Sunday, June 16, 2013

Father's Day Confessions


I was my mother’s kid.  Dad had agreed the way anyone would eventually agree when they found out their girlfriend was 6 months pregnant; it was a moot point.  I was inevitably coming and he agreed to deal with it.


My dad already HAD 4 children, the last 3 of which were also girls.  So me being the last one, ALSO a girl, and having the athletic talents of my mother (!) I was readily handed over to my mother.  I was her child.

A lot changed however, as I grew up.  I don’t know if it was gradual or if it was that sudden smack-you-in-the-face attack of love your offspring afflict you with the minute you meet them, but somewhere between my entry into the world and the age at which I can clearly remember complicated stuff like whether or not one of my parents likes me, I know my dad loved me.  In fact, he even TOLD me he loved me.

 ONCE. 

I remember that day clearly because it was the day I finally got kicked off the basketball team.

I say finally because I had just barely scraped through in grade’s 6-9.  Each year my abysmal basketball skills coupled with my neurotic performance anxiety meant that I came closer and closer to being cut.  And each summer, in preparation for the upcoming season, I would set out to practice on my own over and over again while dad watched in futile helplessness as he shook his head and cursed my mother for giving me her athletic skills.

And then finally in grade 10 I got cut.

I won’t say it came as a shock to anyone, but to the 15-year-old version of myself it was pure heartbreak.

My dad greeted me in the front hall that night when I came home, sobbing, and met me with open arms.  He told me he loved me because he didn’t know what else to say.  And because he didn’t know what else to do. And because he did.

My dad has grown in leaps and bounds since his lone confession of love to me in grade 10.  The birth of my children, combined with the softness of age, has loosened his sentimentality and flow of emotion.  This weekend when Toby gave him his Father’s day Card my dad read it out loud and marveled at the pictures.  I could tell when my dad picked the card up that he was determined to love it.

Toby’s artistic talent equally parallels my athletic talent.   To an outside observer, my dad’s father’s day card was a mishmash of pieces of paper with green highlighter and chicken scratch marks with the lone words HAPPY FATHERS DAY PAPA scattered across the pages.  Try to absolve my dad of any embarrassment as he opened it, I asked Toby to EXPLAIN to my dad what all of the “drawings” represented.

Toby stared at me blankly.

My dad stared at the card blankly.

Then, in a moment of pure grand-parental-genius, and doing something I haven’t seen him do in over a decade, my dad decided to improvise.

“I see what this means, it’s a poem” my dad said as he began to recite, in perfect iambic pentameter, an impromptu poem Toby’s father’s day card had inspired in him.

We sat there all too stunned to grab an iphone to record it, but the gist of my dad’s poem went something like this,

“My dearest darling Papa, I love you love you love you and so do I my darling Toby so too do I love you.”

That was the first random sketch.  The other ones received similar poetic prophecies of love.  Toby sat there with a huge grin on his face and listened attentively,

“Yes, Papa, that’s EXACTLY what I was trying to write.”

It wasn’t long before Mia handed him HER card (a similar array of mishmash –feathers, stickers and felt letters stuck to a piece of construction paper) and my dad belted out yet another poetic ode to his love of her.

Seeing my dad with my kids is seeing a tangible form of love.  He is content just to sit and watch them play, make a mess of themselves over dinner, or run around in circles.  Whatever activity they are engaged in – be it mischief or messiness, his happiest time is sitting there watching them.

I may have been my mother’s kid.  I may have grown of up deprived of nightly “I love you’s” and sappy father-daughter moments.  But I have always known the truth and watching it manifest now in the love between my kids and my dad is a gift I will always cherish.

Happy father’s day, dad…today and always. 


Typical bonding with the grandkids - mini cupcakes on paper plates and air hockey.  Small things that made everyone's day!!!

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