I matured five years beyond myself at the age of 9. Standing nervously at the front door window waiting for him to come, I repeatedly pleaded with my mother not to make me go. Why I was so afraid, I didn’t know. After all, I had gone out with him a thousand times before. He was my father–a good father. But this was the first time we would spend together since the divorce, and there was something very uncomfortable about making appointments with your parents. Some how “hanging out” went from a casual pain free excurstion to a “better get the most out of your time today and try to cry” visit.
Staring blankly out the front door window, trying to single out at least one emotion to deal with, I caught a glimpse of the old family Oldsmobile pulling into the drive. Without thought I flung the door open and ran down the sidwalk to my dad, thinking that if I hurried it would all be over soon. Climbling into the old car, my dad and I began to talk like usual and that should’ve been comforting, but it wasn’t. Despite all of the things he was saying, all I was really aware of was the nagging presence of hurt in the both of us. He was smiling, but I knew he was broken.
I don’t remember much about our whereabouts from the time I got into the car that day, to the time I got home. Maybe that’s because looking back it was insignificant in the light of it all. What little I do remember was going to the mall and getting a toy megaphone that distorts your voice when you talk. I remember going to Dairy Queen and getting blizzards together. But mostly, I remember the ride home.
It was quieter on the way back. Maybe because learning to say good-bye to your kids for days at a time wasn’t something they taught fathers when you were born at the hospital. I was quiet because I knew my father was hurting and that I neeeded to take care of him instead of the other way around. This kind of role reversal usually comes when you’re an adult though, and I was very much a child. A child wanting to give the same thing I needed…comfort.
Then sitting in silence, I realized what I had been afraid of waiting for him to come pick me up earlier that day. I heard my father start to cry. To this day I must have seen at least 100 people cry, but I will never forget the sound of his voice or the look of a face scrunched up in tears, exuding almost as much love as it did pain. For sons and daughters alike, there is always something about the first time you see “him” cry.
I remember saying only one thing from that moment on. When he started crying he was eating a chocolate blizzard and he was always made sick by dark chocolates. So looking up at him while he cried I said, “It’s the chocolates isn’t is it Daddy?” To the best of my memory he smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s the chocolate.”
It’s the only time in my life that I can remember really trying to deceive myself. The truth is I knew why he was crying, and think we both kind of silently accepted that I understood. He was crying because he was thinking about never being there to walk by our bedroom doors and hear his little girls singing at their tops of their lungs. Crying because he now had to pick-up his children from what was once his home. But more than that, he was crying because he had to drop them off.
As we pulled back into the driveway I knew things were different. I was different. It was in moments like those when I experienced realization so deep that I lost a part of the innocence of my childhood. As I watched my dad cry that day I lost the ability to see the world as consisting of only summer vacations, Santa Claus, and perfect days.
Perfect families.
Walking up the sidewalk I realized that parents are human and breakable. The word “daddy” no longer meant invincible like it did to the heart of a child. And as I stood on my porch by the door I had been so afraid to leave, as my dad started back to his empty apartment in Louisville, I think we both knew that simply…
I wasn’t a child anymore.
