Friday, June 16, 2006

A Tribute To My Father

P&T

I loved my mother when I was growing up. I always told everyone that I was going to be just like her when I grew up – a writer and a typer – but my father and I had a special bond.

Part of the bond was that I was an odd child. My mother says that I was born forty, so you can imagine what happened when very adult comments came out of a very small person’s mouth. I was a stoic and serious little girl and I generally thought the rest of world should be the same.

My father and I had similar personalities. So, when we were together it was like a sea of calm. I remember one time when I was around three years old, I had been sitting with my mother and some of her writer friends. Typical of me, I wanted to comment on the conversation that I was listening to and I did. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember the laughter. They weren’t trying to be mean, but to a very serious little girl who was not trying to be funny, it was pretty close to humiliating. I excused myself and went to find my father. He was outside and I remember walking next to him in the garden. “It’s okay,” he told me. “I stay outside when they’re here too.”

Just like it rarely occurred to me that my mother was not my birth mother, it was never really an issue with my father either. I remember my father as being extraordinarily patient and letting me tag along wherever he went. He suffered through Star Trek conventions when I thought that was a good idea and took me every month to “Indian Princess” meetings (a much smaller version of girl scouts) despite the fact that it was VERY silly. He was the only father on our street that would spend any time with the kids so it wasn’t unusual for him to have half a dozen kids hanging off of him at any one time. He took us all to the playground and made the merry-go-round spin so fast we had to hold on to keep from flying off.

It never mattered for one minute that I was adopted or that I didn’t look like him. If you read my earlier post about how I came to be adopted, you know that it was his idea to adopt because he fell in love with the Vietnamese children during the war. My friend was remembering when my father had gotten down on the floor and played with her son (who he doesn’t know very well) and told me that she thinks he loves all children. I would have to agree.

Now, I get to watch him with my son. They roll around on the floor and play silly games that my two year old makes up. They laugh and read books.

Somewhere out there I have a birth father. Wherever he is, I hope he knows what a wonderful world I have because my father is in it.

1 comment:

Third Mom said...

What a lovely tribute to your dad!!

I just found your blog, will be back to read more. Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts!

Margie