I don’t talk about my dad too much here. Maybe it’s because he’s gone, and so is beyond much pointed, active conversation? Or maybe it’s because it still hurts so much.
My dad was far from perfect. As far from perfect as my mother, just in another direction.
Let me just say that it’s a lucky thing that I have some of both of my parent’s good qualities and not too many of their bad ones. Without my mother’s strength and stubborn sense of purpose and independence, my inheritance of my father’s love of pleasure and comfort and ease would be detrimental. My mother is clever and psychological; my father was gentle and funny. My mother is a swimmer; my father was more of a drifter.
My mother is good at taking charge; my father radiated peace, and so on.
It was hard to face dad’s death. When I was little, and needed to remember gentle hands and a kind face, I always called my father to mind. Oh, he committed his crimes too. In my opinion, looking the other way out of laziness or plain irresponsibility or fear is just as bad as doing the harm. He didn’t support us, and ultimately, he barely supported himself. My father always needed a strong woman to help with us, whether it be an aunt, a grandmother, or a new wife, and thank god that he had a soul that made those ladies want to help. He was a charmer and a sweet person to the core, despite his apathy.

I loved my father with all my heart, and even in the midst of anger at his lack of concern for himself and lack of responsibility for us, my love for him never wavered. I thought that my heart would stop or burst when he died, and I was surprised to find that I kept living after he was gone. I guess that was 9 years ago today. I still miss him, I miss his big hugs and his great voice. I miss his good bad cooking (biscuits, grits, gravy, sausage, pancakes, scrambled eggs, or lima beans and ham hocks and collards and cornbread… mmm…). I miss his teasing me about whatever new hair adventure or boyfriend I was enduring, I miss the way his eyes looked when he told us that he loved us, and that he’d wished he’d done better by us, or that he was proud.

Today’s poem is one that I wrote a while before dad died, maybe even a few years, so he read it. And then I read it again at his “official” funeral*. It’s veryvery cheesy and mooshy (you have been warned) but I don’t care, because it is how I feel.

for daddy

Sunday mornings claim love as their own,
sleepy and blurring quiet words from the t.v.
and remote beneath my brothers’ clicking fingers.

You still call me baby,
and my Saturday night-late Scrabble mind
forgets that I am twenty-three,
and pulls me out of bed
to rest my head in the warm spot at the top of your arm
in your hug.

I will be Baby
as long as there is you to call me
to a table set with mismatched dishes,
waiting under your obligatory prayer
to fill me up
with precious waffles, sausage, eggs and biscuits
that have always meant daddy-love to me.

We eat and argue
about things that could never have a meaning
on a Sunday-breakfast morning,
half-hearted squabbles over t.v. channels
and who was where at two a.m.

I watch your brown eyes shine over the rim
of black-cup coffee
and see your pride of fatherhood
as someone reaches for another perfect biscuit.

When nothing’s left but crumbs and dishes,
I stand to wash, remembering my age
and duty.
All I say is “Thank you, daddy.”
but you know exactly what I mean.

* * *
1993

-Sam