The Greatest Man I Never Knew

It wasn't until Sage wrote about today being Father's Day that I remembered. This kind of thing happens when you've been orphaned a certain amount of time. Not that you don't forget the father, just these "holidays" and especially Father's Day which Hallmark doesn't seem to plug as much as Mother's Day.

My father and I had an interesting (some may call it odd) relationship. I was always a little leary of men early in my life. Growing up, my dad was always #3 in my unwritten list of favorite family members. #1 was my mom and #2 was my aunt. Since there were two boys who were 4 years older and 2.5 years younger than myself active in baseball, he naturally spent more time with them because of this. While I could definitely be called a momma's girl, she would say that I always stuck up for my father if they got into a spat or she happened to mention something that he did that she didn't like when I was anywhere near to hear. While looking for pictures to post with this, I noticed that there were a gazillion pictures of me and my mom standing like this while in nearly all of the pictures of me and my dad, we are standing as exactly as we are in this one (also these pictures were chosen because I've been having a hard time believing that it was half my life ago that I graduated from high school).

Along with sticking up for him, it was him that I feared disappointing most so when I knew that my report card could possibly contain a bad grade, I broke the news to my mom first who then passed the info on to my dad. Other things that I remember: sitting on the toilet lid and watching as he shaved and he would put a dollop in my hand, getting to play barber with him and his hair which only involved brushes and combs, watching 'Dallas' with him on Friday nights, always kissing him good night as I was on my way to bed which I did to the very end if I was sleeping at home, being slightly scared at the sound of his snoring down the hallway in conjunction with the weird lighting on a Kermit and Miss Piggy poster I had hanging up, the dolphin calendar he would give me every Christmas, being more than slightly scared if your shenanigans pushed him to the point of yelling at you (unlike with my mom, I never pushed him to that point once I experienced it), how he always wrote something mushy in all of his cards to my mother (After she died, I came across all of his letters to her that he sent when he was at Fort Campbell with the National Guard the months leading up to their wedding day in April, 1963. He was quite mushy even back then), Day after Thanksgiving shopping with him (I eventually grew out of never going anywhere with just him. I think that was due to him dropping me off at school on his way to work. It was either that or riding the school bus. You know my thoughts on public transportation), his singing of 'Happy Birthday' when he first spots you even if that first spotting was you heading into the bathroom to get ready to go to school and lastly, the one and only time I spent most of the day with him - driving 2.5 hours west to go watch a collegiate hockey playoff game and back the same day. I remember our team losing but I don't remember the score. I remember the comfortable silence and the compatibility that we had in that Ford Econoline van during that drive. Even though there wasn't as much touchy feely stuff as with my mom, I see now that he and I just had our own thing.

While reading Sage's entry about his father, I got to thinking what my dad taught me. I'm finding that tough to answer. While I look more like him, I'm a mix of them both so I'm not sure what part is completely due to him. I can spot his influences more clearly in my brothers.

In October, it will be 10 years since he died. Now that I'm older, it pains me that there are things I will never know about him and I envy Sage for getting to know his father for as long as he has. This mommas's girl misses her dad very much.