My dad was a worrier. If there was anything to be worried about, he would. He had worry enough for himself, my mother, my brothers and me. Born out of his anxious heart was also a concern, a desire to protect.
Although his worry-ness drove me nuts, his desire to protect endeared him to me.
Now I won't say it didn't take me a while to appreciate this trait. To be honest, it probably took a good 40 or 50 years for me to fully embrace it. By the time I had, it was pretty much too late to verbalize to him just how much it meant to me.
When I was a child, I didn't get to do things that a lot of kids did. I rarely got to do what my brothers got to do. I was told this was because I was a girl. I hated that. I wanted to do everything they could do, go where they went, hang out with who they hung out with. In a nutshell, I didn't like the two sets of rules mentality I lived under.
So I rebelled. In more than one way. There were so many times I resented my father, probably even hated him, for what I deemed as his over-protective ways.
But then there were times when it came in handy. Like when he made sure there was always gas in my car and that I never had to pump it. Like the time I was going to college in Fort Collins and there was a horrible snowstorm so he and my brother, Scott, drove from Longmont to make sure I got home safely. And the time I accidentally ran over a neighborhood dog when I was 16 and, devastated, ran home to tell dad and to have a shoulder to cry on.
Even into my adult years, sometimes this overbearing behavior was annoying. Like every single time I ever left his house, dad would say, "Be careful. Make sure you call when you get home." Seriously? I was 50 years old and he still said this. Sometimes I rolled my eyes and reluctantly agreed, but more often than not, I began to get it. You see, I had become a parent and there was never, ever a time I didn't say the same thing to my kids. Even now, they are 27, 25 and 22 and I STILL tell them to be careful and to text me when they get home.
I like to say (but hate to admit) that it took me so very long to "get" my dad. There were things I loved, but things that drove me crazy, things I wished were different. Of course, I never looked at things from his point of view: perhaps there were things about me that just weren't that lovely either. Maybe there were times he wanted me to have a more obedient attitude or a less mouthy mouth. I never stopped to think about how my behavior, my temperament, affected him.
So much of my life, even as an adult, especially as an adult, was about me.
One of my fondest memories of my father was also one of the worst moments of my life. A caveat here: please don't focus too much on just how much I broke the law in this scenario, but instead focus on the protective nature of my dad.
When I was 16, I was driving my car in Longmont, my boyfriend riding shotgun. We were having an argument and I could not find my beloved comb. Taking my eyes off the road for a brief second, I reached around the backseat to find it, then BAM! I ran right into a parked car that sat in front of a house on a busy Longmont street. Panicked, I didn't know what to do so I took my boyfriend home, then drove to my house, instinctively aware that dad would know what to do.
I'm not going to say he wasn't mad because he was. But he did not shame me or yell at me; he stayed calm and asked me to explain everything. After I had, he called the police to report it. He fudged the details just a bit, but when the cop came over to our house my dad stood by me, did most of the talking and the officer let me off the hook, saying that he, too, had a teenage daughter and understood how it felt. Somehow, all of the details were worked out and the owner of the car was also understanding, good thing for me!
This memory is but one of many I hold in my heart of the greatest protector, other than God, that I have ever had. I don't know what will become of me, now that he has grudgingly relinquished this duty. But he did it so perfectly, for so long, that I guess I will, also grudgingly, let him off the hook.
A Memorial for My Dad (Part Three)
