Since the moment I helped wrap her
in a bunting and drove her home from the hospital more than a few years ago,
she has always been a wonder to me. And she was different. I
couldn’t explain what I meant by that at the time and I still can’t. But
whatever it is, I know it’s true.
I remember showing her off at age
three the day I took her to the mall to buy a Christmas present for her
mother. From age four she was the go-to girl if you wanted to know
the location of anything in the house. She was a master observer with a
suitcase mind that cataloged everything.
And she was always a looker.
I have the photos to prove it, snapped while she sat on my roll top desk
at age five and made that funny prolonged giggle sound at the back of her
throat only little girls know how to do.
But there was one time at age six
I won’t forget. Through a window I watched her fly back and forth
endlessly on the swing in the back yard, an angel with ringlets of red
hair streaming behind, her face a picture of intensity, her mind on its way to
somewhere in the universe only she could find.
Her mother called her for lunch
but I hoped the little girl would stay out there in the universe on her swing
for a minute or two longer. Her eyes wide and open, full of wonder as she
gazed ahead, evidently from one galaxy to the next. It came to me that
from the simple act of loving her mother I had launched this explorer on the
journey. Her success in finding that special place in her universe would
ultimately reflect upon me. It would measure my own usefulness among the
heavens when I was finally gone.
She became a young woman of charm,
responsibility and caring. I saw her at age twelve out in the barn on a
windy, snowy night, feeding her horse. Although sick with the flu, she
would not let the animal bed down for the night without a hug. She loved that
creature, but sometimes the sight of my lovely daughter on the back of what
could at any moment turn into a raging beast scared me. But as she would
prove so often in life, she knew the dangers and she knew the beast.
Only a few years later I watched
with trepidation as she drove away on her first “official” date with some
numbskull young idiot who probably had more sense than I did at his age.
I remember staring at her one
evening after an argument when she was sixteen years old, stunned by the
realization I had sired a girl child whose mind worked like mine, but
faster. She would always be a step ahead of me.
I suppose she was a normal young
woman and I was possibly a normal father. We had our share of
arguments. Neither of us ever won. How could I win an argument with
a young lady who stomped out of the room just before I delivered my best
line? Or she with a man who wouldn’t open his eyes to reality, but with
his eyes closed would rather believe what he imagined was the truth.
I surely embarrassed her at times
during her teen years with my ideas from what she called the Olden Days and my
pronouncements to her boyfriends. She would complain, but I believed such
was my job as a father. Besides, I told her, she would come to agree with me
when she became a woman and learned to think straight. Over the years one
of us has come around more to the other’s way of thinking.
She left for college and afterward
seemed to hardly ever come home. She did, of course, and regularly, but
never enough for me. Only fifty miles apart we saw each other often. But
as a member of my household, I lost her at age 18.
And what a loss. The Pretty
Women population at home dropped by fifty percent. The same was true for
female minds to contend with, warmer hearts to measure my compassion by, as
well as someone to show me how to do simple things in the kitchen. And
the occasional help of a resident Grammar Girl. But mostly I missed
her sparkle and humor.
When she’d been gone only a few
weeks during that first semester of her freshman year of college, a startling
thought came to me. “I have a daughter somewhere in the universe, but for
the first time since her birth I am no longer sure where.” That night
when the television announcer said, “It’s eleven o’clock. Do you know where your children
are?” I answered, “Not really.”
Then came career, her Lancelot,
marriage, children, lots of responsibility and cares. I’d sometimes drive
up on a Saturday to take her out for breakfast and see if her quirky sense of
humor was still intact. It always was.
It’s true that as the years piled
up her lights dimmed a little on occasion from exhaustion. The daily
chores of a woman managing a career and family, caring for the loves of
her life, can take their toll.
But I’ve always carried that
vision of her in my heart, red curls streaming behind her as she swung out in
search of something in the universe that was truly hers, uniquely hers, always
hers. I have no idea what it might be. She may not either.
I measure myself as a father by
her. Not by her success as a mother and wife, roles she surely
loves. But by her love for herself and by her desire to seek what is
right for her. I am certain she will find it.
copyright David Griffin, 2015
