My father passed away about 9 years ago. It wasn't unexpected, but it was in that a child never expects to lose a parent so soon. He never lived long enough to meet his grandchildren; the oldest born just 2 years after his passing. In most ways I've accepted his death, but I still find his loss creeps up on me at the oddest moments. Today for instance: driving after work to pick up my kids and Eagle Eye Cherry comes on the radio. My dad would play their album over and over again until I thought my brain would leak out of my ears. I could sing the whole thing in my sleep I'm sure. Used to drive me bonkers on long trips - imagine listening to any album again and again and again. For 6 hours. But now it always make me nostalgic: instantly brings him to mind.
I wish I got to ask him so many things, weird things. I'd love to know what he thought of Facebook and blogging and all of the neat techy advancements since he passed. I'm know he was way ahead of his time regarding computers and where we were headed. He'd always tell me that things are coming that I couldn't imagine that would change the way the world worked and how people interact. And he was right.
I'd love to know what he thought about my career path. I certainly didn't end up where I planned, but I think he knew where I was headed back then wasn't the right path for me. He never came right out and said it; always supportive of my choices,allowing me to make my own mistakes to own my decisions. I think he knew my road wouldn't be as straight as I imagined it. And had more bumps. Would he have chastised me for racking up so much student loan debt changing tracks? Or would he have encouraged me to do what I love so I'd never have to work a day in my life? I'm pretty sure it would have been the latter.
What would he think about his grandchildren? Although I didn't get to spend a ton of time with him, like many children of divorced parents, but he was a great dad: always a phone call away.
Long hot summers filled with quiet questions, simple evenings, and sweet iced tea; a world away from my school year life of deadlines, ballet class, and latch-key living. The threat of not-enough hanging over my every breath. Dinners of mac & cheese and peanut butter toast. My summers were my renewal. The time of exploration, messes, and gaining knowledge not necessarily found in books. His laid-back approach to - well - everything, made the summers so much more. Hours spent on the floor taking apart computers and putting them back together hoping they'd work; doing it again and again if they didn't. Never worried, never stressed. Just a shrug and a suggestion; and a knowledge that no matter what I did - he could fix it if I couldn't. The knowledge that I didn't run well "for a girl", I ran well period. And-if-he-ever-heard-me-say-that-again... even though I knew he had wanted a boy. Skiing behind a lawnmower because I was too frighted to learn in the water. The thinker of ideas. The inventor of new ways to get things done. The endless patience with a ten year old who wanted to find the right book at the book store. Lazy late nights filled with "just one more chapter" before bed. Watching old sci-fi shows and bad B horror movies. Discussing the impact of advertisements. I'd like to think that all of that not only added up to a great dad...but would have made him an incredible grandfather. I'm pretty sure he'd love my daughters endless energy and enthusiasm and point out that her stubbornness come from me (and his side of the family.) He'd find himself in my son and his never ending quest for how things work, his laid-back style and his wait-and-see approach. I don't know yet what traits of him are in my youngest, the baby. Her dark locks separate her from her siblings. Her constant need to be close, to be held, to be heard. Would he have agreed with my parenting style as it is now? Would he have enjoyed the evolution of my role as mommy? I'm pretty sure I'd have heard him say to relax and let kids do their thing,
I get envious sometimes when I see fathers with their grown children and grandchildren. I marvel at that dynamic, that relationship that I will never know. I may have been a legal adult when he passed, newly married, but I was, in so many ways, not much more than a child. I didn't know the right questions to ask before he died. I knew that his end was near, but I could only hear the fear inside my head asking - what will I do without my dad? - and not the millions of questions I would want to ask, the million things I would want to know as a parent, as an adult.
Even now over 9 years later, I forget. I hear some interesting story, or get another one of my IDEAs and I want to get his thoughts. But there is no one at the other end of the phone. The house was long-ago foreclosed on; another father is sleeping in his bedroom, another child playing in the yard.
I'm not that young girl any longer with the shiny new marriage and the thirst for success. I define success differently now. More like him, I hope.
So I hug my mother a little tighter. Keep my new little family as my focus, my beacon, my guiding light. And I "keep truck'n," keeping in mind the things learned during those oh-too-short lazy summers.
