| Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast.......Featured grownups 2 of 2 June 2008. Things I learned from my fath I'm 47 years old. My father is 78. To this day, I still do not understand why I lost him. There is a picture of me on the family wall, at age two. I'm in my high chair, bawling my eyes out. I asked my Mother why she has this photo of me, crying, as the framed photo. She said, "It was because the photographer was a man." Other than my Grandfather, he was the first man I had ever seen. She said it terrified me. My father went to work in the mornings before I awoke, and came home after I went to bed. He worked hard to support his family. After the picture, we sold the row house in Detroit, and moved to Wisconsin. Dad got a job at the university of Whitewater, Wisconsin. While he worked there, he came home in the evenings and played with us kids. On sundays he read at church. We all sat in the front row and watched him. He lost the job. We moved to a farm that we rented, and saw him every second weekend, when he came home from Iowa. We liked the farm. One day Dad came home, and announced we were moving once more, to Minnesota this time. I was the lucky one, that got to ride in the moving truck, with Dad. We arrived in Moorhead, in June of 1966. Because of his new job at the local college, he was home every night for dinner, afterwards we would go swimming or to a park. He roller skated with us, he played games with us, and he took us camping. One day, he decided he needed more schooling to better support us. He was already working three jobs. Placement officer at the college, flight instructor at Valley Aviation, (he also was their accountant) and he was the local Justice of the Peace, and traffic court judge. The college told him if he got his doctorate, they would make him a full professor, and he would be able to teach classes. So as well as the other three jobs, he was now teaching, and going to school full time, at the University of North Dakota, 89 miles away. He left the house before 5 am, and returned after midnight. Friday nights he came home early. That was family fun night. Which usually meant poker, or a board game. When my sister turned 14, she announced that she was too old for family night. The very next friday, the other four of us, got out the poker chips and cards, set up the card table, and waited for Dad to come home. At bedtime we gave up and went to bed. That was the end of family fun night. After that, getting my father to do anything with us kids, was like pulling teeth. A popular song of the time was "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast." The song felt appropriate to me. Dad used to take me on his walks with him. Now I was no longer welcome. And from that day until now, for some reason I shall never understand, the father I loved and knew, left and never returned. I still have a father. I've learned a lot from him. One of the biggest lessons I learned, was how much rejection hurts. It was a lesson I was determined my children would never learn. Unfortunately, life is not what we plan, it is what happens; and my darling Nell has learned the hard way about a father's rejection. Fortunately, for Nell and myself, other men stepped up to the plate. In her case, it was her Uncle Dan, Uncle John, and Grandpa Joel. In my case, it was Father O' neil, Jim Noehl, all of my uncles, both of my grandfathers, and interestingly enough, my older sister's boyfriends. |
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