I didn't talk to my Dad much after I moved away from home. He hated talking on the phone and I didn't travel home often. He wasn't worldly, or educated. He was bright. But he had small town sensibilities.
Those ideals don't fit with who I am--or, at least, who I want to be.
But, I miss my Dad sometimes.
Having children changes your perspective on your own parents. It's impossible to know the simple pleasure of cuddling an infant, without realizing your Mom and Dad had that same feeling.
The simple act of cuddling your child is everyday magic. It transforms the mundane. It takes an adult, with all the worries and stresses of the grownup world, and turns them into a place of profound love. They become the embodiment of home.
At some point, my Dad was a cuddly place of warmth and safety for me. He was home.
Despite being dead for a few years now, I think he still is.
I miss my Dad these days.
I only have one piece of physical evidence of the warm, safe place he was. In my baby album, all three of us are cuddled up on the couch. I am still a baby, no more than a year old. I'm dressed in one-piece footed pajamas and I'm settled in my Daddy's arms as he closes his eyes for a moment. My sisters are using his back and shoulders as sinewy plaid-covered pillows.
I know that exact feeling now. I've come home from work, exhausted, to excited and energetic children. I've turned on the t.v. and laid down so they could all touch a piece of me and we could be together.
These moments connect time and space. I'm not making claim to some transcendent eternal return, or claiming a symbolic connection with the past, present and future. It is more grounded, more real and more important than philosophical ideas.
In these moments I know how important my Dad was to me, and how important my presence is to my children.
I miss my Dad today.
The death of a parent means part of the world that has always existed, no longer does. The world becomes a smaller and scarier place when a parent dies. In our hyper-modern world it is sometimes hard to know when a boy becomes a man, when a child becomes an adult. When your Dad dies, the world lets you know.
I only have one picture, but I have a lifetime of tangible evidence of the warm, safe place my Dad was. I would never claim my father was perfect, or without errors in judgment. And outwardly he wouldn't be described as warm and cuddly. But he was my constant centre. He was a simple and ever-present touchstone of where I came from and who I was.
It turns out, he is also the thing I most want to be. He was warmth, safety and love wrapped in a wool henley and smelling of tobacco and coffee. I didn't pick up the smoking habit, and I don't wear my woolly often. But everything else is part of who I am.
Thank you Dad.
I miss you, always.
