My dad and his stories

This is going to be sort of long, and sort of sappy, so skip it if you don't care for huggy-feely stuff. But with Thanksgiving tomorrow, I started thinking about a few things.

Right now, my brain is sizzling with the seemingly endless list of things I have to work on and finish between now and my wedding in April: the literature class, the master's thesis, the planning of the wedding itself, the job search. Lately, for every minute that passes I'm thinking about what I could have been doing to keep myself active, productive, to keep things moving toward their conclusion. It's easy, when I'm galloping along on my panic pony, to forget how hard my parents worked so that I could sit here on my couch and talk about being fatigued from worrying about finishing grad school, so that I could reach my goals, for the most part happy and in good health. It's harder to remember--and acknowledge--how grateful I am for my mother and father's support and encouragement and love.

But this just for Dad, and for the wonder and curiosity he sowed in me. This is for his stories, and his music, and his goofiness and his sternness. He is one of the things I'm most grateful for.

Dad didn't go to college, but he's eternally curious and knowledgable. He works a rather physically demanding blue collar job, even though he's close to 60 and now he's tall and wiry (but still pretty damn strong, for all that). My dad is, more or less, a quiet guy. He's an observer: Dad is the kind of guy who, in a room full of people, sits in the middle of them all and watches how they interact with each other, listens to what they say and how they react and how they laugh. And maybe because of this, Dad is also a hell of a storyteller.

He would come into the room my older sister and I shared when I was little, and tell us stories about being a little boy living on a Mississippi farm. He would tell me about Ma Fannie, his grandmother, and how when one day a chicken hawk lazily circled the sky above her chicken coop for hours, Ma Fannie spat to my father, "Sonny, bring me my axe," and how she shot the axe high into the air and chopped the hawk nearly in half and how, after the bird fell dead onto the dusty ground, Ma Fannie said, "now, get that axe out and clean it for me, Sonny." Dad would tell me about being a boy fishing alone on the river, cracking the meaty pecans that fell from the tree on which he rested as his cane pole sat across his lap, and almost having a heart attack when a huge black bear bounded out of the woods and across the river to attack him, and how he poked that hulking monster in the eye with his cane pole and flew through the trees along the riverbank and toward the farm and safety.

Dad would tell me about moving to Indiana in the sixties, with his mother and his sisters and brother, he older than all of his siblings, and wrapping up silverware for his little sisters and wrapping up twine for his little brother for Christmas. He would tell me about losing his younger sister when she died during surgery for severe scoliosis, and how his mother, deflated by grief but buoyed by her other children, went back to her jobs a day or two afterward. He would tell me about when he was 16 and he played guitar in an R&B band (with a name that paid homage to the Fantastic Four, his favorite comic book) so that he could buy clothes and shoes for his little sisters and brother.

My dad shared his life with me--the things he did and the things that happened to him as he grew up. Or, you know, things that maybe didn't happen--although I'm still amazed when my aunts and uncle confirm some of his more outrageous tales, like when he was nearly killed running from a furious mother sow. Dad had been playing football with her babies. He was practicing field goal kicks.

But he also taught me the importance of taking care of myself and other people. My dad, through telling me how his grandparents and his mother worked--always, and always hard--told me that work is the only way to earn and truly own what you want. He told me to stay away from people who couldn't be honest with me. He told me that very few people will help someone else simply out of the goodness of their hearts, but that, every now and then, I should try to do just that. And, more important than anything, Dad told me that I must always take care of my family, that family is a blessing and the highest priority a person should have.

And Dad taught by example. My dad taught me that it's okay to be goofy. Dad taught me to sing and how to read. He taught me about Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey and Marvin Gaye and Fela Kuti. He taught me that God loves me, no matter who or what I am. He taught me that everyone who does right by themselves and everyone else can do just about anything.

And my dad made me feel like the most important little girl in the world. He still does.

So, sitting here and thinking about my dad, thinking about much he's given me, makes me feel a little better, a little calmer. It also reminds me that I have a shitload of reading to do, and that I should get to it so I can enjoy my parens' incredible cooking tomorrow without too much anxiety.