For a long while, it didn’t register to me that Father’s Day was coming. Not until I walked into stores that wrapped their walls in “gifts for dad!” posters, and saw the barrage of commercials selling grills or ties or tools. It’s strange how these things slip away when the reason to celebrate them is gone.
And oddly, I’ve struggled to write this. I’ve sat, frustrated, staring at blank screens. Deleting, re-writing, arranging paragraphs, and feeling like what I want to say is somehow out of reach. How do I articulate who he was as a father, and how he was a father to me?
There’s a lot of pop psychology around the influence a father has in the life of his daughter. How that relationship can define a woman more than most. And for me – it did. But maybe not just who we were to each other – a father, and a daughter – but because we were so much alike.
I’ve asked mom many times in the past few months what dad would say about me, how he’d talk about me to her. I’ve often wondered who I was to him when I wasn’t around. Everything fell apart so quickly in the end that we didn’t really get to have one last conversation – so I try to fill the absence of those words in whatever way I can. And I suppose you can’t ask of someone in death, what they weren’t in life. Dad always gestured in action, so I ask mom.
And since he wasn’t a man of many words, what she tells me is how he’d always boast “That’s my Toots!” with an enamored grin. Whether I’d stood up for myself at work, or won a race at a track meet, or got in trouble in a way that actually made him more proud than angry. And that’s all he’d really need to say – because it said it all. I was his Toots, so much an extension of him.
I think he prided himself on being a pillar of strength for us all. When I lived in San Diego, mom would collapse against my chest as we hugged at the curb of the departures entrance. She would cry as I pulled my suitcase out of the house, into the truck, and as we pulled up to the airport. But dad, he’d give me an enormous, composed hug as I’d hide my welling tears behind sunglasses. Or so I thought.
Not once, in all the times I put 3,000 miles between us, did I see him cry. But that’s because he didn’t want me to. What mom told me, years later, is that when she’d get back into his truck after watching me safely walk into the airport, she’d find him leaned over the wheel with tears winding down his face. Because his Toots was leaving.
That’s what I want my heart to rejoice in this weekend, that special bond we shared. Last father’s day was probably the worst day we had since he passed. It had only been a few short weeks, and my mom, brother and I were all grieving in intense, different ways. It was raw and incredibly painful, not knowing what to do for ourselves or each other.
So for this father’s day, I just want to be Toots. I want to remember all of the amazing ways he helped piece me together throughout the years. How he understood me better than most, stepping aside to let me grow up, and screw up and get back up, always with the encouraging words I needed.
It was him that talked me down from hysterics in a dark stairway in Chicago in the middle of the day. It was him that gave me confidence when I faced decisions that I struggled to make. It was him that stood behind me, unflinching, whenever I moved cities, or jobs. “There’s very little in life you can’t change,” he’d always say – with the comforting notion that life could be whatever I make it. Just make it good.
And yet, his words still offer that old, wise advice. I can change that he’s not here. I can meet Sunday with gratitude and love for who he was. I can fill my heart with the joy of 30 amazing years. I can share stories of him. I can. I will.
After all, that’s his Toots. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
A REKD GIRL 