After All, I’m Just like Dad
April 22, 2009 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
Filed under Family, Parenting
My sister and her kids took my father out for his 69th birthday last night. I called while they were en route to whatever fabulous restaurant they were going, my father jovial and saying he hopes I can make it there for his “big one” next year. I want to more than he probably realizes. It kills me to be so far away when every other child of his (blood and otherwise) is right there in Memphis with him. This makes me wonder why I moved 350 miles away so many years ago. Was I escaping something?
My dad is sooo cute!
Perhaps I was. I was running away from that little girl I always was. Trying to grow up. But unlike my mother, who claimed to have moved 2,000-plus miles from her parents to feel un-smothered for a change, I wanted to be smothered. I wanted to be flooded with undivided attention and pathetic love. I wanted to live in the nest of their security for…ever. Instead, my parents insisted I grow up. My senior year in college, my father told me that once I made it into college I would live outside the home. That if I considered going to a local college, I would still live in the dorm because, godbedamned, I needed some growing up. He was right.
And he loved me. He loved me the way enthusiasts love tall mountains to hike. He said I was programmed to be like he was – climbing at my own pace, stopping to take mental snapshots of the view at every other step. Enjoy life at every pass, he’d say. Once, when we walked together to Union Avenue get frozen yogurt, he told me that reality had far surpassed his dreams. And I remember that, the way I looked at our sneakered feet, keeping pace with each other, step-by-step. I wanted so much to be just like him. To find that peace that hung over his shoulders like a tallit.
Once, at our annual Christmas Eve party, someone asked me, “Who are you most like, your mother or father?” And before I could speak, my father answered. “Me. She is most like me.” And I glowed for week. A month. A lifetime. I glowed the way a firefly completely lights up a millimeter of space and time. That brilliant light that makes you wince and glean with pleasure because life is good and warm when fireflies light.
Becaue I am my father’s daughter, I moved 350 miles away. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I left my family to follow a career – the way my father did – which in my case was to Alabama, the only newspaper in a 350-mile radius that would hire me right out of college. And my life rooted here. I have a wonderful husband now. A beautiful son. My life may not have played out the way I had hoped or expected (I’ve yet to write that novel), but I eventually grew up. And isn’t that what a parent’s job is anyway?
If you ask and I were to reflect, I would say that yes, life has surpassed my dreams. I have found that inner peace my father spoke of. And in that respect, I am just like my Dad.
Happy (belated) Birthday, pa!
photo, JWJourney
I enjoyed reading about your relationship with your father. Although I love both my parents dearly and share qualities passed down from both of them, I, too, feel I am most like my father. He loved and supported me in so many ways, but most importantly, with my writing career. He was the one who encouraged me to quit my management job with BellSouth in the early 1990s (when heads were rolling due to their divestiture and restructuring) to pursue the writing career I had always dreamed of. When I became a published writer, he was the first to read everything I wrote and the first to call me to talk about each article. I was fortunate to be able to take my mother and father, along with my husband and daughters, with me on several travel writing assignments, and his comments enriched my writing immeasurably. Although he passed away from melanoma five years ago at age 81, I still imagine I can hear his warm, sure voice from time to time, encouraging me to always pursue my dreams.
Thank you for sharing. I, too, believe our loved ones stay with us even after they pass on.