My Daddy Is Home

In Honor of My Father

Every time I look in a mirror I see the deep lines on his face, the gray passion in his hair. I remember the hours we spent playing catch in the backyard until the sun had disappeared from the sky and a darkness had replaced it. I remember the basketball games when he came to watch me play and I would spend the entire game on the bench. He never asked me why I didn’t get to play or how come I wasn’t as good as the others on the team. He could have, you know. He had been the captain of his basketball team, the leading scorer. I never achieved his greatness, his level of skill. I was a second-string player, sitting on the bench. I showed up at every practice, ran laps with the best of them, and shot hundreds of free throws.

I remember the first time I was fired from a job. He didn’t yell at me or make fun of me. He quietly offered me his help. I was fifteen and wanted to work for someone besides him. I didn’t want to build houses that summer. To carry cement blocks in the hot sun to those laying the basement walls. I didn’t want to carry shingles or hang insulation and drywall. I wanted to step outside the shadow of my father, to find my own path, to make my own way in the world. I secured a job detasseling corn, walking the cornfields during the hottest days of July, sweat pouring down my face. I had leaped from the frying pan into the fire. If I thought construction was hard work, detasseling was even harder. And I wasn’t the boss’s son. I couldn’t slack off. I couldn’t goof off. I couldn’t hide out. I lasted a week and they fired me. Claimed I was too slow. It was a setup. My supervisor told us he wanted a girl’s crew. So he told four of us to take our time, then he fired us for working too slow. When I told my father, he said he could help if I was willing to apologize. So he took me to see a man he knew, a person high up in the company. So there I stood. Shamefaced. Apologizing and begging for my job back. It did not work. Even my father could not fix everything.

More than a dozen years ago, my father passed away. A heart attack. He had gone to work when he was still sick with pneumonia. He was sitting on the tailgate of his blue pickup when it hit him. He fell to the ground. One of his employees helped him to his feet. He sat down beneath a tree. Moments later his heart gave out. He left his body. He left with a smile on his face. Dead, one month shy of his sixty-fifth birthday. We must all die someday. I wonder how my death will come. Will it sneak up on me in the middle of the night? Will it accost me at noon on a hot summer day? My hair is showing gray now. My wrinkles are deeper. My body stiffer. My snoring louder. Each of us must come to accept who we become. Each of us must find our own way through the fog of death. My nephew claims my father visited him after he died. Will he be there waiting for me when I cross over? What awaits any of us on the other side?

On my office wall hangs a photo of my father and his basketball team. I look at it almost every day as I reach for a tie to put around my neck. My father was a quiet man with a smile on his face. My mother claimed the smile was from the car accident, where he had all his ribs broken, except the one God used to make a woman. And most of his teeth were broken off when he tried to eat through the dashboard. He joked about being hungry. Would my father be proud of me today? Would he sit on a hard chair and listen to me preach? The gift that my father gave me was to support whatever I did and to be proud. Sometimes late at night when my world is asleep, I can hear him breathing. Some veil in time opens and we cross the folds that separate us. I listen for his return when I will whisper: My daddy is home.

Copyright © 2020 by Harley King

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