The Best Daddy in the World
Sunday, June 19, 2011
It's Father's Day, and I am a fatherless child. What I have left are memories.
If you look at the old photos of my dad, he's so very young and good-looking. I've seen some old films of him and he was bit of a ham, though not a showoff. The ham part was probably an outgrowth of his simple good humor, and -- in a way I understand and perhaps inherited through some latent gene -- a way of making others like him. Not in any kind of desperate "oh, please like me, like me" kind of way, but a part of him that wanted to please people, to make them smile.
He played football and baseball and could dance. I suspect he was very popular in high school, though I'm betting he was the kind of guy who never thought he was anything special. Those are always the most attractive boys.
But I have always said, without shame for my immodesty, that I had the best daddy in the world. He was a kid at heart, and when my sister and I were children, he played with us like another kid romping in the yard. He was the one who taught us how to ride our bikes, how to rollerskate, how to fly a kite. He took us to parades, to Daffin Park to feed the ducks, to Rattlesnake Roundups. He called me Big Rat and my sister, Little Rat. I don't know why, but those were his pet names for us. He taught us how to swim. And he recorded our lives in photos that are my most cherished possessions.
When I was very little, I confused my daddy with Elvis Presley. Maybe because he was so cute with a dollop of good Southern boy charm, and because he loved his mother who was also named Gladys, and his middle name began with A, too, and because he sang and played the guitar. He and his cousins, Bill and Roger, had a band in high school. I'll bet the girls just swooned.
When I was born, he was still playing guitar with his cousins, though much less often, and singing songs like "Lemon Tree" and "Three Jolly Coachmen." I would sit and listen with my many kid-cousins as they played those songs at family gatherings, and think in a pleased, secret way: "That's my daddy." When they sang "Polly Von" it gave me the shivers. I grew up knowing all the words to Peter, Paul and Mary songs.
He went solo for my birthday parties, always "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea."
Many years ago, after I was all grown up, Dad gave me a copy of a tape he'd made with Roger, in which they "pretended" to be performing at a club, complete with dubbed laughter and applause and wind effects on "They Call the Wind Mariah." The sound quality was painful, but it was adorable, and I cherished that tape... right up until someone broke into my car in college and stole my box of cassettes. The worst part of it was knowing they probably just threw that tape away, when it was the only one that mattered to me.
Daddy wasn't just a good father, he was a creative one. One Easter, he used his fingers to make little bunny tracks on the back porch where our baskets were found. I was so excited, and so angry with my friend Randy next door, who was more interested in seeing another girl's live bunny she got that morning than coming to see my real, live Easter Bunny tracks. Idiot.
My cousin Tina had the most fabulous playhouse. It wasn't one of those plastic or cardboard things, or even the too-cute prefab houses you can buy at Home Depot now. It was a little one-room house her daddy built for her in the front yard, complete with a screen door and windows. It even had electricity, so we could plug in her record player and listen to "Day Dream Believer" by the Monkees and sigh over Davy Jones.
But somehow it became a tradition that after dinner at my aunt and uncle's, Tina and I would go out to the playhouse. We pretended to play, but really we were just waiting for my dad to come sneaking up on us.
"Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!" he would say in the deep theatrical voice of the Big Bad Wolf, as he paced around the house, rattling the windows and thumping on the walls.
"Not by the hair on our chiny, chin chins!" Tina and I would shriek as we giggled hysterically.
"Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll BLOOOOOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN!"
When I was four, I went with Mom to her mother's house in Thomasville for the delivery of my little sister, Karen, while Dad stayed in Savannah to work. (That's what dads did then.) But he wrote me two tiny letters: one was from him, one was from my favorite doll, Baby Boo.
They were amazing little letters. He had taken the time to construct little child-sized envelopes, about the size of a credit card, gluing it together carefully, and writing the letters on paper cut to scale. He and Baby Boo both told me how much they missed me, and that we should hurry home with our new baby sister.
My dad's handwriting was neat and precise, block letters, addressing the envelopes to "Miss Belinda Yandell, c/o Granny's House, Thomasville, GA." And he used those little Greenback stamps for postage, even drawing on a postal mark.
Those letters tell me today that I get my creativity from my dad, along with the ability to carry a tune (although not very far).
Those letters were stolen from me, too. Sometime in the 90s, I had taken them out of the photo album to show to a friend, and slipped them into my wallet for safe keeping. For some reason, I carried them around for about a month, always forgetting to take them out and put them back. Then my wallet was stolen out of my purse in Kroger. The wallet was cheap and the money, credit cards, bank book — all were just crap I could replace. I still feel sick about losing those little letters.
Life is like that, though. Either we lose precious things through our own carelessness, or time and age and the general bullshit of living takes them from us. We forget. Sometimes we just throw things away, realizing too late what was really valuable.
Time changed a lot of things between me and the man who became "Dad" instead of Daddy. I grew up, and I think he lost the last bit of his youth and enthusiasm when I put childhood behind me. Maybe he didn't think he had a place in my life anymore, or he just didn't know where it was. For a time, I blamed him for disappearing from my life, even though he was still right there. But maybe I didn't try hard enough to keep him in it, as adolescence reared its ugly head.
Family crashed as my parents divorced, and things got complicated, as they always seem to do. I've heard it said that childhood is really at an end the day you can see your parents as not merely your parents, but real and often flawed individuals with a life apart from yours. My father was flawed by a certain weakness in the face of life's harsher realities, a tendency to withdraw and hope for the best rather than taking an active role in his own life. I see those characteristics in myself, too, and so fight all the harder against them.
His last gift to me came when he passed, too early. It was the lesson, trite but true, that life is short. We all think we know this, but we don't. Not really. Not until someone else's life is over and we see how much was left undone and unsaid and unlived.
I think that in his last days, he thought he had failed as a father, though our relationship was good if not close. I wish I could tell him that I had the best daddy in the world, and that all other things are forgiven.
Happy Father's Day, Daddy. Thank you for all you gave me. I love you, and so does Baby Boo.
It's Father's Day, and I am a fatherless child. What I have left are memories.
If you look at the old photos of my dad, he's so very young and good-looking. I've seen some old films of him and he was bit of a ham, though not a showoff. The ham part was probably an outgrowth of his simple good humor, and -- in a way I understand and perhaps inherited through some latent gene -- a way of making others like him. Not in any kind of desperate "oh, please like me, like me" kind of way, but a part of him that wanted to please people, to make them smile.
He played football and baseball and could dance. I suspect he was very popular in high school, though I'm betting he was the kind of guy who never thought he was anything special. Those are always the most attractive boys.
But I have always said, without shame for my immodesty, that I had the best daddy in the world. He was a kid at heart, and when my sister and I were children, he played with us like another kid romping in the yard. He was the one who taught us how to ride our bikes, how to rollerskate, how to fly a kite. He took us to parades, to Daffin Park to feed the ducks, to Rattlesnake Roundups. He called me Big Rat and my sister, Little Rat. I don't know why, but those were his pet names for us. He taught us how to swim. And he recorded our lives in photos that are my most cherished possessions.
When I was very little, I confused my daddy with Elvis Presley. Maybe because he was so cute with a dollop of good Southern boy charm, and because he loved his mother who was also named Gladys, and his middle name began with A, too, and because he sang and played the guitar. He and his cousins, Bill and Roger, had a band in high school. I'll bet the girls just swooned.
When I was born, he was still playing guitar with his cousins, though much less often, and singing songs like "Lemon Tree" and "Three Jolly Coachmen." I would sit and listen with my many kid-cousins as they played those songs at family gatherings, and think in a pleased, secret way: "That's my daddy." When they sang "Polly Von" it gave me the shivers. I grew up knowing all the words to Peter, Paul and Mary songs.
He went solo for my birthday parties, always "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea."
Many years ago, after I was all grown up, Dad gave me a copy of a tape he'd made with Roger, in which they "pretended" to be performing at a club, complete with dubbed laughter and applause and wind effects on "They Call the Wind Mariah." The sound quality was painful, but it was adorable, and I cherished that tape... right up until someone broke into my car in college and stole my box of cassettes. The worst part of it was knowing they probably just threw that tape away, when it was the only one that mattered to me.
Daddy wasn't just a good father, he was a creative one. One Easter, he used his fingers to make little bunny tracks on the back porch where our baskets were found. I was so excited, and so angry with my friend Randy next door, who was more interested in seeing another girl's live bunny she got that morning than coming to see my real, live Easter Bunny tracks. Idiot.
My cousin Tina had the most fabulous playhouse. It wasn't one of those plastic or cardboard things, or even the too-cute prefab houses you can buy at Home Depot now. It was a little one-room house her daddy built for her in the front yard, complete with a screen door and windows. It even had electricity, so we could plug in her record player and listen to "Day Dream Believer" by the Monkees and sigh over Davy Jones.
But somehow it became a tradition that after dinner at my aunt and uncle's, Tina and I would go out to the playhouse. We pretended to play, but really we were just waiting for my dad to come sneaking up on us.
"Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!" he would say in the deep theatrical voice of the Big Bad Wolf, as he paced around the house, rattling the windows and thumping on the walls.
"Not by the hair on our chiny, chin chins!" Tina and I would shriek as we giggled hysterically.
"Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll BLOOOOOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN!"
When I was four, I went with Mom to her mother's house in Thomasville for the delivery of my little sister, Karen, while Dad stayed in Savannah to work. (That's what dads did then.) But he wrote me two tiny letters: one was from him, one was from my favorite doll, Baby Boo.
They were amazing little letters. He had taken the time to construct little child-sized envelopes, about the size of a credit card, gluing it together carefully, and writing the letters on paper cut to scale. He and Baby Boo both told me how much they missed me, and that we should hurry home with our new baby sister.
My dad's handwriting was neat and precise, block letters, addressing the envelopes to "Miss Belinda Yandell, c/o Granny's House, Thomasville, GA." And he used those little Greenback stamps for postage, even drawing on a postal mark.
Those letters tell me today that I get my creativity from my dad, along with the ability to carry a tune (although not very far).
Those letters were stolen from me, too. Sometime in the 90s, I had taken them out of the photo album to show to a friend, and slipped them into my wallet for safe keeping. For some reason, I carried them around for about a month, always forgetting to take them out and put them back. Then my wallet was stolen out of my purse in Kroger. The wallet was cheap and the money, credit cards, bank book — all were just crap I could replace. I still feel sick about losing those little letters.
Life is like that, though. Either we lose precious things through our own carelessness, or time and age and the general bullshit of living takes them from us. We forget. Sometimes we just throw things away, realizing too late what was really valuable.
Time changed a lot of things between me and the man who became "Dad" instead of Daddy. I grew up, and I think he lost the last bit of his youth and enthusiasm when I put childhood behind me. Maybe he didn't think he had a place in my life anymore, or he just didn't know where it was. For a time, I blamed him for disappearing from my life, even though he was still right there. But maybe I didn't try hard enough to keep him in it, as adolescence reared its ugly head.
Family crashed as my parents divorced, and things got complicated, as they always seem to do. I've heard it said that childhood is really at an end the day you can see your parents as not merely your parents, but real and often flawed individuals with a life apart from yours. My father was flawed by a certain weakness in the face of life's harsher realities, a tendency to withdraw and hope for the best rather than taking an active role in his own life. I see those characteristics in myself, too, and so fight all the harder against them.
His last gift to me came when he passed, too early. It was the lesson, trite but true, that life is short. We all think we know this, but we don't. Not really. Not until someone else's life is over and we see how much was left undone and unsaid and unlived.
I think that in his last days, he thought he had failed as a father, though our relationship was good if not close. I wish I could tell him that I had the best daddy in the world, and that all other things are forgiven.
Happy Father's Day, Daddy. Thank you for all you gave me. I love you, and so does Baby Boo.
