in Coeur d' Alene, our families favorite place on earth. These trips were trying for my dad sometimes.  He would occasionally announce, "Do I have to stop the car?" or worse, "Do I have to take off my belt?"  And sometimes both things would happen and we'd be subdued into silence for an hour or so.  The instigators were normally my sister Sue or my brother Dave...

On these trips my favorite place to sit was in the middle between my mom and dad and I would pour him coffee from his thermos to keep him awake and driving for hours on end.  I loved that job.

I only remember one time that he got truly mad at me and it was when I was about 15 and I was so frustrated with my mom that I called her a bitch.  He stormed down the hallway that I had stomped down and got in my face and said, "Don't you ever, ever call your mother that word!!"  I never did again.  It scared me because he wasn't an angry person (unless locked in a car with 5 kids for 5 days) and I think that last year he was alive he didn't feel good.

My mom would make him breakfast every morning because her mother told her that's what a wife does. It was truly the only time they had together each day.  He carpooled to downtown Washington D.C. which meant getting up early to make it in time and even earlier if it was his week to drive.  My mom never complained because I think she really treasured this time with just him.  It was long before we all got up to go to school.

When he arrived home, shortly after my mother had finished her piano lessons, she would meet him at the top of the stairs wearing her apron she used while cooking, often in either a dress or bell bottoms that she'd sewed, and she'd have a 7 and 7 in her hand on the rocks for both of them.  My dad would kiss her, then ask where we were, and walk around and hug each of us...then he'd sit with my mom and have that drink before dinner.

He finally quit smoking long after we'd used markers to write "smoking kills" and "smoking is bad for your health" all over his Lucky Strikes.  He was so mad about that because he had to run out and buy more, but not long after his doctor told him to start smoking filtered, light cigarettes.  He tried to quit, but alas, never did.  He also was told to stop eating eggs so the eggbeaters appeared on the scene as a staple in our fridge.  He never ate a regular egg again.

I turned 16, I liked boys, but I would never have taken one home because I was afraid of what my dad would say. When I was little he would sit me on his lap and say, "Someday I'll have to cut a hole in the floor so your legs can dangle down."  He meant that no matter how old I was I would always be his little girl and sit on his lap.  He also said he'd need to get the shotgun out because all the boys would be knocking down our doors.  I had mixed feelings about moving from little girl to growing up girl.  I never had to really face that piece which was a silver lining in this whole story.

He marveled at how tall I was getting and made me feel good about it by telling me that I could be a Rockette someday because they all had to be six feet tall and hopefully I'd make it.

I remember someone telling me years ago that our bodies have muscle memory and that days we experience trauma we will possibly feel forever in ways we don't wish to.  That day might be a day of surgery, or the day you signed your divorce agreement, or as for me, the day my dad died.

I was only 16.  In high school and I thought I was so grown up.  I was beginning to separate from my parents and had a carefree existence.  On October 28, 1975 I woke up to sounds that resembled laughs, but as I got more awake, I realized it was quiet sobs.  I heard my brothers' voices and they were also quietly choking out words I couldn't hear.

I steeled myself to go into the kitchen, took one look at my moms face and I knew.  I knew he was gone. He was supposed to come home that day.  He had a mild heart attack and had spent a week in the hospital and I had only visited him 12 short hours before.

Our last conversation was in the hospital.  I went after church with my mom to visit him and told him the battery on the Karman Ghia had died and I needed him to come home and fix it.  He explained how to do it and I barely listened and reiterated that he could just do it tomorrow when he came home.  He looked at me very seriously and said, "I won't always be there to help you charge your battery so you should learn how."  I was angry.  I denied that he wouldn't always be there.  I tried to not listen to his words, but I heard him.  I hugged and kissed him goodbye and he told me how much he loved me and I told him how much I loved him and how I couldn't wait until he got home.

After finding out my father had died in the early morning I went back to bed, my mom tucked me back in with tears in her eyes and I sobbed aloud for several minutes.  I recall thinking, "whew, I'm glad I got that out of my system, that's the last time that'll happen."  I was wrong.  I was horribly wrong.  It would happen that day at least a dozen more times.  And every day after for at least a year, several times. But as I started to fall asleep again, I felt his presence. My dad was in the room.  As a parent I know he was sick about what had happened.  I know he must have been so worried about my mom and all of us and I don't think he wanted to leave.

I changed.  I wouldn't wear makeup, I tied my hair in a pony tail each day and I scoffed at the frivolous nature of my peers.  I wrote for my creative writing class and made my teacher cry continuously as I poured out my aching heart.  I met a boy in art class who sidled over to me one day and sat next to me. One day he quietly said, "My dad died six months ago."  Enough said, we were inseparable for the next 2 years.

Grief is a tough taskmaster.  People would be talking and I would just want to scream, "Why are you talking about such inane things when my heart is literally broken?"  I felt 100 years old. My life was irrevocably shattered in a moment.  I didn't know how to put the pieces back together.  I began having dreams that our house was on fire and that I was responsible for getting everyone out.  I took on much more than any 16 year old should.  My brothers moved west in the first year and I became my moms confidant which led to my launch into adulthood in a jarring and painful way.

My family changed.  That's the hardest part.  There are chapters of our lives that are hard to revisit and the ways we changed as a former group of happy people was and is often heartbreaking to examine.

There was this brief time the day he died, about one hour early in the morning, when my two brothers, my two sisters and my mom and myself all were awake and we were the only ones who knew my dad was gone.  We sat huddled in the living room, laughing, crying, hugging, hoping for the best.

My dad was there too, we could all feel him.  From that moment on our lives changed forever as the world and reality crashed in.  Sometimes I wish I could go back to that one brief hour filled with so much hope for a future that hadn't yet unfolded.

Today is the anniversary of that day.  Every year I head into October thinking this is the last time I will feel the horror of that day in the core of my being....and every year I still do.

On October 28th every year I am 16 again. I am that little girl that wishes she could sit on her dad's lap one more time, that wasn't grown up even though she was trying to be, that wishes he'd walked me down the aisle when I got married (both times), that wishes he'd held his grandchildren and that wishes our family had never changed.

I once told my best friend that I'd rather have had my dad for 16 years than a crappy dad for a lifetime, but that's probably not true.

If you're a dad, take care of yourself for your kids sake.

If you have a dad, hug him, no matter what he's like and let him know you love him.

If you have a husband, support him as a father.

If you've lost someone you love, I'm sorry.  I promise it gets better.  Maybe not easier, but better, and if it's just for that one day that you long for the clock to rewind itself, then it's progress.

I love you dad, and you'll be happy to know I learned how to charge my own battery on that old Karman Ghia but I think you would be proud of me now for a million other reasons....

See you in my dreams Daddy.

My mom and dad a few months before his heart attack.

My mom made us do a family picture before "anyone else died."  This was about two months after and Rick showed up with a horrible hangover, hence the special word bubble in my scrapbook for him.  I think he felt like he was going to die that day!
Left to right top row:  Dave 18, Me 16 (still no makeup but I didn't do the ponytail to make my mom happy), Sue 14,
Left to right bottom row: Rick who turned 20 just 4 days after my dad died, my mom 45 and Jeanine who turned 13 a few weeks after his death.