I don’t believe in co-incidences – I believe that things happen for a reason.   In the last month relationships between fathers and daughters have been increasingly brought to my attention.  Perhaps because Nov 1st is the anniversary of my own Father’s death.  I wonder how he would have reacted to the births of his grandchildren and his great grandson and the rest of the changes in the family.  I wonder if he had lived past 45 and not been ravaged by cancer  - if old age would have mellowed him.  I wonder if he would have ever acknowledged my accomplishments with pride or if they would have passed without comment.  I wonder if we would have ever reached the point where we could have at least become a little more accepting of each other’s foibles, grown to at least tolerate each other with a form of respect.  Sadly I doubt that ever would come to pass but given his death – I’ll never know for certain.  I want to believe that time would have changed him – I know I am not the same woman I was 20 or even 10 years ago – I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

As much as I wanted desperately when I was growing up to be loved and accepted by him, or failing that for him to be proud of something that I did,  conversely there were also times (particularly when I was older), I admit that I hated him.  In my late 20’s I tried to rationalize my father to myself, find mitigating circumstances that shaped him – a futile means to know the man before he became my father.  I know that his mother raised him along with his 5 brothers and sisters, as well as 6 of his half brothers and sisters pretty much on her own –12 to raise in the late 1920’s and 1930’s in Georgia, couldn’t have been easy.  From all accounts and the few photographs – they must have been dirt poor - I know that the older children went to work in the fields when they were young and the factories when they were older to help ends meet.  I know he lied about his age, ran away and enlisted in the Navy and served in South Korea.  I know he had nightmares about what he saw there.  I know he was a shrewd business man, tolerated little that was not essential or necessary and could pinch a penny until it screamed.  I know that marriage to my mother – a woman so totally unlike him in every way - was his one extravagance.  

I look around me at other fathers with their own daughters – perhaps seeking clues to what it SHOULD be like – daughterhood by proxy.   William with Cristina and Vanessa who loves them unquestioningly in spite of their physical challenges and their gifts of extreme intelligence.  Anthony with Joan and Karen – one light the other dark – truly different as night and day and yet – sisters – separate but equal.  Aaron with Tessa, Sean with Megan – fierce protective love that would die for them.  Joe with Brandy – fragile as a soapbubble.  I hear the tone of pride and love in other father’s voices when they speak of their daughters – and I feel cheated in a very real sense of something I’ve never known and never will experience. 

I know fathers who have not spoken to daughters and daughters who haven’t spoken to their fathers over wrongs – real or imagined, hasty words spoken in anger which now seem impossible to swallow, injured stiff necked pride waiting until the other person says sorry first for years.  How trivial upon reflection – is that the last exchange you want to remember when you think of your daughter, your father?  It’s easy to think that you have the luxury of time to one day ‘fix’ whatever is wrong between the two of you, and that possibility does exist as long as the two of you are.  But I’ve learned how fleeting life is – how death does not respect age nor condition and that it can come at the moment you least expect it – that even the very young die.  How I envy all of you the opportunity to be able to pick up a phone, write a letter or send an email you know will be received and read, to be able to hug someone who wants to be hugged - and I hope that you make that effort too while they are alive.