Happy Father’s Day

Daddy,

Yesterday was your birthday.

Today is Father’s Day.

How I wish I could kiss your cheek that smelled like soap, chicken and sometimes beer, and see that grin you had for me as I bounced towards you, big smile, big energy, big, huge, unending love for you.

How I wish I could fall asleep again like when I was a small child, your fingers tracing my face (always managing to hypnotize me somehow to sleep)…

How I wish I could laugh with you as we did over the silliest things, from farts to movies to playing games with words. You were so clever and funny.

How I wish I could see you in your cherry shorts pyjamas, old slippers, silly glasses taped up with a bandage and parka ready to go out shopping with me… Oh my gosh, how you would smirk and barely hold your laughter in as I was ready to die of humiliation.

Yet I went with you, somewhere inside of me laughing with you and knowing that no dad on earth would have made me laugh so hard and so much…

How I wish I could go on one of your crazy outings… piling every neighbourhood kid in the car (before the seatbelt laws) to bring us to DQ to share one or two huge giant-size jugs of soda with 15 straws in it… Man!!! How fast that soda would suck down to the bottom!!!!

How I wish I could go for the drives that we would go on, when you would ask me for directions and of course, left was right, front was back and up was down! I got frustrated every time, playing along and switching down to up, but then you would do some other crazy, unexpected thing. Until eventually we were both laughing so hard that we cried.

How I wish I could go for the long bike rides with you that always ended with a milkshake…

How I wish I could listen to your bedtime stories again. The ways that you would try to trick me into sleeping by telling me to pretend that I was a sleeping princess… Ha! As if I would fall for that. After I was ten.

How I wish I could close my eyes and go for those “magic carpet rides”, where I saw the world through your imagination…

How I wish I could play one of our one-hour-long games of “I Spy.” You always cheated and made sure that I knew you were cheating… I couldn’t figure out why you would cheat and still want me to know that you were cheating until later, when I realized how important honesty was to you.

How I wish we could have those magical midnight talks… the ones that you insisted on teaching me about all that you would think would later be important to me… (Hello, 11-year-old brain. Welcome to Daddy’s version of Psychology 101.)

How I wish I could hear you tease me, calling me “The Great Brain,” telling me I did it again… (Which usually meant, somehow, that I was in trouble again!)

How I wish I could sit at your bedside, in the later years, when you were sick. Sometimes I had other things to do, but you always wanted me beside you when you were having a bad day, and you always made sure that I knew, through and through, that I was your princess sweetpea, and that you delighted in my presence, my opinion and my company. That you loved me thoroughly.

How I wish I could look in your eyes one more time and remember what it felt like to be loved. Thoroughly loved. Unconditionally… no expectations, no judging, no mean comments, nothing but you, beloved Daddy, doing your best to point me in the right direction.

I love you, Daddy.

You always make me smile.