My Father Left

But another man showed us good men don’t

When my dad left, he gave my brother no choice.

It’s now your responsibility to worry about these girls.

He was fifteen.

Far too young, to be concerned with a five-year-old whose father was absent.

My brother often says it’s divine retribution that eleven out of twelve grandchildren are boys. He says it’s payback for growing up with four sisters. The law of averages, finally dispersing in his favor.

I’ll let him have that.

Recently, we were celebrating my nephew’s engagement.

“A little of Colleen goes a long way,” he says.

“What??!!” I gasp. “This is the first time I’ve been mad at you.”

“Really?” he says. “You’ve never been upset with me before?”

Truth be told, I haven’t.

I think my big brother walks on water.

He’s given me many reasons to believe this.

But this dagger hits me between the eyes before it redirects and aims at my heart. My brother is no longer walking on water, he’s swimming in it.

But I digress it.

Sometimes we don’t share our thoughts with people.

The things that push forward when others retreat.

Like watching my twenty, and then-thirty-something brother show up religiously to cut our mother’s lawn. Or the photographic memory of his signature as I would round our piano and see a check left in our mother’s name. Always, trying to leave her with a few more dollars than he had found her with.

Or the day he walked me down the aisle.

Once again, stepping in where my father stepped out.

On my wedding video, he can be heard saying, “I’m glad Colleen is marrying you because I’ll never have to worry about her.” It was the first time I knew my brother carried an invisible burden, though he never let on.

I called him the day my second son was born.

“We named him Billy,” I say.

“You did!?”

The surprise in his voice was not lost on me.

I might be the youngest, but I knew my brother’s inherited conflict. It wasn’t a name. It was a weight. A young boy determined to love but not live the legacy of his father.

I knew this because of his apprehension to name his own kids after himself.

As if the strength of one man wouldn’t compensate for the misfortune of another. But family ghosts are haunting that way. We run from them even when we’ve already successfully escaped.

I named my son Billy after the best man I know.

But I also wanted to free my brother.

To let him know I never made that association.

He is who he is. He is not our dad. He never was. He is someone to be celebrated not deprecated. Despite a few letters lining up in his name.

We girls, we live largely and are every bit the complicated dynamic a primarily all-girl household brings. It’s a part of our charm and a part of our downfall. My brother knows this. We challenge him. In every single dimension of complex and complicated.

He has never let me down or been disrespectful to me.

With the exception of the one day, he fell through the water.

I’ll let him have that.

Because he was the only boy born to four sisters.

Who watched a man leave.

But he never did.