6/21/2015 Happy Father's Day

Aleathia says:

As a child I knew I needed my parents.  They gave me food and shelter and safety.  It is hard to bring into concept when you are young how much more they are to you.  In my life, my time with my Pop has been sporadic and the spaces marked with long, sad pauses from both circumstance and stubbornness.

I remember bits and pieces from my young childhood.  He taught me to hold a gun, skin a deer, walk in the woods, appreciate nature, and understand history.  There are glimpses of moments from those times we were together and those glimpses were always filled with something very important.  Hidden lessons and morals and great swathes of character that my small mind could not process, but absolutely recognized.

After a long pause in our time together, we were reunited when I was 10 years old.  So much had changed, so much time had passed it was like having to meet a stranger you had been waiting your whole life to meet.  We were hesitant.  I was shy and scared, but it didn't take much to break that.  We spent 2 years being inseparable.  We watched Yankee games together and wrestling matches.  We took long walks where there was the most comfortable silences only broken by names of trees and information about Native Americans or other useful history.  There was fishing and camping by the river. There were summer's at work with him learning architecture, direction, map reading, hard labor, carpentry, painting, and patience.  There was lunch by the ocean and so much jazz my 10 year old brain didn't understand because at that time "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" was so much more interesting.


When I moved here to upstate New York it was the hardest decision I ever had to make.  I would leave him again and break his heart.  I will never get to know what my life could have been like, what I would have learned, but where I am now is such a wonderful place that it must have been the right journey.

As an adult, our relationship has been strained.  Part of this was my fault and part of it was his fault and part of it was my mother's.  She fed me stories that were not true and I believed them because she was my mother.  I never got to hear his side of them until my mother passed and how sad it makes that all that time was wasted.  But we have right now and that counts for something.

In the last year my relationship with my Pop has been growing.  We have been active in the space between us.  We have made an effort to set aside all the awkward pretenses of people who love each other, but don't know how to show it.  I have learned to let so much go.

All of those moments in my life where he has been present has shaped who I am as a woman.  All those little things that didn't seem very significant when they happened were just seeds planted in a young mind waiting for the right conditions to grow.  I will be 42 this year and I am still learning from my Pop.  So much of him makes up my character, so many of his qualities he bestowed upon me are the qualities that my friends and family like about me.  His influence is stronger than I believe he imagines and our time together in this history of our life has touched me.  It has made me a strong, confident woman.

Thank you Pop for your steadfast patience.  For your love.  It is more precious to me that you can imagine.  I can't wait to see you this summer.  I love you.