For My Father

They say you shouldn't speak ill of the dead and, as I think back on my father, it occurs to me that part of that might be that, once someone is gone, you're more apt to remember what you loved about them, the reasons why your relationship was memorable rather than whatever differences you might have had. Or maybe that's just me.

It's certainly true of my father. There were times when we had many conflicts and difficulties, but they seem so unimportant now. When I think of him, I think of him much like I thought of him when I was a child, when he was my model of what a parent should be. He was patient and generally soft-spoken, absolutely dedicated to his family.

He was a botanist and loved making plants grow, vegetables, flowers, green things - he had a real gift (that I have not inherited). He was logical, painstaking, meticulous and had a way of looking at things critically that I have inherited. He wasn't an imaginative man, happier, I think, in the reflected creativity and fantasy of wife and children, ready to do his all to make them come true if he could. He read nonfiction, and fantasy was as far removed from his personality as gardening is from mine.

He was an excellent photographer and loved to take photos, another gift we don't share. I never got the satisfaction from photography he did, but he gave me my first camera and his cameras took the pictures that provide a catalog of my youth.

He was one of the most feminist men I've ever met with an anti-male bias nearly as pronounced as my husband's. To him, women had all the capability of men without that bad bits. If I think that's simplistic (and inaccurate), if his antagonism toward the men who courted (and won) his daughters was sometimes unrelenting, his faith in what his girls could do was equally unshakable.

But, for all the differences and whatnot, there was no one I loved more than my father growing up. In some ways, he was the key element for me - I was Daddy's girl. We used to walk at night and talk on every subject. If he wasn't interested in science fiction or fantasy, he never had an issue discussing my crazy ideas or discuss history or philosophy or whatever for hours on end. In many ways, he was so grounded and I think I absorbed that sorely needed tendency; I'm sure my writing is better because of it.

I'm sure our differences perplexed and confused him. (His father-daughter speech to me: "Men are jerks. Stay away from them.") I know they distressed him.

I also know he loved me.

I also know I loved him.

Sometimes, I think my siblings grew up with someone else, that this image I have of my father is mine alone. We'll never know, now. He died a couple of years back after a bout with cancer.

Lee, my husband, said he was a like a tree, limited in some ways, but grounded, stable, reliable, sturdy.

I think my dad would have liked that.