This weekend my younger son is at a large alumni reunion organized for the 50th anniversary of the founding of his high school, a world-renowned school for the arts. I keep checking his Facebook page to see who he has reconnected with. I have sent and received greetings from his dormitory housemother, who—from my perspective—treated each of those young men as her own. I have gazed in awe at his inspirational history teacher, who instilled in my son such a unebbing love of history. I have seen familiar faces, now almost 20 years older, and looked for these classmates' Facebook pages and websites to see the successes they have logged in the ensuing years.
Then I stop and wonder if there's something wrong with me that I'm so entwined in my sons' lives.
Only then do I remember my daddy and how closely he followed my life. He knew my friends' names. He listened to the tales I told of our exploits. He doted on my place in his life and in the world.
I always called him "Daddy." My brothers called him "Doodle." One of my closest college friends, who recently finished her U.S. Air Force career with the rank of Major General, dubbed him "Doctor Daddy Doodle." We still talk about how wonderful he was to us.
One of my favorite memories dates from around 1970. I hosted a gathering of my University of Central Florida Tyes Sorority sisters at our home in Spring Valley. Daddy was away at a medical convention or fishing in Alaska, his two most common reasons to travel. In the middle of all the laughter of college-aged girls, the phone rang. It was Daddy, calling to say hello to my friends and to see how the party was going.
Was that intrusive? No! Was that overinvolved? Never! It was a daddy who somehow knew his importance in my life, staying connected.
And I think I'm standing in my daddy's shoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment