fathers

{Father’s Day, 2013}

A man walked by me in Safeway wearing Old Spice the other day. The smallest things are reminding me… Father’s Day is here again.

Last Thursday, I stood in the Hallmark store at the mall, searching out two Father’s Day cards – one being for my husband. My girls aren’t ready to give him a card yet – I don’t know when or if they ever will. I think a couple may, someday. One never will. He isn’t their father of course, so they don’t even think of it yet – a card. How could they? Why should they?

That card will come, if it ever comes, from a life lesson that can only be learned looking back; the one that teaches us that, while our “father” in biological terms may have singular distinction, the men who ultimately raise us – our Dads – are the men who are there for us, every day.

They are the men who work long hours to provide for us, and still find time and energy to play a game or take a walk with us at the end of the day. They sacrifice for us, and when they must choose, they choose us. They worry about us when we stay out too late. They hear our cries behind closed doors and silently wish they could do more. In a ways small and large, Dads inspire our dreams, build our confidence, and stand by us when no one else can or will.

Because they love us.

Whether we embrace or reject them, tolerate or torment them, love or hate them – they stand fast. These men – biological, adopted, grand-, step-, or something else entirely – keep us in their hearts every moment of every day. We are lucky if we have even such one man in our lives growing up. If we have more… (I had more…) oh, we are so blessed. Because these men are the ones who help guide us toward who we will become.

The man who raised me – the man who kept me in his heart every moment of every day – was not my biological father, but he was the only dad I ever knew.

I have a bio-father, still living. He is an architect and lives a few hours south of me, but I have never met him. I’ll admit it, when I first learned about him, I was curious. I even looked him up on Facebook, where I learned that he and I share, if anything, a great love of horses and the outdoors. (But really, what girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest doesn’t? It’s hardly ascribable to genetics.) Nevertheless, I can probably also thank him for at least a portion of my artistic nature, my attention to detail, and the delay in the graying of my hair – at fifty I have only a few random grays around the edges, while my bio-mom and sister have been “bottle red-heads” for decades now.

I can see myself in the faces of his children. His son looks something like me, I think: same face shape and dark hair. His daughter’s name is Camille (I have always liked that name), and is a professor at one of our state colleges. I do not believe that either one of them know I exist.

My bio-mom made a special trip to see him just after she and I reunited some years ago, so he knows about me and has seen pictures of me grown and with my daughters. He told my bio-mom he thought I was pretty. He also questioned my paternity. (If you saw our pictures side by side, you would not question.)

In the early years after my adoption reunion, I wrote him once or twice, but he has never replied. I don’t know how I feel about that, or him, but I do know that I don’t need to send him a Father’s Day card.

I’m losing my way… so, I there I am, standing in the aisle at Hallmark, looking for cards and trying to avoid the pushy woman in the bright apricot pants who seems to have laid claim to the entire aisle; she is shielding great expanses of the card rack like an NBA point guard. I suck in my stomach and maneuver around her, and start picking up one sappy card after another, reading every sticky-sweet line, trying to find just the right one for my kind, sentimental husband and trying not to think about my own Dad.

I’m fine. No tears – I’m fine. Really.

Then, down the way, past the apricot pant lady and her very large suspendered companion, I see a young woman dressed in blue cotton, leaning into her husband (I assume, based on their conversation) to show him a card she has found.

“Oh, it’s perfect! That’s Dad! That’s absolutely Dad!” She runs her finger down the words on the front, encouraging him to read it, then opens it up with a flourish. “Don’t you think that says Dad all over?” She is excited – giddy.

Her husband reaches around her and pulls her close. He smiles and nods and they laugh quietly together. “Perfect,” she says again, “just perfect.” Her tapered fingers reach for a tan envelope and then she links his arm and they both turn toward the counter. As they whisk away, I can’t help myself: I have to see – what is so perfect? What is her Dad all over?

I move down the aisle and pick up a card from the same slot and before I can even get it open, I feel my cheeks warm and my eyes begin to well. Snoopy. It’s Snoopy.

Snoopy dancing – with his head thrown back and feet flying. It could have been any one of a billion other cards that Hallmark makes this time of year for Father’s Day, but it is Snoopy.

My Dad loved Snoopy – just loved him. Honestly, I think he had more of an affinity for Charlie Brown – he related. But he loved Snoopy. And now I’m standing there holding this card with Snoopy dancing and I can’t read the words because they all look they’re at the bottom of a swimming pool. I will never know what the blue cotton woman’s dad is all over.

So there I am, crying all by myself in Hallmark, trying to pretend that I’m not. I make my way down the aisle, away from the popular cards.

Sniff, sniff.

A little woman who barely comes up to my chest (I’m 5’3”) passes by and looks up with concern. “Sorry – allergies,” I say, and wipe my nose as I put on my best allergy face and try to look very interested in the Happy Bar Mitzvah card that my hand has fallen on.

Stupid dancing dog. Stupid card.

Father’s Day isn’t simple for me. It should be, but it isn’t. This is my seventh Father’s Day since my Dad died, and it is the first one for which I didn’t buy him a card. I know how crazy that sounds, by the way: I have six cards tucked away, signed and sealed up for my Dad who will never see them.

But this year, I didn’t buy my Dad a card. I didn’t even look for one – I no longer need the ritual. My grief, while still tender, has softened with time, and with the great peace and boundless happiness my life now brings me. Instead, this year I am buying a second card for another man, to give together with my husband – for a man who has captured my heart in a way I never expected: my father-in-law. Pop.

Pop has been married to my husband’s mom for twenty-two years now, and her kids, as far as he is concerned, are his too. He loves every one like a great treasure, and tells us all often what it means to him to be surrounded by a family that loves him.

I don’t know all that Pop has been through in his life, but my guess is that his soft, gentle soul is the result of long years of wear on some formerly rough edges. I think perhaps Pop has learned the hard way how precious family is, and how “family” is something we make, not something destined because of biology or designed by law or social mandate; but rather formed and forged through health and sickness, struggle and success, acceptance and understanding, time and unconditional love.

I will never forget the moment I realized how much I love him. On the day that I married my husband, Pop came up to me and put his arms around me, hugged me tight and said, “Now you’re my daughter. I don’t call you my daughter-in-law because that’s not how I think of you. You’re my daughter.”

He meant it. I could tell he had been waiting some time to say it, and I could feel to my bones how deeply he meant it. And just like that, right there in the middle of the reception hall floor at my own wedding, I fell in love with him.

Pop is patient, hard-working, and kind to a fault. He loves a cold beer and a good joke and he can be a little stubborn sometimes (some might say “more than a little”), but he is completely and passionately devoted to the people he loves. He loves a good country band too, and at 83, he can still out-dance most of the young people on the dance floor. Sometimes he even finds it in his heart to lead me in a two-step; when the dance is over he always smiles his widest grin and patiently tells me that I’m coming along… that I’ll get it sooner or later.

So the second card is for him – for Pop. Not my bio-father, not my Dad, not even one of the men who had any part in who I grew to become – but nevertheless a man who keeps me in his heart every day now, as I keep him in mine.

The card I chose for him isn’t fancy or sophisticated; simply stated, it reads:

We want to say
how much you’re appreciated
for your love and caring,
for everything you do
for a family who loves you
very much.

It is Pop, all over.

Daddy once told me that he never read The Grapes of Wrath. “I lived it, sis. Why the hell would I want to relive it?” Needless to say, Steinbeck has always been a favorite of mine because he showed me the world that made my father.

“Daddy, can I go strawberry picking with Marilee? She goes every day and the bus comes at five in the morning and drives them out to the fields on the island and she’s back by lunchtime and sometimes she makes more than $10 in one day just for picking strawberries!” The child is breathless.

Robert runs the pad of his thumb across the calloused tips of his fingers, then turns them – palm up, down, up again. Memories flow like water over his shoulders and the weight of long forgotten harvests surge through his body in a torrent.

Excited shouts and laughter of towny children echo across the fields of his memory. Children who live in houses with indoor plumbing and light fixtures and mothers who tuck them in at night between clean, crisp sheets. Children who do not move lock, stock and barrel with the changing of the seasons. From the rows, he watches them fly through the tall grass at the edge of the fields, running toward the swimming hole, where cares are peeled away as easily as clothes.

Sweat stings his eyes. He inhales miles of beans reaching for heaven. Slips on windfall peaches under his bare feet. He shakes his head, baby-fine hair falling all around, and reaches for his cap too late to stop the burn. A river of heat pours down the small of his back. Dirt and pea-gravel work their way into thin, bent knees. The long gone prick and sting of the cane berry vines with their blood-red berries stain his memories. Cotton bolls cut through gloves, lancing his palms like a scythe. Now the jolt of the truck in the morning, waking him to the fields. Now the sway in the evening, carrying him to bed.

“Well, Daddy – can I go?’ Her voice startles him back.

He looks down into her open, eager face. She is hungry for cash. Anxious to board the early morning farm bus that will take her to the fields. To the heady scent of early summer strawberries. To the youthful backache. To the blistering sunburn. To the blood-soaked fingers. To the fields that steal a childhood in a single afternoon.

“No,” he says, like a mission. “I don’t want you to pick.”

Her brow furrows. He has taught her to work, and now he is denying her the chance. He bends slightly to meet her eye to eye. His voice softens. “I’ve picked enough for the both of us.”

She looks into him with old eyes. Then she nods and blinks quickly. He wonders if her tears are because he will not let her go, or because she understands why.

He reaches behind and pulls out his wallet. Rifles the few bills. Chooses one and lays it across his palm, extending it to her.

“Here’s five. You can earn more if you want. Stay home.”

It is a month’s allowance. Still, the bus ride, the strawberries. She shifts. She takes the bill and holds it, one hand grasping each end. Her gaze falls to his hands and then rises once more to meet his. In the space between, a covenant is sealed.

“Thank you, Daddy.” She does not argue. “I’ll earn it. I promise.”

Robert watches her walk away, and then looks down – palm up, down, up again.

Two Cards for Father’s Day

{Father’s Day, 2013}

Strawberry Season