I was never a daddy’s girl.
For one thing, I constantly had my nose in a book and prided myself on being a star student, but my dad’s childhood had been so different. He had dropped out of sixth grade to support his mother and siblings after his own dad died.
As for hugs and declarations of affection, they were rather sparse. And when it came to fatherly advice, my dad was a man of a few words, with two remaining forever embedded in my memory: “Be careful.”
If I was going across the street to visit a friend, he said, “Be careful.” If I was headed to the swimming pool, it was, “Be careful.”
In college, I rather carefully kept secrets from him rather than risk upsetting him. I was Ms. Ultra Liberal Gal, espousing every cause that I thought was progressive, which turned out to be anything my dad disagreed with.
Today, I look back and see he was right about nearly everything.
He was right when he warned me about college boys who would be after “just one thing.” He was correct about many of the godless and misguided ideas that lurked within the highfalutin philosophy tomes that mesmerized me.
When I was in graduate school, my mom died, which was the biggest shock the family every weathered. After that, my dad and I became a bit closer, writing letters to each other and even going on a cruise together.
Of course, when he wrote to tell me about the cruise, he said I should “be careful” driving down to Ft. Lauderdale to meet him.
We were actually getting to know one another, finally, until the next crashing blow hit, when he died quite suddenly six months after my mom.
As Father’s Day nears, memories of him flood my heart. True, he was not a sophisticated “Father Knows Best” kind of guy. He liked to play poker and smoke Cuban cigars, and favored Bermuda shorts over suits.
True, I never knew what it was liked to be spoiled by a father, to be the apple of his eye.
Still, he was the only dad I ever had, and not a day goes by that I don’t pray for him.
If he were here this Father’s Day, I see us going to Mass together and kneeling side-by-side in the pew. Later, I’d fix him a nice pan of manicotti, using my mom’s recipe, of course.
And I envision him sitting in the living room, reading the newspaper while I chop veggies with the big knife in the kitchen. I can hear him pausing for a moment to deliver the inevitable punch line: “Be careful.”
It has taken me all these years to realize what the words meant. They were a father’s secret code for “I love you.”
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Lorraine's latest books are “Death of a Liturgist,” a mystery, and “The Abbess of Andalusia,” a biography of Flannery O’Connor. Her e-mail address is lorrainevmurray@yahoo.com
