Happy Birthday Daddy

It seemed weird to write "Daddy" when referencing my dad, but that is what I always called him, even when I was an adult. So, even though it looks funny, it really is my reference point. Today is his birthday. He would have been 88 years old. I know I've talked about Birthday Week before: we had three within six days. And my mother would always squeeze in a cherry pie to honor George Washington between the birthday cakes. She loved to bake. We loved to eat. A match made in heaven. The match is actually in Heaven now, for almost five whole years.

In an essay called "Eleven" Sandra Cisneros wrote: "What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one....Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one." This is true in my own life. It is probably a truth for us all. I realize that when my parents married, they weren't just the adults that appear in the photo, but they were also the children who had grown up to become that young couple.

They both grew up during the Great Depression. But my mother's family was relatively secure on their small dairy farm, with her father an accomplished carpenter. She was the little sister in a loving family, living in a close community, enveloped by an enormous network of relatives. It was the very picture of security. My dad's family was fractured by his mother's death when he was just six years old. His father was involved in a questionable enterprise (he helped his brother bootleg liquor) and there was no large, loving family especially because his own grandmother didn't acknowledge their relationship. Then his father died two years later, followed the next day by the death of his father who'd been living in his son's home to help with the three little children. Orphaned at age eight, left destitute, taken in by relatives---he grew up quickly, always a little worried that he might not be allowed to stay there either. Despite growing up just 25 miles apart, and attending the same high school, their childhood worlds were completely different.

Yet, they joined up as a team, and worked hard to have a stable family life for us. I realize that my mother's expectation was that her childhood was "normal" and that was how a family should be. Lucky us! My dad thrived in her orbit. She told me once that he was really "hard" when they were first married, and that she'd had to soften him up. Meaning---help him to relax and realize that he was now part of a new loving family and no one would push him away. He didn't have to "deserve" it or be "useful" in order to compensate for his keep. She simply loved him as her mother had loved her father, and she passed that on. Grandma had made a pleasant home in which she provided comfort and love to her family, and my mom did the same from that example. Daddy, in response, did all that he could to provide a living and life for our family. His devotion to our mother was the soil in which the whole enterprise flourished.

On this anniversary of his birthday, I want to acknowledge what a magnificent gift their legacy has been to me as their child. I was bequeathed optimism, thoughtfulness, the desire to share my bounty with my fellow man, and a faith in God as our loving Father. I'm rich beyond belief as a result. It is my life goal to pass on this heritage to my own husband and children.