I recall one time in high school where my Papa picked me up at the front of my high school. I immediately opened the door to the back and sunk low on my seat, looking away from any passersby, hoping and praying that no one had seen me enter the back seat of the car. Papa immediately took offense, yelling, “I am not your driver. Why are you not sitting up front?” Not moving and remaining in silence, I just continued to hear my Papa rant about his anger towards my behavior; how instead, I should have been appreciative of the time he took to pick me up and yet, there I was, practically hiding in the back, being ashamed of him. The fact of the matter was, although I remained motionless, he was right in everything he was saying, looking back now. As I sat crouched in the back, I immediately felt this sense of disappointment of my very own behavior. I clearly hurt my Papa’s feelings and that smile he had on his face when he picked me up had quickly vanished upon my reaction to him pulling up in his fully paid, but however, brown and white-topped used Maverick. I had no words to explain my actions. I was wrong, but still, could not find myself to move to the front. Upon the car coming to a complete stop and arriving home, I shamefully walked out, managing to mutter a “thank you” to Papa as I quietly walked to my room where I could close the door.
Having a son for our firstborn was a great start to our own family. In all truth, having one boy sufficed that imaginary checklist of “he who has a son has life” verse. However, I recall the very moment my husband had heard the words of our doctor announcing that we were expecting a girl. We had forgotten to tell our doctor that we did not want to know until the time of delivery, but to no one’s fault, it was already too late to take back the announcement as if we had not heard the words spoken. I still see my husband standing in that dark corner of the room, his stillness very telling of his shock at the words just said. I respected that my husband was happy, but quiet the whole evening and night. Apparently the word had traveled at his work the following day because the receptionist giggled about how all my husband did all day was walk around the track at the park, next to their building. I began to sense that the news of expecting a girl was a lot more serious than I, as a mother, had taken it. My feelings were proven right at the sound of a knock on our door. I was quite surprised to have found my husband at the doorstep as any other day, he had always walked in with his own keys. Without giving me a chance to ask questions, he immediately uttered, “I figured it out.” The only response I could come up with was, “Figured out what?” My dear husband, giving complete transparency as to how much the news of having a girl had emotionally overtaken him answered, “We’re going to have sensors on her window. If that window opens, a red light next to our bed will alarm us.” This, everyone, is a clear example of the fear a father holds even BEFORE the birth of their baby girl.
It is to say the least that after having had another girl two years later, my husband did all he could to shield and shelter his precious angels. While he will be the first to admit that he wasn’t perfect, having had no guidance other than faith and a book on raising children he had purchased, I will be the first to stand by his side to say that he did a remarkable job. Yes. My daughters crushed him in more ways than one. They were and still are beautiful girls after all, going through challenges of adapting to growth, change, and their social environments while not understanding from a father’s corner that preservation of their innocence required greater work each day the more beautiful, smarter, and older they became.
Around the same phase our youngest daughter was in high school, I recall vividly a time where it was becoming clear to us that we were losing, if we had not already, our baby girl. Having two younger ones twelve years later from the time we had been blessed with her arrival, we did our best to juggle being parents again to two highly energetic and demanding baby boys, one year apart while still trying to determine when to take part or not take part in our blooming youngest daughter’s life. Before our boys were born, I distinctly would recall our daughter stating that we were too involved in her life, how she wanted to attend school events on her own-without us. However, as our boys came into existence, all of a sudden, we were the parents who didn’t seem to care to show up at the events she partook in. Honestly exhausted, dealing with the juggles of two practically newborn babies one year apart while knowingly understanding that my husband’s silence meant he, too, was trying to hold his own end at the same time for the family, sometimes I just surrendered to becoming the absent parent than being the overbearing because I figured the latter was what I had been for so long- it would be just a benefit to all if I chose to just miss a few events here and there. This way, I could manage sanity for being the nurturing mother I needed to be for our newest two.
With the two oldest off to college, my husband and I had already been accustomed to the spurts of emotions in the home here and there. My husband clearly did his best to be the father he felt our youngest daughter needed to have for her to remain on the right path, but peers just become stronger than parents at some point and while you remain strong and steady, with your chin up in the eyes of all, your heart and soul silently crushes by the sight of your daughter falling farther apart from you. Even a simple gesture to join us for a movie that my husband specifically picked out for our daughter only to have her come home and tell him she wasn’t in the mood would naturally want me to give her my “piece of mind” only for my husband to whisper to me that it was okay. He reminded me that we have to accept she was growing up and she needed her space. I could tell, whenever he spoke in moments like these, that those words were really for his heart more than it was for mine. So, I would manage to find my peace and forgiveness.
It was this one particular time where our youngest daughter had truly put her dad’s back against the wall. Upon ultimately telling our daughter that she ride home with us rather than her team, she adamantly complained that she did not want to get in the car, claiming her two youngest siblings would be taking up all the room in the back of her dad’s fully paid, but apparently too small, BMW sedan, the same car she had joyfully ridden in countlessly with her older siblings. You cannot hold your children responsible for the exhaustion you feel of life itself, yet alone, the unwanted feeling of having to deal with the clearly emotional venting your daughter presents before you while you try to ease yourself into a long ride home with two innocently babbling babies in the same car. Raising strong-willed daughters, I sat in silence, hoping my daughter would get the hint to do the same while my husband remained focused on the road. Clearly still not happy to have found herself in the car with us, young at heart and full in spirit, it was becoming evident that our daughter was going to say whatever she could to get her dad to react. And, react he did. Just as soon as she remarked that he, in more or less words (my head silently spinning at this time), cared more about her making it to state than he cared for her at all, there was this breath that my husband took that I know too well. It’s that, ‘you have no idea, but since you challenge me’ breath of air moment. “Alright, then. You are done. You will not finish the season.” I need to go no further because to this day, I still hurt for the both of them as I sat there in the passenger’s seat, too pained by the only action my husband felt he had left to show his baby girl how much nothing more meant to him than her love. When a father has been challenged and words have been spoken, there is no turning back. What was ultimately said had been spoken. The decision was final. May our baby girl one day know how much strength her daddy had to uphold from that time forward.
I felt my husband’s hurt the same way I had felt my Papa’s hurt(s) many years ago. Two different eras, and yet, two fathers who simply had lost that innocent sparkle in their daughter’s eyes along the journey of life, who were simply just trying their best to adjust to the growing lady before them who inevitably had replaced their angels- that same angel who used to skip gleefully next to them to the hold of their hand.
While I couldn’t understand why my Papa no longer treated me like his precious, little girl anymore and used all of my adolescent behaviors as justification for this void, I so understand clearly now that he simply reacted to the change growing before his eyes. Perhaps it was when I first started to show care of what clothes to wear, or putting on eyeliner to replace my barren, brown eyes. Perhaps it was me spending countless hours on the phone talking to my friends instead of sitting next to him watching Scooby-Doo, Three’s Company, or The Cosby Show. Perhaps it was me choosing to just lay in my bed doing absolutely nothing rather than getting in the car with Papa to just aimlessly drive around, having nowhere to go, sometimes happy to just stop at the store to get candy. Perhaps it was the admission that he was no longer the one who held the sparkle in my eye as I began to venture into the likes of boys who looked upon me. All of this and more, as a young and growing lady, I did not take into understanding because I was too busy believing Papa no longer cared to understand me. That it was he who had let me go. And yet, having two daughters of my own, bare witness to my husband speaking so cheerfully and proudly of his two daughters when they weren’t around while trying his best to prepare them for the truth about boys and their motives, I now openly see what I could not see back then in my own eyes- daddies lose their angels to the ill-prepared process of growing up and essentially, every father has to “man up” and let go. Ironically, it was our own push to grow up that gave them the permission.
