Growing Up with Dad

- Christine J. Seymour

"Daddy!  Daddy!"

I  jumped up from my place on the floor in front of the TV, where I had been watching the Mickey Mouse Club, when I heard the front door open.  I knew it was time for Daddy to come home because Mommy was in the kitchen fixing dinner. The blue police uniform worn by the tall handsome man meant nothing to me. It was his smile, and the twinkle of his blue eyes as he picked me up and tossed me high into the air that told me that this was my dad, the most wonderful man in my life.

We lived in a house where  I slept in a small bed with bars on the side like a crib.  Only the bars had a space in the middle where I could crawl out. Whenever I awoke in the night the room seemed dark and scary.  So I would climb out and crawl into the big bed in the room where Mommy and Daddy slept.  Curling up comfortably in the warmth and safety of daddy?s embrace I would drift off peacefully, not really noticing when he carried me back to my own bed, until the next time I woke up.

Our family was growing.  Before I was old enough to start school we moved to a great big house. Now that I was a big girl I got to have my own room.  It still had the tiny bed with parted bars, but the big bed was not there.  Now when I woke up frightened I would get up and wander through the dark halls until I found the big bed where Mommy and Daddy slept.  Again, finding the comfort I needed,  I did not notice when Daddy carried me back to my own room.

I recall in a very jumbled picture, baby brothers arriving and each taking their turn to occupy a crib in the corner of my room.  In the dark of the night they would cry. I don?t remember who got them, but I do remember when each was big enough that they would climb out of their crib in the night and find the big bed where I slept.  Then, I was not afraid, so I didn't need to get up and find the big bed where Mommy and Daddy slept. I had learned how to comfort.

With all these people in our family now it seemed like there was forever laundry to do meals to cook, babies to bathe and change.  By this time I knew that my dad was a very important policeman and that he had to be at work all the time to catch the bad guys to make the world safe for us.  Mom taught me how to iron his shirts , starch the collars, press the sleeves.  I was so proud every time I saw my dad going out the door  in a clean white shirt.

My dad also had the very important job of coaching baseball and basketball teams.  My brothers starred, and my mom kept score.  I was always proud when asked to take care of the little ones and to fix dinner all by myself while games were on.  Some times I wished I were one of the boys. That looked like more fun.  Then Dad would stop being a coach, and I would have him all to myself.

With all this stuff going on in our lives one thing I always counted on and looked forward to was Sunday.  We would get dressed up and go to church  (sorry, that was not the part I looked forward to).  After church we came home and  ate big breakfast of pancakes or waffles or scrambled eggs. Often Dad would stop at the store on the way home and pick up some cinnamon rolls for a special treat.

Then we would go for a drive. It was always magical.  Dad would be in charge behind the wheel of the car driving us to places we had never been and telling tales of those places as if he had been there. Some places he had, but other places he just knew about.  He ma de each trip like an adventure, a guided tour through the h istory of the lives of people and places that I otherwise would never have known.

I remember the coke mines of Carbonado. Those funny rusty old railroad cars on the small track and the dark ominous holes in  the side of the hill with the brick openings.  Mostly they looked like big ovens to me. 

I remember picking oysters on a beach across the Narrows bridge.  We put them on the fire until they popped open from the heat and then putt butter on them right in the shells and ate them (Yuk! Only once). 

I loved going to the logging mill at Mineral Lake,  the place where he grew up.  It was miles away in the mountains and he knew the story of every person that lived in every house.  Always each drive was charged with the excitement that we might see a deer or other wildlife on the side of the road.  I was never the first to spot one.  Dad had the sharpest eyes of anyone I knew. I did imagine a lot of animals in my strenuous gazing to be the first.  There was something about a tall, skinny cow with horns that we laughed about for years.

I remember going to the airport and seeing the giant silver planes.  The 747, so big, so awesome, the Cadillac of airplanes. I was awed watching the monstrous  air ships taxi down the runway  until they were going so fast they left the ground.  I wondered how anything so big could float in the air.   Of course birds could because they were tiny, and light weight and could flap their wings.  But these hulking, heavy wings of steel could not flap.  I'm sure my Dad explained  it to me (he knew everything), but aerodynamics didn't have much interest for me. I preferred to wonder...But I was proud that he knew.

So many times I watched my dad go away on those big jets, and each time I was afraid because the wings wouldn't flap.  I guess I should have listened to his explanation.  Each time he came home I was so relieved.  Then, one time he took off in the "big bird" and he didn't come back.  I could not understand.  I know Mom tried to explain, but I could not understand.  The mighty 747 had carried him so far away that he could not come back and I really, really wanted him to.

I knew he didn't fall out of the sky be cause the mail man brought me post cards with my  name on them in that beautiful penmanship that could only be his. (He drew each letter with perfect curly Q's and shapes.)  There was one of a big building with lines drawn around one window and he wrote that that was his room.  He had gone to Washington, DC to  a three month FBI academy training. I just could not understand why he didn't come home.  Why did he need a room on a post card? There was a picture of cherry blossoms.  We had those at home.  His messages always told me to be a big girl and help momma.  He signed "Love, Daddy" and those were the most precious words on the whole thing.

I got my piano when I was eight years old.  Dad brought it home and put it in the living room. I was so excited. This was for me.  The boys had their bats and balls and fancy uniforms, but this piano was mine. Life was very busy.  Dad worked all kinds of weird shifts and left little time between work and coaching.  But, when there was, he would stop and listen to me play the piano, look at my school work and make me feel like I was the most important person in the world.

In the fourth grade, when studied the Lewis and Clark expedition, I was supposed to make a replica of Fort Clatsop.  I had no idea how to build a fort, but Dad did.  He sat with me at the kitchen table and helped me transform  a campfire mint box and Popsicle sticks into the most awesome Fort Clatsop the fourth grade had ever seen.  At least I thought so, because my dad helped.  If Dad helped I knew it was perfect.

He must have been pretty embarrassed when I was in the sixth grade.  He was the most famous policeman in the city and his name appeared in the newspaper everyday.  I would get extra credit for bringing current events when it wasn't my turn (everyday).  Nobody else had such a famous father.  He also gave me the winning idea for the name of our sixth grade school newspaper, Ben's Bugle (for Franklin School) and I made sure everybody knew it was my dad 's idea.  I was just sure everyone wished he was their dad.

Our family camped all the time. Every year we had our vacation the last two weeks of August and we packed up the station wagon inside and out and "head for the hills."  It was an adventure, a test of strength and endurance (what happened to just plain fun)?.  No matter what the circumstances there was no turning back.  We were learning to live with nature, to survive at all costs.  Never give up! Never Turn back!  Never?what!  All those mornings waking up with flat air mattresses and soggy sleeping bags, trying to curl up small enough that no part of me would touch the water.  Sitting in the station wagon waiting out the rain, while Dad drained the overhead tarps and dried the sleeping bags to give it one more night.  The sun was bound to shine tomorrow.

Sometimes it did.  When it did, the gift of the forest, the river, the lake, the beach, the ocean, the campfire, the outdoor meals were all mine, because dad wanted to share the things he loved.  I'm glad he didn't want to go home when it rained.

Some of the things we had to do when the sun was out...Yikes!  Mountain blackberries and blueberries that could only taste so heavenly if you picked them yourself.  Dad would take us up to the burnouts in the mountains,  where all that remained were burned stumps, ragweeds and berry bushes.  No trees for shade, no creek for water.  My brothers and I  would stand in the heat and pick these minuscule berries, no bigger than peas, until our buckets were full.    All the time we were whining and complaining,  Dad would assure us that there was a cool mountain lake just waiting for us to finish our berry picking so that we could jump in and get relief from the heat.  When we had either finished filling our buckets, or Dad got tired of hearing us complain, we would indeed get back into the car and go find that cool mountain lake.  AH!!!! Salamanders!  I can't get in that water.  Oh, the joy of living with nature.  I laugh now. But then, oh the treachery!

Then there was fishing.  A joy he shared with all of  us.  Dad would take the boys out in the morning and do their men thing. They stomped through the brush, and trudged through the shallow waters to get to those hard to reach places where no one else would go to catch the fish.  That must be where the big ones hid. 

I stayed back at camp and spent most of the day down by the bridge or the river, sang to the skies and daydreamed. When the men returned with their catch, then Dad took me down to the creek.

We climbed out to the big rock where the water rushed creating a deep pool.  That?s where the fish liked to stay.  He caste my line out to that perfect  spot and I waited (not patiently).  I felt the water pull at my line and I snapped it up like I saw him do. With  no fish to weight it down, the hook flew up into the tree overhead, twisting around the branches with the aid of the sinker. Dad pushed and pulled and pointed and shoved to try to free the line.  Quite often he would have to take out his knife and cut the line,  tie on another hook and let me try again.  After several vain attempts he eventually held the pole for me until he felt a fish, hooked it and handed me the pole to reel it in.  It was great.  I caught a fish (smile).

I do not ever see a stream or a lake that I do not hear his v oice instructing me: "Snap it! Jerk it! It's all in the wrist!"  Whenever I look across the water I can see the fishing line float out in front of me and hear him say with no uncertainty, "There you go.  That's where the fish are."

As I  learned to play the piano and read music and moved on from the mandatory teaching pieces of my piano teacher, Dad and I became quite a duet.  Dad played the clarinet and the saxophone.  He had beautiful silver horns from when he played in his high  school band.   He encouraged me to learn music that my old piano teacher had never heard of (most of my friends either).  It was my Dad's music and I loved it.  When we sang and played together it was as if there was no one else in the world but the two of us.  Even when the rest of the family joined us it was as if we were the only two people in  the room.

Having a father who was head "narc" when I was in Junior and Senior High might have been a difficult situation for some kids, but not for me. I was proud of what my father did. I used the education he gave me to write reports for my classes and articles for the school newspaper.  I had firsthand knowledge that other kids weren't even interested in knowing.

After I finished high school and left home my father and I did not stop doing things together.  My parents joined a dance club which brought  them together with their friends to enjoy music and dancing that people my age didn't even know. Dad invited me.  When he took me out on the dance floor it was as if I had been waltzing all my life.  Even when he wasn't lifting my feet off the floor I felt like I was dancing on air and all eyes were on us.  There is no way to describe it other than to remember the scene from Sleeping Beauty when the princess and the prince are pictured dancing on air. That's exactly how I felt, like a princess being gracefully guided about by her prince.  Mine was every bit as handsome and charming.

We continued to sing, and dance. Eventually we even played baseball on the same team.   Though my skills were never up to the standard that others had, Dad never failed to give me the chance to try.  I was a loyal teammate, as taught in my youth, and that was worth my place on the field.

Recently I got a chance to go camping with Mom and Dad.  I got to go to the place of my childhood, adolescent and young adult fantasies.  The place where I could sit on the rocks at the side or even the middle of the river.  The small stream of rushing water, pure and clean as the melted snow, made such a powerful sound as it rushed down from the mountain tops, crashing against the rocks, running to join its mother river on its long journey to the sea.  There is a wooden foot bridge connecting the campgrounds on both sides of the river.  The old one, built of huge logs, was wide enough for a car to cross, but it bounced and flexed with any crossing, so it was limited to foot traffic.  It must have spanned about a hundred feet above the water (or maybe it just seemed that way to me as a child). 

I had wanted to travel back to this place of beauty and peace to experience again what I use to do and feel there.  I wanted to walk out to the middle of the wooden footbridge and sing out to the trees and mountains, the water and the rocks and imagine the roar of rushing water drowning out my voice to any human presence but my own.  I wanted to climb down to the  boulders below the bridge and dream of  days gone by, of what might have been but wasn't.  I wanted to see how things are and be grateful for what is. I wanted to walk through the campground imagining the events of each stage of my life as I remembered each favorite spot and the natural forces that made those places change from  time to time. I wanted the opportunity to come to terms with all the passages that had come to be in this place.  A place I came through the years from infancy to today.  A place I came to as an adult to try to imitate life as I had known it as a child.  A place I brought my husbands and my children to share with them all that was good about life in the magic of the Northfork.

Instead of traveling this road alone this weekend, I took the reminiscent journey with my father.  At his suggestion, the two of us rode in his pickup truck that took this trip with u s for the past twenty years.  Dad drove through all the back roads and shared with me his memories of life that had taken place here when he was a young man.  He spoke o f the changes in the river and towns that no longer existed as a result of the dams that created lakes and submerged land where communities used to thrive.  He drove us on familiar roads to unfamiliar places to show me where nature had gone beyond the river banks taking roads and bridges with it, leaving earth and rock where "the Ponds" used to be.

This is the guide I have had all my life...My father.  Taking me to places in his memories and following the changes with both excitement and sadness. Logging each natural occurrence that changed the world as he knew it, then sharing it with me.

When we reached the Northfork,  he parked the truck and together we walked out to the middle of the footbridge. A gentle peace came over him as he looked around and told me that it was 60 years ago when he came here the first time.  It was 44 years for me.  Of course I don't remember the first time, I was only 8 months old.

Instead of keeping all my memories to myself and spending this time in self reflection of years gone by, I gave my memories to my dad.  We stood on the footbridge and I pointed out the boulder where I used to sit and sing and dream.  We looked down at the river bank where he used to help me fish and untangle my fishing line from the tree overhead.  I recalled the devastation after a great flash flood, when I was very small, and how he had done exactly what he was doing now. He had taken us around by car and by foot and described t he forces of nature that had completely changed a place that we held dear.

I'm giving my memories back to my father.  After all they are his.  He gave them to me in the first place.  I woke up to realize that my life is not mine to own, to hold and remember solely for my own purposes.  My life, my memories were given to me out of love by my father sharing his life with me over the years.  My memories belong to those I love and if I have not shared them, then I must. They will die if I keep them to myself and don't bring them out into the sunlight.  Memories are only worth having if they are shared.  There is no other way to remember.  This weekend I gave my memories of the Northfork back to my father, and he gave me some more.

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