When I came up for air at the end of the last fifty yard sprint, my nemesis, Celeste, said, “Who’s that old hippie?”
I peered at the far end of the pool thirty yards away where the girls in my lane stared.
Dad.
Stringy, dark blond hair fell on his shoulders as he rocked back on his heels, arms crossed, hands buried in his armpits against the late afternoon chill—a pose I’d witnessed so many times it was tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.
My glance sprinted away from Dad. What if our eyeballs knocked into each other? I’d have to speak to him. Then every kid in the pool would see that we were connected.
He didn’t look like any dad I knew. Even the hippie-leaning men at the marina who smoked pot had worn close-cropped hair. He looked like Willie Nelson, ready to burst into Shotgun Willie.
I jammed my goggles back on, faced Coach as if I hadn’t just seen my father for the first time in months.
As I listened to Coach—the man I revered more than my parish priest—my panic notched down a couple rungs. Coach Farmer embodied everything a coach should be—firm, serious, cool-headed, expecting one hundred percent.A lot like Dad, I realized with a single arrow of clarity.
I dove into butterfly, the first lap in a set of 200 Individual Medleys.
From the bird’s eye view of several lapsed decades, years after Dad passed away, I wonder what he felt that day, watching me workout. The too-familiar—splash of water, click of hand paddles, bark of Coach’s commands, climb of steam to sky—had to toss him back twenty years to training for the Olympics, the eight years he raked in ribbons swimming high school and college and AAU.
Did remembering bring joy or sadness?
Did he hope I would fulfill his shattered Olympic bid? Or could he tell by watching me at sixteen that I wasn’t Olympic material? Did he figure out I’d never break a minute in the 100 Free?
At the end of practice I darted into the locker room. Maybe if I took a long enough shower, everyone would be gone by the time I had to face Dad.
When I emerged, the sky around the pool lights had darkened to night. Just a few freshman boys rat-tailed each other with their towels. Celeste, thank God, was nowhere in sight.
Dad stood against the glass wall inside the double doors rubbing his hands together for warmth.
I walked over to him. “Hi! When did you get here?” I injected surprise into my voice, took a deep breath, and leaned in for a hug that was all elbows and sharp-cornered shoulders.
Me at 5’6” and Dad at 5’7”, I stared eye-to-eye into the liqueur of love and leftover hurt that always lapped between us. I’d catch his height before I was done growing, but Dad would always loom large on my emotional landscape.
I stepped toward the parking lot and let out my breath, hoping the cool night breeze would blow Dad’s ever-present BO off my person.
Dad followed me into the lot, talking about how, in order to see me swim, he’d tacked on an extra thirty miles to the 250-mile bike ride from Miami. He biked because he could, not because he had to. A forty-eight-year-old man riding half way up the state of Florida impressed me not at all. What would have impressed me was if he’d used a bar of soap.
Headlights pulling out of the lot illumined the family Duster as Dad hefted his bike into the trunk.
I ducked into the driver’s seat, not wanting him to guess how embarrassed I was that we’d been spotlighted by my teammate’s low beams.
My waterlogged eyes stared at the rainbow rings circling the traffic signals, rush hour headlights, and neon storefronts.
Chlorine and stink warred for dominance inside the foggy windows.
I turned south onto US1 and drove into the stretch of dark between Port Orange and New Smyrna Beach.
Dad talked about a flat tire he’d had on his trip, how he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. His voice caught when he brought up selling the Annie Lee.
Dad had cast a fishing line for my sympathy and hooked me through the heart. I didn’t want to think about how I was a willing participant in the divorce, how four years later, I was still deep-down relieved to be disconnected from Dad.
“What did you think of Coach Farmer,” I threw out, hoping to get Dad talking about swimming.
But after a cursory discussion of tonight’s workout, Dad moved on to new affections—carrot juice, hummus, and Tabbouleh—decades before I could imagine juicing a carrot, grinding garbanzo beans to paste, or tossing tomatoes, parsley, onion, and mint together and calling it a salad.
I yawned. Why couldn’t we talk swimming? I had good memories of Dad rounding out my Red Cross swimming strokes with butterfly and backstroke. When I was in fourth grade he taught me to bend my elbows and cup my hands in freestyle. And he’d perfected my strokes without making me feel like a loser.
Dad would have made a great coach. But he stuttered whenever he got nervous. Maybe that was why Dad coached me when I’d needed a daddy who clapped when I twirled.
But Dad loved me. I knew it at the bottom of me. Maybe it was nobody’s fault that on the other side of the equal sign from love lay my thousand what-ifs.
What if today, in the pool, I hadn’t been so mediocre?
I wouldn’t ache so deeply over disappointing Dad if I didn’t love him back. I knew this because Ralph’s rants sluiced off my skin like pool water.
I sighed. The smell of Dad’s perspiration always pitched me back to childhood and all my various pockmarks. Dad hadn’t uttered a single criticism since he climbed into the car.
I cracked the window to let in some fresh air.
We hit the lights of New Smyrna Beach—Dudley’s Funeral Home, Pappas Drive-In Restaurant—and I was home. Albeit, I’d lived here less than a semester. But a passel of friends and teachers had taken me in. Along with Mom, they made me feel more than mediocre. This was my new, upgraded reality.
I only had to deal with Dad for the duration of his visit. I had my whole life to worry about the wounds in my soul.
But I didn’t have to wait that long. Six years later God scabbed over every wound when He gave me the strength to do something I didn’t know I needed to do, didn’t even want to do. I forgave Dad.
If you’d like to leave a comment, share an epiphany you’ve had about your parent(s).
Subscribe to my blog and get a
FREE GIFT!
In the right-hand column, type your e-mail address in the box above subscribe, then click on subscribe.
FREE GIFT: My First Kiss
Whether swoon-worthy or Ben Stiller-awkward, we all remember our first kiss. Subscribe to my blog and chuckle over mine.
Related posts about New Smyrna Beach:
Friendless on the First Day of School
Beached, Brokendown, and Blessed in New Smyrna
Spoons, Nudes, and Tuna Casserole
Too Much and Not Enough Testosterone for the Christmas Parade
A Couple of Kids Cobble Together Christmas
Dodging the Day After Christmas Blues
First kiss? Mine was rather boring.
Dads. Sigh. Our first slow comprehension that love can cause such visceral pain. And our deepest lesson in forgiveness.
So succinctly and perfectly put, Pamela. We are sisters of heart.
My dad flew 1200 miles to watch me play football one night, NSB vs. Father Lopez. NSB won, huge, the team’s first big test of strength that season. I didn’t know my dad had flown in and was in the stands watching. He met me on the field after the game and I was beaming, my dad was here! Someone was in the stands watching me play. My dad couldn’t hug me as we met, a guy thing, guys didn’t hug or say “I love you.” Weakness, you know? What he said next, obviously I have never forgotten. He said, “Good game son. I’m proud of you…even if you weren’t the guy carrying the ball.” “It’s a team game, not an individual thing, dad” I shot back, a bit bitter at his comment. His comment hurt so badly because it didn’t matter that I was a starter on the team, I was nobody if I didn’t carry the ball and score touchdowns. His comment left me glad to get on the team bus and be with teammates who understood the sacrifice made during the weeks of practice, the butterflies before each kickoff, because you were afraid you might miss an assignment and cause someone to get hurt or cost the team a victory and let the town down. High School sports, where a lot of life lessons are first learned, many not fully understood until adulthood. I guess, back in the day, as simple as it was, is sure felt complex. And now I also know, I wasn’t alone, there were others, like you, roaming the halls of NSBHS. Why do I read your words Ann? Why do your words push my thoughts around until I have to respond?
Pain is universal, part of the human condition. When someone excavates his or her pain, we identify. It helps to know another person felt what we felt. And my hope is that the healing I experience as I write will seep through the words and give my readers a little healing too.
Oh Ann. My dad was my nemesis, too. I remember him coming to my high school graduation in a yellow tux. He sat in the stands with all his old buddies from the same high school. I thought, he looks like a big fat lemon drop! Why is he here? Just to show off. He never once bought my school clothes, paid for my lunches in high school, or even called on my birthdays. But he could sure show up to play it up big now. I was his oldest child, everyone knew about me since I had been born in his senior year at NSB! My dad spent all his nights in the bars until I was eight. He would come home every few days to my mom and lay on the cry like a baby! He was like James Knox in the charisma department. Captain of the pep squad with a red convertible. Everyone loved him. He still has that. He could look at me right now and say “I love you baby doll!” And I would melt, though he hasn’t been to see me in over 5 years now. My dad never had BO, he was the perfect gentlemen, but he didn’t give a damn about you unless there was something in it for him!
Thanks for telling your story, Bonnie! A lemon drop! I can just picture everything you said. It appears to me like there are fewer good dads than bad. Maybe that’s just my skewed perception, but I’m sticking by it. I sat in a Bible study one night with about a dozen women. All of them had poor fathers except for one gal! And her dad wasn’t even religious. Go figure.