DAD—a memoir

This is a creative nonfiction memoir piece I write about my early childhood about my relationship with my dad.

I have always considered myself a daddy’s girl. Not to say that the approval of my mom was less valuable, but that the desire to be noticed by my dad beat strongly in my girlish 7-year-old heart. My dad was a soldier which meant that he was often away for 6 months at a time on military deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq. Even then, I knew what a solider was and that soldiers go to war, but I was stubborn to accept what this meant for me— my daddy would be away for work, and he wouldn’t come back for a long time.

I cried myself to sleep every night for the want of my father to be home. It was not until mom gave me a framed picture of him to keep beside my pillow that the crying fits subsided. By the thin stream of light that snuck in through the cracked door from the hallway, I could see his masculine face held up just above his uniformed shoulders and decorated chest. Daddy had lots of ribbons. His face was locked behind that tiny pane of framed glass, but it served as my window to him. I would tell him things I wanted him to hear, “I love you, daddy.” He was supposed to be fighting to protect me, to protect our country, but from what I never understood.

When daddy was gone, mom would be sad too but hardly in front of us. My brother, sister, and I were too young to relate to the challenges of assumed single parenthood that she was facing. All we knew is that there were less rules and more time for fun when daddy wasn’t home. We would mosey through chores, so we could go outside and play with the neighborhood cat, swing on the neighborhood vine, and play with the neighborhood school kids. The yard of that rental house where I cried for daddy to come home was my playground.

I chased lizards, captured frogs, jumped on the outdoor trampoline, and held my pee in as long as I could to prolong the length of my backyard adventures.

Sometimes I overestimated the strength of my bladder but always tried to be discrete about accidents or else mom would call me inside to change. We all knew that once we were inside, it was near to impossible to escape again without being tasked with some insufferable, domestic chore. My goal was to stay out until my legs grew tired of jumping on the trampoline, my skin grew tired of the heat, and my eyes grew tired of watching the severed tips of lizard tails squirm in my hand after a vain attempt at catching one.

My brother would often commission me to catch the lizards he wanted to hold or to do things he was too scared for. He used his older-sibling-manipulation-and-bribery tactics to get me to cooperate. Then again, I was young and did not take that much convincing. I rarely questioned why he would stand still while I chased the lizards or walked down the dark hallways to flip the light switch at the end. It was not until I became smart enough to be suspicious of his nonparticipation that I became scared of the dark.

Once the sky turned from blue to yellow to pink to grey, I knew it was time to go inside. Before entering the house, dad used to make us take off our shoes. We would get in trouble for walking across the carpet with tennis-shoed feet. Dad would spank us if we were caught, so as a habit, I slipped my tiny feet out of my shoe holes and carried the shoes to the bathroom. Dad always wanted us to beat our shoes together over the bathtub so any excess dirt would fall off in an easy-to-clean place. With my tiny hands, I beat them together sending specks of dirt flinging in all directions. Though I knew dad was far away, I did this every time just in case.

One day after returning from 2nd grade ventures, I came to the bathroom as usual to beat the dirt from my shoes but this time the shower curtain was closed. I pulled it back unsuspectingly. A growl emerged from behind the curtain, forcing me to close my eyes in fear. Then, all at once, my eyes opened and he was there in his battle dress uniform and combat boots, waiting to surprise us. He was home at last. He had chosen to hide behind the curtain because it was the last place he thought we would look, but I remembered what daddy had said about shoes on the carpet. He had forgotten his instruction to us and didn’t think how it would spoil his plan of surprise, but my young heart, the one that wanted so much to be loved by him, came to that tub just because I knew my shoes needed a beating.

My happiness in that moment was serene, but from then on, things were different. There was less time for outside playing and dress up. The carpet always seemed to need a good vacuum and laundry was never-ending. Dishes by far were my least favorite and the only thing that kept me from refusing to do them altogether was my dad’s stern expression when he was serious. I remember peaking up at his stark German face and watching for the flex of his jaw muscles at the curve of his jawbone. The tightening of this muscle was the tell-tale sign of trouble. I knew that when this muscle contracted, he was grinding his teeth in anger. Each pulse in his jaw was like a tick on a time bomb counting down the seconds before an explosion.

I saw this look many times in the next coming months, though I did not feel every instance of this reaction was merited. When daddy was home, the house stayed cleaner and the food got tastier and the punishments were harsher, but that is just how it was. No matter how scared I was of getting in trouble by him, it never kept me from missing him again when he would go to some far-off place without me. “I love you, daddy.”

I was lucky to know my parents when they were still young, energetic, and intrigued by the life they could build. As the second child, I grew up observing signs like the contractions in my dad’s jaw muscle and recognizing when to push back and when to submit, but my youngest sister had much different parents than I did.

I remember getting upset when she would do something I would have been spanked for while she got off scot free. Although this infuriated me, I also found myself racing to her defense when she was about to cross the point of no return. I would shuffle to a vantage point just behind the fuming parent and give her ques with my eyes, “Stop, retreat, abort!” they screamed. I would gesture dramatically with my hand, swiping sharply in front of my throat, letting her know she was dead meat.

Yet, in her naivety, she had the gumption to ask inopportune questions like, “Why are you even mad?” or say things like, “I did nothing wrong! I don’t see what the problem is.” This of course only made the fumes emanating from the nose of the parent combust into flames of anger and impatience. There was no saving once fire was in the air.

In less high-pressure times, I would explain to her the expression my mom would give when she was at her whit’s end and how to recognize the jaw clench my father would do when he was 2 nerves away from grounding her for life. She would even seek praise for recognizing those signs all on her own by saying, “I didn’t even get in trouble. I noticed dad’s jaw this time.” Oh, the blight of younger siblinghood.

When I was her age, I didn’t have anyone to direct me in knowing when to stop. I had to make observations of my own, so I learned that lesson spread over dad’s knee with his forceful hand whipping my hide. I guess that, in the 10 years between my childhood and hers, their parenting style graduated from a going-through-the-motions approach to a been-here-done-this-before style.

I remember on one occasion when my sister was being playful, my father was exchanging simple father-daughter banter. I recall all of my family members being gathered in my parents’ room near the bed watching something on the TV, but we all became bystanders to this witty exchange. As a playfully malicious rebuttal, my dad looked at my sister’s favorite blanket and said, “I am gonna burn your dee-go.” (as it was nicknamed). Almost without a moment’s thought, she glanced over at the TV in the armoire and said, “I am gonna burn your TV!” His face expanded in surprise and the rest of us stood aghast at the quick-witted response of a 5-year-old. I remember blushing and suppressing a laugh when I saw his face. I had never seen my father so bewildered and speechless. He had met his match.

We laugh about that moment still. Now, my sister can hardly believe her own sassiness at that age but always dotes on her response with verbal pats on the back. I am not sure how that scenario would have played out when I was her age. Would my father have taken it in good humor? Would he have been speechless in a dangerous way? Would I have been punished for embarrassing him with speechlessness in front of my mom, brother, and sister Emily? I cannot say for certain, but I do know that the allowance of humor in his household seemed to have evolved over time.

I like to think that, if given the oxygen to explore my own desires and sense of self, I would have been much more creative. Since the age I could speak, I always loved to sing. During recess at school, I would balance on the black plastic perimeter of the rock-filled playground and sing to myself whatever came to mind. I would sing of birds, trees, flowers, people, the sky, anything I saw. This was a habit that remained a large part of my personality. When I was about 10-years old, I remember my dad erupting and telling me I was banned from singing in the house. Naturally, I went to the backyard to resume my singing. It was the only way around my dad’s strange punishment to me.

The vast space of the yard invited me to test the confounds of my voice. It carried long into the cow pasture just beyond the barbed wire fence. I let the air sweep my voice freely from my throat to the backyard. Music flowed from my lungs and I was blossoming. My singing was soon interrupted by a distance voice coming from a place behind me. I turned to find my father glaring through the 2-story window at the back of the house and shouting something to me. I eventually heard his cry. “Shut up! Stop singing.” I was tired of his purposeless repression of my music. In exhausted refutation, I yelled, “I am outside!” I likely sat on the backyard swing set dangling my feet and resuming my concert in my head. I would have played with the bugs in the grass and uprooted several long green blades from their earthy beds just to feel their grassy bodies break under the strength of my little hands. I would have conversed with the dogs in my neighbor’s yard behind the chain-link fence adjacent to the swing set and observed the small animal gravestone by the tall oak in the farthest part of the yard until I inevitably had to go back inside.

My father’s words stung that day. I wondered why he was so abrasive towards my talent and love for singing. But because I loved him, I swallowed my songs on many occasions going forward. To this day, I look back bitterly at that moment. I have since learned that my obedience to parents should only be limited to their direction in right-versus-wrong situations, otherwise I may lose myself. Singing was never wrong or immoral but somehow was treated as an off-limits activity in my childhood home. Against his judgement for my education, I am not a soldier. I am not a nurse. I am not a lawyer. I am an English major who still loves to sing and will one day have a backyard meant to be filled with music. I have learned that the hero I looked up to as a 7-year-old girl is an imperfect role model, but a role model nonetheless.